The 2023 recipient of the Lieutenant Governor’s BC Journalism Fellowship is Kim Bolan, an experienced and award-winning journalist who has covered gangs in British Columbia for the past 25 years. Bolan has been awarded funds to produce a series of articles on the increasing international tentacles of BC gangs and organized crime groups. Building on her years of experience covering gangs at home, Bolan has travelled to some of the places these organized crime groups have expanded and has examined the effectiveness of Canada’s efforts to tackle organized crime.

Beginning on January 22^nd, Bolan’s work was published as a five-part series by the Vancouver Sun, online and in print. We have been awed by the unflinching investigative narrative told by Bolan, shining a light on some of the most insidious crime networks, with far reaching tentacles across the globe. Truly, her work is a fearless example of the best of journalism, so rarely accomplished these days. These are precisely the stories that go untold and remain unknown without programmes like the Lieutenant Governor’s BC Journalism Fellowship.

You are invited to read the five part series:

Part 1: Lethal Exports: B.C. gangsters at the centre of a global drug trade

Part 2: Lethal Exports: The alleged ‘right hand’ of a crime boss dubbed the Asian El Chapo is this B.C. man

Part 3: Lethal Exports: How B.C. gangsters are damaging a tropical paradise

Part 4: Lethal Exports: UN bosses run their B.C. gang from a Vietnam hideout

Part 5: Lethal Exports: Why Canada is a ‘global refuge’ for Hells Angels, other crime networks

Presented in partnership with the Jack Webster Foundation with generous support from the Government House Foundation, the applications for the third year of the fellowship will open in mid-February for intake, of not just one but two projects for 2024.