The Vancouver Sun has been named as a finalist for the 2010 Online Journalism Awards for a series about missing women in northern B.C. and Alberta. The finalists were announced Tuesday by the Online News Association and its partner, the School of Communication at the University of Miami.

The Sun is up against three other nominees for the Gannett Foundation Award for innovative investigative journalism for a small website. They include the Centre for Public Integrity, voiceofsandiego.org, and a combined effort by ProPublica, the New Orleans Times-Picayune and Frontline. The Sun’s project, called Vanishing Point, was a five-part investigative series looking into the disappearances of many women along northern British Columbia’s and Alberta’s “Highway of Tears.” It raised questions about other similar unsolved cases in both provinces. The cases date back to the murder of Gloria Levina Moody in 1969 and end with the murder of a 14-year-old Prince George high school student in 2006.

Sun reporters Lori Culbert and Neal Hall and photographer Ian Smith worked on the project along with Web editor Lorraine Passchier. “I hope this nomination helps remind people that aboriginal women in B.C. continue to go missing, and to be murdered, in alarming numbers,” said Sun Editor-in-Chief Patricia Graham. “Let’s not forget them.”A team of 12 journalists met at the University of Miami’s Coral Gables, Fla., campus and seven more conferred internationally to select the finalists.