stephentaylor.ca
One of the earliest Canadian political blogs — two decades of commentary, media accountability, and digital political organizing.
S tephentaylor.ca launched in January 2004, at the founding moment of the modern Conservative Party of Canada, making it one of the first political blogs in the country. Over two decades it grew from a personal commentary platform into a significant node in Canadian conservative media — a place where political analysis, investigative accountability, and technology intersected. The site helped establish the template for digital political publishing in Canada, and the audience Stephen Taylor built there — now 112,000+ followers on X — became a foundation for his later work in political advisory, media, and technology. The site remains active with occasional posts and continues to host the Stephen Taylor Data Project, an interactive suite of electoral maps and visualizations.
What I did
- Co-founded Blogging Tories in December 2004 with Craig Smith — the first Canadian political blogroll, which grew to roughly 300 blogs and directly inspired the creation of Progressive Bloggers, Liblogs, and other partisan counterparts across the political spectrum
- Became the first fellow of the Manning Centre for Building Democracy, addressing its inaugural meeting on the floor of the Toronto Stock Exchange on the role of blogs in conservative political organizing
- Served as Federal Director of the National Citizens Coalition, the advocacy organization previously led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, transitioning it from traditional grassroots methods to digital and social media
- Broke stories that held mainstream media accountable — most notably documenting selective editing of a Harper press conference by CBC, which led the network to express regret for its report
- Fought for blogger access to Parliament Hill after being removed from a media scrum by the Parliamentary Press Gallery in 2007 — a landmark incident in the debate over whether digital publishing constituted legitimate journalism
- Published commentary featured in Maclean's, the National Post, and the Financial Post, and was recruited by CTV to produce their 2004 election website
- Built the Stephen Taylor Data Project — interactive riding maps with poll-by-poll resolution across eight federal general elections and provincial elections in Ontario and Alberta, historical streamgraphs, and polling trend visualizations using React, D3.js, MapLibre GL, GraphQL, and MongoDB
- Built and maintained multiple iterations of the site across different technology stacks over 20+ years, growing it into a credible platform that supported a career in political advisory and technology
Capabilities demonstrated
Skills
Community Building & Political Capacity Building
Building audiences and mobilizing communities is the intersection of content strategy, platform mechanics, and authentic...
Strategic Advice on Public Affairs & Campaign Strategy
Effective public affairs strategy requires reading political terrain, anticipating adversarial moves, and executing comm...
Media Intelligence
In high-stakes communications environments, knowing what is being said — and anticipating what will be said — is the fou...
