Jim Barr & Jeremy Derksen, Co-Publishers, Seekers Media

– By Bianca Bruder, MagsBC intern, January 2026. Edited by Doris Fiedrich, February 2026.

Jim Barr and Jeremy Derksen colour portraits with ski outfits in a snowy landscape — Jim Barr (left) and Jeremy Derksen (right)

I Interviewed Jim Barr and Jeremy Derksen and asked them about the story behind the three Seekers Magazines and how they came into being. What do they like to see change in the magazine industry, and why do they think community and human connection are essential in times of AI growing bigger?

Tell us about the idea behind publishing three Seekers magazines with three different topics.

SnowSeekers, our first online community and magazine, was published ahead of the 2010 Olympics to connect people from around the world, skiers and riders, with BC’s winter experience potentials and their next winter adventure. Once SnowSeekers gained momentum, our advertisers and partners asked what we were doing in the shoulder season and summer months, so we launched FestivalSeekers in 2011, a magazine about events in music, food, art, and culture in Western Canada.

When Gord Downie of the Tragically Hip passed away, we launched ZenSeekers in honour of his reconciliACTION efforts. ZenSeekers’ mission is to connect colonial Canadians with outdoor and Indigenous tourism experiences to leave our community better connected to the land. The aim is to share travel ideas or trips that will inspire and transform others.

What do enjoy the most about creating the magazines?

Connecting our community with our mission—to use our magazines filled with first-person, human-produced content—as inspiration to get outside more and connect with Alberta and BC communities. This is especially important in times of AI.

Why do you think that?

Fighting the robots, AI piracy, and the Meta invasion must be our top priority in the magazine industry right now. We can all expect fewer referrals from traditional referrers; that includes Google and Meta. This is exactly why we have to prioritize human connection over robot curation. Did you know that in October 2025 more articles and stories online were produced by robots than by humans? Think about that for a second. Real storytellers get replaced by robots and AI. That’s why connecting with our readers and our community is now more important than ever. It’s about storytelling and real human interaction and sharing their experiences. At SnowSeekers we do that through weekly newsletters delivering everything about winter travel destinations and snow conditions right into our subscribers’ inboxes throughout the season.

How can we support each other within the local and Canadian magazine industry?

We need to fight against Meta’s domination in the media buying space by working together, by offering collective advertising deals, and by building a collective dashboard so our reporting, as a collective industry, is on par with Meta and Google.

We can do a better job as a collective: to engage ad agencies and Canadian media buyers on what it means to keep their marketing money local and regional. Another way is to support Sarah Thompson’s work, Canadian Media Means Business: https://www.canadianmediameansbusiness.ca/