Seven Oaks Magazine.

We know, we know – it’s not yet summer time. And yet, through the magic of traumatic SUV-induced climate-change and our flat-lining credit union account balance, this year the Dog Days have come early.

During indispensable times of trouble and turmoil such as these – with George Bush back in the White House, Stephen Harper mining fear of sodomy for poll boosts and Million Dollar Baby somehow beating Sideways, The Aviator and Hotel Rwanda – young progressives seek out spaces to sound off and draw out their understandings of the complex political, social and cultural realities surrounding us. For over a year now, one such space has been SevenOaksMag.com, an exciting and provocative Vancouver-based e-zine created by youth of various intellectual and political backgrounds – journalists, activists, academics, humourists, photographers, artists – galvanized by the changing world around us.

There is no doubt that Seven Oaks has been a resounding success. Read by a growing readership of thousands, we have begun to stake our small claim of the vast online landscape. The superb quality of our work to date is evidenced by the roster of prestigious print and online periodicals that have reprinted our stories: Monthly Review, Rabble.ca, Counterpunch.org, The Tyee, Zmag, the Westender, and the Israel/Palestine-based Alternative Information Center, just to name a few. Several of our articles have been translated into languages such as French, Italian and Arabic. The response to the site has been overwhelmingly positive.

We can, in fact, be more certain of making an impact than we are of making rent. Hence, the Dog Days of Spring fundraising campaign.

We are setting out to raise the relatively modest sum of five thousand Canadian dollars between now and July 1st, a dark day marking the birth of our country and one of our founding editors. To raise that amount, we ask that you – our readers and friends – help us in one of two ways, ranked here in terms of desirability:

The Monthly Sustainer-Fellow Traveller donation is a monthly pledge of at least twenty dollars paid out by cheque or through our online PayPal account. Individuals donating more than fifty dollars per month will be noted on a soon-to-be-added “Thank You” page, and organizational donations above fifty dollars will receive a small box ad on the front page of the site.

The One Time-Kinetic Guerrilla donation is one cheque or PayPal payment, made out for whatever magnificent sum you’d like to give in order to help keep one of Canada’s most vibrant and provocative youth journals online.

Cheques made out to Seven Oaks Magazine can be mailed to: Seven Oaks Magazine 803 – 1434 Burnaby ST, Vancouver, B.C.V6G 1W8.

We ask you to please consider this request very seriously. If you’ve enjoyed our website to date, and look forward to where we’re heading, please help to continue to make it possible.