August 2017 - North99 founded
North99 was founded as a non-profit with a mission to give a voice to working class people, their issues and to counter the rise of right-wing online content through our social media advocacy.
The non-profit quickly grew to have the most engaged and viral online progressive social media accounts in Canada, reaching millions of Canadians every month.
February 2020 - Passage founded
The team quickly realized there was a need for a publication to examine what the mainstream media was ignoring. To do this, North99 ran a crowdfunding campaign in December 2019 to fund the launch of Passage, a separate and independent publication for opinion and analysis.
The publication launched in February 2020 with Davide Mastracci as its managing editor. He was responsible for editorial decisions.
Passage and North99 continued to exist under the same non-profit, but editorially and organizationally were entirely separate.
August 2021 - The Maple founded
After seeing how social media algorithms throttled political content, and observing the power of independent media across the country, North99 pivoted to become The Maple, a journalistic publication focused on news and investigations.
The Maple hired Alex Cosh as its managing editor. He was responsible for editorial decisions.
The Maple and Passage continued to exist under the same nonprofit, but editorially and organizationally were separate publications.
March 2023 - Maple and Passage merge
As time went on, it became clear that The Maple and Passage shared similar values. As such, the two teams agreed that merging the publications would be the best way forward, given that outlets generally have separate sections for opinion and news anyway.
Alex Cosh serves as the managing editor of news while Davide Mastracci serves as managing editor of opinion. They manage the publication together based on consensus, with each making all editorial decisions for their respective section.