Dispatches is a depository of reporting by Bramwell Ryan. Much of it also appears elsewhere – magazines, newspapers, online – but here is where it is gathered.
This is independent work; it is non-sponsored, immune to news releases, happily oblivious to group-think on X and skeptical.
Dispatches is about chasing interesting stories and sharing them – regardless of medium – in ways that delight and inform, provoke and challenge.
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free range, independent, episodic journalism
Choppiness in the Asian Venice | Dispatch from Myanmar
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Wild and Free
With vulnerable supply chains, hardening borders, fewer farm workers and meat packing plants in crisis, there are worries that food might be scarce in the months ahead. Even if fears of acute shortages are overblown, there’s little doubt that pre-pandemic abundance and the cost of staples are bound to change.
For Laura Reeves, 46, this is a nudge we all need to start looking elsewhere to find portions of what we eat. She’s not advocating hunting trips or wilderness expeditions. She says the larder is closer to home. In fact, it’s in our yards. Reeves is a teacher and practitioner of foraging for wild edibles. Weeds. And this free food is available anywhere across Canada, even in urban centres.
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Hell's Waiting Room
The smell of rancid meat piled on a crusty mattress blended with the reek of burning rubber. In the murky light of the two-room cattle shed, the screams of insanity echoed off the splintering, single ply walls.
Saving Ridley
They are ugly, tough and bred to survive brutal winters, yet somehow the gnarly Ridley Bronze turkey has captured the heart of a retired nurse on Saltspring Island.
Migratory Profit
Morocco | It smells of fear in the Café de la Porte in Tangier. It’s the same smell you always find on the fringes of power. But there’s also the smell of croissants and boiled eggs, strong tea and buttered toast.
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Hunger for Survival
They have known boom and they have known bust, but most of all, George River caribou – a massive and magical herd – have known the rigours of an endless, epic march.
Lake Winnipeg podcast
Can Lake Winnipeg – with a watershed of almost 1-million square kilometers – continue to thrive with the pressures of climate change, pollution, development? Dispatches explores in a podcast series.
Sacred Journey
A 500 km journey in search of reconciliation with First Nations. Follow Bishop Logan McMenamie as he takes One Step on Vancouver Island.
Solutions
Solutions journalism is a shift in how media covers the world. It focuses on what the news misses most often: how people are trying to solve problems and what we can learn from their successes or failures.
Dispatches endeavours to take this approach to story selection and treatment. It’s not endless ‘good news’ but it is an often missing recognition that there are some glimmers of hope and light amidst the regular programming of doom and gloom.
Bramwell Ryan
independent media
