Hi, I’m Paige.
The "buck stops here" of Canadian Civil... For now. If you're not familiar with Canadian Civil, most people know us for our live event in Montreal each summer "Canadian Civil Alive" which is a large event for reform focused communicators in North America.
That's just the public tip of a much larger iceberg.
It All Started With A Podcast
Canadian Civil started during the pandemic. Originally I figured it would be nice for viewers to have something wholesome to watch during a rough year. If I'm honest though, it was as much an attempt to avoid professional isolation as it was to create content. When the recording would stop we would often stay on the line talking for hours and acquaintances quickly started to become colleagues.
In Person
When the pandemic ended, it seemed like it'd be nice to "spotlight" the success of this little group in creating urbanism advocacy content. I nervously invited everyone to Montreal and was surprised that Uytae was down to fly all the way from Vancouver.
It was called Canadian Civil Alive to celebrate making it through the pandemic.
It Stopped There
This is where people watching from the outside would say "progress stopped". Apart from Canadian Civil Alive growing each year there hasn't been a whole lot happening.
Behind the scenes we've seen it all from cat sitting to full on ugly crying... And I don't have a cat so...
What's actually been developing is behind the scenes. Over the years those colleagues have become real friends and allies. Every so often a new person comes along and it just clicks: I met Cara less than two years ago but it feels like I've known her forever.
We have helped each other through some real nightmare projects, successes and failures, the birth of children and the deaths of friends. It's a weird job that only a handful of people have, I can't imagine doing it without this semi-professional support network.
We all do our own things and debate and argue constantly, but at the base I trust everyone because we share a similar open mindedness and optimism for what's possible. None of us have rigid political ideologies. It's mostly about thinking through policies on a case-by-case basis and trying to figure out what we can do about it.
Working with these people has made me better at my job, but also I like playing a role in a community where everyone has their different strengths. I'm useful as an organizer and administrator.
Keeping Canadian Civil... Alive
As nice as everything is though, I'm at the point that things either have to push through and scale up, or scale down to be sustainable.
The Hard Reality
Our flagship hangout "Canadian Civil Alive" has been going on my credit card for years. The event tickets don't cover the costs despite everyone covering their own travel costs and sleeping on mattresses. The real cost is time. I spend about 200-300 hours organizing the event, which means I'm not earning money for months.
The 2025 edition was really tough. Organizing it delayed a time sensitive project I was doing for CBC by a couple of months. It significantly reduced its potential impact on shaping discourse on a rail project. When someone on the project said to me "If only this had come out just a month or two earlier", I was pretty gutted.
I also tried to put in the minimal money and time to make it sustainable, but that meant we didn't have a sound technician, which made it incredibly stressful on the day. Stressful in an "I can't keep doing this" sort of way.
The minimal effort also was creatively unfulfilling, simply replicating the previous years materials and changing the variables. Needing to create new things is an unfortunate problem with the way I'm wired... more on that later.
Saving Canadian Civil Alive
While this has been going on, several organizations have offered support that would take the event out of the red. Free facilities & funding would help a lot, but they always required Canadian Civil to be a real financial entity. The problem is, the burden and cost of incorporating would undo a lot of that. Canadian Civil is sitting in this in-between zone and has been for years.
Increasingly, the other content creators have suggested I "ask for support" while others have wondered if Canadian Civil "could be more". I have a hard time asking for support, but getting excited about the "could be more" is what motivated me to fix this.
Save Canadian Civil Alive and get early access to tickets before the event sells out.
The Solution
The possibility of giving up on Canadian Civil Alive is triggering a real loss aversion. After thinking about Canadian Civil as a proper organization for years: I'd like to try to make it happen.
I have carefully outlined a set of milestones in 2026 which with your support will allow Canadian Civil to reach its potential as:
...A Reform Focused Organization
There's a need for an advocacy organization that pushes for reforms across Canada. If you've seen my videos, they have a certain technocratic-explainer-advocacy element to them. Electoral reform, housing reform, competition reform. But with it being done as an individual, it has a "yells at cloud" energy to it, especially with my channel just being my name.
Uytae, or as some people know him "About Here Guy", was ahead of the curve as usual on this one. It's good to have a thing that goes beyond an individual. It adds credibility and makes the focus clear. It sounds better and is easier to understand when a brand does things. If someone wants to support About Here, they know the range of things they're going to get. What do they get if they support "Paige Saunders"?
...Separate From Paige
The obvious solution would be to rename my channel and "Be" Canadian Civil right?
The problem is twofold. Firstly, I'd be an awful official spokesperson of a reform movement. I've had people describe me as "Too high octane", "Offensive" and "Weird".
"You're weird" - The General Public
After 38 years, I still haven't been able to regulate myself, which makes me kind of divisive. I think it's better long term for my distinct smarmy-sweary-silly style to detach from Canadian Civil. The version of Canadian Civil that has the biggest impact isn't a one man band playing a tune that most people find irritating.
Canadian Civil would lose credibility if it put out videos accusing the signage department at TTC of being inbred.
The second thing is: Remember the creativity thing from earlier? I've tried, but can't make straight technocratic reform videos without becoming very unhappy. I wish it wasn't like this, but it is. I love making videos on a wide range of stuff and balancing the types of projects is key. Half the time I need to experiment and try things that are so outside the box that it doesn't belong in the Canadian Civil brand.
In 2025 I decided to play a team sport for the first time. The experience changed my life so I want to make a very self-indulgent documentary on it, but if you signed up for competition reform "What the fuck is this shit?" is a fair question: It just isn't in the scope of the people who support the efforts of reform.
People who want to support me now have a choice. If they want to back everything I make no matter what, from learning about graffiti, to tiktoks about Eruvs, to a documentary about trying sports, there is patreon. If they want to support building an organization that focuses on reform-advocacy-explainers, collaborations and events they can support Canadian Civil.
Ideally, it's a little bit of both because the personal projects are a hobby while Canadian Civil is more of a job.
...A Container For Collaboration
I see Canadian Civil as one day being a container that this loose collective of people can utilize from time to time. We all work separately on things but collaborate a lot. So far there are a few things we have done together like the podcast, our PeerTube/Mastodon instance and Alive.
I'd like to add some more things to that list. I have a hunch that if we move towards setting up an entity, we'll find it useful in ways that are hard to predict, from basic things like having a blog, podcast and shared meetups to splitting the cost of insurance, off-site backups and bookkeeping.
For now, though, I'm trying to be cautious and build things step-by-step starting with my own projects and seeing what the others make of it.
Next Steps
I've created a page which has funding goals and what is unlocked at various levels. The goal in 2026 is to restart my channel with regular content, get Canadian Civil Alive out of the red and dabble in collaborations by offering my services as a free producer/editor/whatever is needed.
A couple of years ago I made this when I was thinking about what "Canadian Civil" could be. Something with intensity and passion which established organizations understandably avoid. A flanker brand for "the kids" to complement the more established and academic institutions.
As the levels increase, we have more project types, locking in Canadian Civil Alive and finally, once this gets to a level where this is a 5 days a week role, it can be officially incorporated.
The story of Canadian Civil is gradual steps towards doing things together. All of us started off in our bedrooms making videos and it's been incredibly rewarding seeing everyone do so well.
Getting reforms passed in North America is a long and hard task. Many issues sit on the docket for decades. I'm an optimistic person and think we'll get there eventually no matter what, but with your support, maybe we can find more ways to work together and get there sooner.
Member discussion