The Walrus

December 14, 2003 5:28 AM

The Walrus: Does Canada Finally Have Its Quality Magazine? It's always been a mystery why Canada, with its appreciable intellectual weight, cultural sympathies and significant middlebrow readership, doesn't have a general magazine to rival with, say, Harper's, The Atlantic or The New Yorker. Well, The Walrus looks good - at least online. Is this it? Or am I unfairly overlooking other Canadian publications?
posted by MiguelCardoso (24 comments total)

Sadly Miguel, you are not.

While there is a (sometimes flourishing) Canadian magazine industry, most mags tend to be focused on special interests like sportfishing or poetry. General interest magazines have either faded into semi-obscurity (Saturday Night), or become tired retreads of American drek like Time and Newsweek (see Maclean's).

If there is another Canadian magazine as smart as the Walrus, I haven't found it yet.

Links to more canmags here.
posted by pooligan at 6:57 AM on December 14, 2003

shift has seen better days, but still manages to remain hip.

Saturday Night has been very good, depending on who owns it on a given week. For a while it was the only Canadian culture-y magazine I'd ever bother to look at. Now I don't look at any.

This Walrus thing has potential, though. *fingers crossed*
posted by Space Coyote at 6:58 AM on December 14, 2003

I find PDF a turnoff. But comparing a new mag from Canada to what in the U.S.? Which are so super good in the nation down below?
posted by Postroad at 6:59 AM on December 14, 2003

Is this a print or web publication? Incredibly, I can't find an answer to this simple question on their website.
posted by 327.ca at 7:29 AM on December 14, 2003

327.ca: It's a print publication.
posted by Badmichelle at 7:40 AM on December 14, 2003

"9/11, a catastrophe that is already a logo": so true. From Resisting the Veil by Margaret Atwood... but why the horribly funky font size and weight? Honestly, I am not a picky person but I find this page unreadable. This article, on the other hand, is both interesting and readable.

(I feel rotten for criticizing something that is published for the free use of readers, but still....)
posted by taz at 8:09 AM on December 14, 2003

always been a mystery why Canada, with its appreciable intellectual weight, cultural sympathies and significant middlebrow readership, doesn't have a general magazine to rival with, say, Harper's, The Atlantic or The New Yorker.

No it hasn't. It's the pablum result from government funded "art" campaigns and forced Canadianization of American magazines.

I'm amazed even a single readable magazine (or any other show) has emerged from Canada as a result.
posted by shepd at 8:58 AM on December 14, 2003

Masionneuve, Montreal's answer to the New Yorker, might turn out pretty good if it doesn't go under.
posted by statisticalpurposes at 9:52 AM on December 14, 2003

http://northernlife.com/
posted by billybobtoo at 11:17 AM on December 14, 2003

The second issue of The Walrus is out which I haven't seen. The first was filled the most boring liberal pieties (What about the children? The Russian children?) that made the thing entirely unreadable. Now, the first issue of any magazine is almost always the worst, but that the editor's note said they worked on it for two years would not inspire a flash mob of Walrus subscribers. A short piece about South Asian dialects from the second is better than anything in the first. Even the piece from the first that should've inspired a sense of wonder or at least slight amusement -- the Germans roleplaying as Native Americans -- seemed to unravel the closer it got to the end.
posted by raaka at 11:19 AM on December 14, 2003

Vice, the hipster trash organ of general interest, started in Canada and moved to Brooklyn.

Adbusters is Canadian.
posted by Slagman at 11:43 AM on December 14, 2003

shift has seen better days, but still manages to remain hip.

Yeah, um... still waiting for the second issue of 2003. Maybe if shift published with some sort of schedule of frequency... that'd be good.
posted by damclean2 at 12:24 PM on December 14, 2003

Wow. I actually agree with ShepD about something. :)

Most Canadian magazines suck for the same reason most Canadian movies suck: government funded arts.

Over the years there have been very few Canadian magazines worth reading. About 8 years back a mag out of Winnipeg (I think it was) called Diverge, was great, but it only lasted 3 issues. ICE, a free weekly published in Toronto around 1990 was also very good. Vice, which Slagman mentioned, is also good, though yes, it's transported to NY. I've yet to read Walrus though. Will pick one up.

statisticalpurpose, thanks for that link. Haven't heard of that mag. Will have to hunt one down.
posted by dobbs at 12:31 PM on December 14, 2003

shift has seen better days, but still manages to remain hip.

No kidding about the better days, Space Coyote. Shift's myopic, cowardly publisher (St. Joseph Media) pulled the plug on the print version of the magazine last spring. They left two staffers to keep the website pseudo-current (and to do all the web development stuff for a half-dozen other titles), but their energies are now focussed on must-read titles like Elm Street and Owl Canadian Family and tobacco-company magalogs. (Okay, okay - they also publish Toronto Life and Saturday Night.)

[/former Shift editor-at-large rant]

It's the pablum result from government funded "art" campaigns and forced Canadianization of American magazines.

I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean, but I can tell you that no Canadian magazine I've ever worked for was a victim of its government funding. There are no content rules attached to the funding - the magazine simply has to be based in and staffed by Canadians.

The big problem that faces Canadian magazines - with the exception of supermarket-checkout titles like Chatelaine and Canadian Living - is one of economies of scale. Practically every magazine in the country struggles for newsstand space and attention with similarly-themed American titles that already have ad and sales revenue from a consumer base of 300 million propping them up. That's why some of the most successful newer Canadian mags - e.g. Adbusters, the Buddhist journal Shambhala Sun, Cannabis Culture, even Vice - are extremely niche-oriented, and thus prosper because they can easily cross the border into the US. But a Canadian general-interest magazine? A steep, treacherous uphill slog. It hurts, too, that any Canadian writer or editor or art director with a lot of talent can easily skip across the border and double or triple his/her salary in New York. (Graydon Carter of Vanity Fair is a Canadian, so is Bonnie Fuller who re-imagined US Weekly, so are large chunks of the staff and contributors at The New Yorker and Harper's.)

And indeed even US general-interest titles have had a hard go of late. Hence for example the semi-Maximization of Esquire and GQ and Rolling Stone - they're all pretty desperate for readers. And the real quality titles are rarely big revenue generators. The New Yorker has hemorrhaged money for years (I'm pretty sure still is), but deep-pocketed Conde Nast subsidizes it with its dozens of profitable titles for the prestige. And Harper's breaks even because it's backed by a charitable foundation.

In fact - to come finally to the present topic - The Walrus was built overtly on the Harper's model. Its founders consulted with the Harper's people on strategy and even discussed shrink-wrapping it with Harper's for its launch. The Walrus got its seed money and some of its operating capital from a charitable foundation run by its founding publisher's family. That's the only reason it's got the cash to afford writers of Atwood's calibre and cost, as well as top-tier Canadian freelancers who'd otherwise be writing for American mags.

And finally, to throw my two cents into the ring, I think The Walrus has got tons of potential, and there have been some nice pieces in the first two issues, but it is a tad dry thus far. I'm hoping it hits a more fluid stride before long - hopefully on the Harper's model of having brilliant, stylishly written esoteric stuff alongside the high-fibre current affairs features.
posted by gompa at 12:47 PM on December 14, 2003

throw my two cents into the ring

Way to mix your metaphors, Writer Boy.

*hangs head in shame, slinks away*
posted by gompa at 12:52 PM on December 14, 2003

>I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean, but I can tell you that no Canadian magazine I've ever worked for was a victim of its government funding. There are no content rules attached to the funding - the magazine simply has to be based in and staffed by Canadians.

Bingo!

The free market thrives on there being "victims", ie: Sucky things die. It's a lot like darwinism. It isn't based on good stuff rising to the top, it's based on suppressing the bad stuff. Remove the predators (consumers) and you end up with a sick population. Ever see what happens when deer hunts are outlawed?

Welcome to media in Canada.

>The big problem that faces Canadian magazines - with the exception of supermarket-checkout titles like Chatelaine and Canadian Living - is one of economies of scale.

Is it? There's many other countries with far less population than us that have no problem defining their own "image" without being paid to do so by their government.

Hey dobbs, it was bound to happen sometime... My odd combination of leftist and very rightist views mean everyone can see a little of their own opinions in mine. Just a little. Sometimes. ;-)
posted by shepd at 1:43 PM on December 14, 2003

which canadian films have you seen this year dobbs...? The Gospel Of John, Foolproof, Sur le seuil, Mambo Italiano, My Life Without Me, Père et fils, or Seducing Doctor Lewis...? you didn't like any of them at all...?

gompa, thanks for the comments, it's good to hear from an actual industry insider instead of just layperson opinion.
posted by t r a c y at 1:46 PM on December 14, 2003

There's many other countries with far less population than us that have no problem defining their own "image" without being paid to do so by their government.

Any of those countries sitting right next door to the richest nation on earth with the world's largest, most powerful media industry and sharing a common language, mutually comprehensible culture and among the most free-flowing common markets on earth with said richest nation on earth? Plus also being 1/10 the size of that nation in terms of population (i.e. potential readership)? Didn't think so.

Here are two things for a market darwinist to chew on:

If Canada didn't subsidize its smaller magazines, it's a veritable certainty that I and the majority of other Canadian magazine contributors wouldn't have been able to find enough work early in our careers to survive - there'd be virtually none of the small-circulation mags that gave many of us our first work left in the country - and so many of us likely wouldn't have careers as a result. We'd be writing copy for tech manuals or something (which many still do to subsidize their meagre wages; the industry standard for writing fees at major Canadian publications was established in the 1970s - a buck a word - and hasn't budged since).

OR

If there existed a genuine free market between Canada and the US - i.e. if it included labour as well as goods - I and anyone else hoping to make a career of it likely would've moved to New York years ago. As it stands, getting a Green Card is next to impossible for someone in the early stages of their career. In fact, people in this business (and related ones like film and TV production and advertising) sometimes get turned away at the border or the airport by overzealous US customs agents for attempting to enter the US to do a job an American allegedly could be doing. Some free market.
posted by gompa at 2:09 PM on December 14, 2003

The first was filled the most boring liberal pieties (What about the children? The Russian children?) that made the thing entirely unreadable.

Actually, I thought the article on the German obsession with Native Americans ("Red Indians") was pretty cool, and highlighted something I'd never even heard of before. The SARS article was pretty blah if you'd already followed the epidemic coverage, and read to me like a giant summary. And surprisingly, the article on Paul Martin's ownership of Canadian Steamship Lines and his creepy rise to power (which I guess is probably true of a lot of politicians in the pocket of business) was a lot more interesting than I expected.

The real problem with the first issue were the half-assed bits of writing from folks like Neil Pollack (awful and pointless) and Douglas Coupland's bit.

The second issue's larger articles didn't leave as much of an impression on me, though. I've subscribed anyhow, since I'm kind of tired of reading the U.S.-centric content of Harper's and the New Yorker but I like the prose style in those magazines.
posted by Big Fat Tycoon at 2:30 PM on December 14, 2003

isn't there some irony in attributing the failure of canadian culture on the inability to toe the american (usa) political / ideological line?

"if only you behaved more like they do in america, you'd be more like canadians..."
posted by andrew cooke at 6:01 PM on December 14, 2003

Any of those countries sitting right next door to the richest nation on earth with the world's largest, most powerful media industry and sharing a common language, mutually comprehensible culture and among the most free-flowing common markets on earth with said richest nation on earth? Plus also being 1/10 the size of that nation in terms of population (i.e. potential readership)? Didn't think so.

I agree to an extent, but I'd say New Zealand fits most of that profile pretty well.

Also : many years ago I used to write the occasional booze-addled travel or music piece for Discorder, the magazine of the radio station of the University of British Columbia. The issues in which my articles appeared were of course the very pinnacle of the Canadian publishing industry, which has not seen such glory since. Pity.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:16 PM on December 14, 2003

stavros, you remind me that one of the better "mags" I've come across is the Georgia Strait. Altho more local than national, Vancouver is still big enough and important enough to have a decent paper mag. Unfortunately, it's nowhere near as good as it used to be, they tell me. But it's still better than most magazines.

And then there's that venerable political magazine, Frank Magazine, which proudly proclaims, " More fun than The Walrus, guaranteed. Or at least, more obscenity-laden and lawsuit-prone." Frank has offered up some good dish over the years, made me laugh more than once, and is spot on more often than not.

Gompa, good to hear from an industry person on this subject. Your explanation makes a lot of sense to me. Thanks.
posted by ashbury at 10:14 PM on December 14, 2003

I totally agree with Gompa - if there weren't government funding there wouldn't be much of a cultural industry at all. The funding has no bearing on the quality. And hey, look at American cultural products - no funding, plenty of crap. Sometimes the crap sells, sometimes it goes under. There still is a darwinism to it - if the thing is unpopular crap, it will go under - the funding is not enough to support it indefinitely. But it is sad when you see that something good like Saturday Night fade out - I loved that magazine.
posted by orange swan at 6:44 AM on December 15, 2003

Although it's not in the political style of Harper's or the Walrus, I'm surprised no-one's mentioned Geist.
posted by transient at 7:04 AM on December 15, 2003