Elana Shepert

Elana Shepert is a reporter for Vancouver Is Awesome whose work ties major events, civic disruptions and everyday conditions to their impact on people’s lives. Her coverage spans breaking news, regular updates and feature stories, with an emphasis on clear, accessible explanations of what a development means for residents right now. She moves easily between sports-related mega-events, travel and transit, weather, and community stories, often framing them through social and public-interest angles rather than scores or spectacle.

Sports tournaments and civic strain

Shepert’s sports-adjacent reporting focuses on how large tournaments and public celebrations intersect with vulnerable communities and city systems, rather than the play-by-play of games. In her coverage of the FIFA World Cup, she examines where the unhoused population will be directed when a global event arrives, treating the tournament as a pressure test for urban policy, shelter capacity and public space management.

This approach aligns with earlier work that tracked the transit strike, where she chronicled service interruptions and their effect on commuters and workers, keeping attention on practical consequences rather than institutional press lines. She brings the same lens to city-scale festivities such as the Celebration of Light, highlighting which teams win, but also how the event unfolds on the ground and what it means for crowds, waterfront access and neighbourhood experience.

Her sports beat therefore reads as a bridge between the stadium and the street, using major competitions as an entry point into social issues, mobility and public order.

Travel, transit and movement

Travel and movement are core threads in Shepert’s reporting, informed by experience as a travel writer and agent and by her ongoing role curating a travel newsletter for the masthead. She regularly explains tools and processes that help people move more smoothly, such as an Advance CBSA Declaration service that can save time for travellers making flight connections through Canadian airports. These pieces are tightly practical: she outlines what the tool does, who should use it, and the specific steps a traveller must follow to avoid missed flights or long waits. Her destination and travel-deals features similarly balance inspiration with service details, drawing on visits to numerous countries to anchor coverage in concrete itineraries, logistics and on-the-ground expectations.

Even in non-leisure contexts, she uses a movement frame to tell stories - whether describing how a cruise-ship terminal attack unfolded and affected passengers and staff, or documenting how a rooftop climber navigated cranes high above the city, she treats routes, access and physical risk as central to the narrative.

Weather, environment and public safety

Weather and environmental conditions are another recurring pillar of Shepert’s work. During heavy snowstorms, she reports on conditions and public response, sharing footage and examples of how residents adapt and enjoy the sudden change while noting the challenges it poses for travel and daily routines. When a beach is closed due to high levels of bacteria, she explains the decision, the testing results and the implications for swimmers and families who use the shoreline, turning a short advisory into a clear public-safety update.

She has covered severe weather swings more broadly, including wind and rain events that disrupt transit and utilities, always anchoring the story in what readers need to know now about closures, risks and preparedness. Her environmental coverage extends upward as well as outward, with pieces on phenomena such as a Sturgeon Supermoon that combine vivid sky imagery with practical pointers on viewing conditions and timing.

Across these stories, she consistently connects meteorological or environmental data to the lived experience of people in public spaces.

High-volume breaking news and community stories

Shepert’s defining structural trait is volume paired with range.

Since joining Vancouver Is Awesome in 2018, she has produced thousands of pieces that stretch from crime and safety incidents to entertainment and food, while maintaining a focus on clear, concise updates that readers can act on. Her work has included fast responses to incidents such as an attack at a cruise-ship terminal, where she contributes reporting that clarifies what happened, how law enforcement responded and what comes next in court.

She also files community features that profile people and subcultures, such as urban explorers climbing cranes, using direct description and quotes to let subjects explain their own motivations and routines. Recognition as Glacier Media’s Newsroom Employee of the Year in 2019 underscores both her productivity and her ability to identify stories that drive high engagement and deepen readers’ understanding of their community.

Beyond hard news, she participates in lighter cultural pieces - from fast-food tasting panels to coverage of music and events - showing a willingness to shift tone while maintaining straightforward, reportorial prose that matches the subject at hand.

Across beats, Shepert’s consistent pattern is to start with a concrete development - a tournament, storm, policy change, tool, or incident - and rapidly translate it into implications for movement, safety, access and daily life.

Her sports coverage sits inside that broader frame, using global competitions and civic celebrations as catalysts for examining urban strain and social equity, rather than isolated sports pages. For communications teams, her byline signals a reporter who values clear, timely information and stories that answer “what does this mean for people on the ground?” in plain language.