Sarah MacDonald

Reporter / Anchor

An award-winning journalist, Sarah MacDonald is the anchor of Global BC’s News Hour at 6pm and 11pm Weekend newscasts. When she’s not in the anchor chair for her own shows, Sarah regularly reports for News Hour and Global National, and substitutes as anchor for both newscasts.

During her time with the Global News network, Sarah has covered some of the most momentous local, national, and international news stories in recent history. Her work and coverage has been recognized by the Jack Webster Awards, the Canadian Screen Awards, and RTDNA Canada.

In 2023, Sarah was awarded the Jack Webster Award for Best News Reporting of the Year for her investigative continuing coverage on the circumstances surrounding the tragic death of Noelle O’Soup: an Indigenous child who disappeared while in the care of the Ministry of Children and Family Development. Sarah’s reporting revealed egregious systemic oversight and procedural failures in the case—by the Vancouver Police Department, the BC Coroners Service, and the Ministry of Children and Family Development.

In November 2020, Sarah travelled to the United States to join Global National’s extensive team coverage of the U.S. Presidential Election. Filing from across Oregon and Washington State, Sarah’s coverage focused primarily on widespread political unrest and rioting in Portland and surrounding areas in the days preceding and following Joe Biden’s electoral victory. On Election Day, Sarah was on the ground in Portland.

Months earlier, Sarah spent weeks in Northern British Columbia leading the network’s comprehensive national coverage of the Wet’suwet’en rights and title conflict—with coverage that spanned Smithers, Houston, and Wet’suwet’en and Gitxsan Territory. The still-ongoing standoff over a polarizing natural gas pipeline, pitting traditional Indigenous law against the Canadian legal system, sparked widespread protests and a reckoning on Indigenous rights and reconciliation across Canada.

When the COVID-19 pandemic first hit Canada, Sarah led the network’s continuing coverage of the country’s first confirmed outbreak at a long-term care home in North Vancouver. In the months following, from behind the anchor desk and in the field, Sarah continued to cover all angles of the pandemic on a near-daily basis.

Other major news events that have taken Sarah on the road in recent years include the cross-country manhunt for notorious teenaged murderers Bryer Schmegelsky and Kam McLeod, which began in British Columbia and ended in Manitoba; the Enbridge natural gas pipeline explosion that forced the evacuation of the Lheidli T’enneh First Nation near Prince George; and Canada’s only double-fatal grizzly bear mauling on record, in the Yukon Territories.

Before joining Global News, Sarah spent the first decade of her career with the CTV News network, based in Vancouver and Toronto.

During her time with CTV News, Sarah led the network’s award-winning coverage of British Columbia’s historic flooding in the town of Grand Forks in 2018. Sarah’s body of work, the result of nine days on the ground in Grand Forks and surrounding areas, was later recognized by the Canadian Screen Awards, the Jack Webster Awards, and RTDNA Canada—winning the Ron Laidlaw Award for Best Continuing Coverage in 2019.

Sarah also played key roles in extensive team coverage that earned multiple awards for journalistic excellence on regional and national levels during her time with CTV News: a British Columbia Association of Broadcasters Award for continuing coverage of the tragic line-of-duty death of Abbotsford Police Constable John Davidson, and an RTDNA Canada award for the network’s live coverage of British Columbia’s historic provincial election in 2017.

Sarah studied Political Science at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, before graduating from the Broadcast Journalism program at the British Columbia Institute of Technology.

A fifth-generation Vancouverite, Sarah lives in Kitsilano with her husband and two daughters, Hart and Maude.