It might seem that there’s not much going on in Vancouver besides drug addiction, homelessness, and the long-passed Olympics. Or at least, that’s what I’m told. Having just moved to Montreal from Vancouver, I’m discovering the way the rest of the country sees my hometown.

There’s a lot of ways to look at Vancouver, I know. A year ago, I sat down with four people and we started a magazine as a platform for stories to be told about the city that had never been seen anywhere else.

It was a chance to rediscover Vancouver, through the work and the points of view of previously unheard Vancouverites. That idea became Sad Mag, an arts and culture quarterly driven by striking photography and new perspectives in writing.

Sad Mag is our love letter to the places, people, and things that make us love the City of Glass. It plays with the impression that Vancouver is a culturally deprived, no-fun, sad city. And when I look at the pages of the magazine, thinking of home, the Sad city looks so beautiful from here.

Sad Mag is available for free across Vancouver and can be downloaded here. Join us on Facebook