The Story
The kid in the
yellow shirt.
Why 7AM exists, how it works, and what a hockey rink birthday cake has to do with any of it.
Yeah, that's me. Blowing out the candles and spitting all over the cake. Hockey rink cake, obviously — because some things about a person are established early and never really change.
Birthday parties in the 90's were wild. Living rooms filled with cigarette smoke, Pilsner Stubbies and ozone-depleting hairspray.
So. Much. Hairspray.
"7AM is how I spend a few hours each day doing something that kid would be proud of."
Every day I sit down and build this thing — reading through the news, pulling out what actually matters, cutting the noise, and writing it up the way I'd want to find it in my inbox. Not because anyone asked me to. Not because there's a VC-backed content strategy behind it.
Because there's a version of me in that yellow shirt who would think this was genuinely cool.
He'd also be relieved to know I still play with GI Joes and harass people at movie stores.
He appreciates that we've never grown out of that.
Why Canada needed this
38 million people. No dominant morning briefing. There are regional papers trying to be national, wire services without a point of view, and American newsletters with a "Canada" tab tacked on like an afterthought.
None of them feel like they were written for someone who had a Blockbuster card in their own name, knew a Zellers by its smell, and has an opinion about every NHL trade deadline whether they're asked or not.
7AM is the one that was missing. Smart, Canadian, a little funny. Written every morning the way you'd want to talk about the news over coffee — not a transcript of press releases, not an algorithm's summary of other summaries.
What it is
A daily newsletter, out every morning at 7AM Eastern. People, Places, Stories, Things, Events — not always all of them, not always in that order. Saturdays are the Saturday Morning Funnies. Sundays are Puzzles & Bewilderment. Both are open to interpretation.
Written from a coffee shop, under deadline, with a temperamental relationship to how well we slept. We think that's a feature.
Free forever. No credit card. One click to leave.
The kid in the yellow shirt would have it no other way.
Questions? Tips? Just want to say hi? hello@7am.ca
c. 1990