Category: The Magazine

It’s a cool day in October 1976, and Connie Smith is working toward making history. In a time when television news stories are recorded on film and edits are spliced together, Smith starts her first day at CHCH TV, where she will become the first female anchor of weekday news in Hamilton. On this day… Continue reading CH-CH-CH-CH Changes

I was a summer intern at an Alberta business magazine-you can’t be an intern and not be lowly. I was making a list of rich CEOs, people with the kind of money a student of magazines shouldn’t think about if he wants to stay sanely out of business school. Then the news of The Walrus  reached across… Continue reading The Long Goodbye

It was mid-October 1939 when Gladys Arnold sailed aboard the luxury liner the Washington, on her way back to France. There was a strange atmosphere on the ship. The truth hung low over the almost 300 passengers’ heads; they were sailing into the unknown. Watching land fade into open sea, Arnold wondered whether she would ever… Continue reading A Canadian in Paris

The second-floor workout studio of the Du Parc YMCA in Montreal has four large windows with a view across an alley to a Hasidic synagogue. Built in 1912, the Y is functional, not fancy. It’s a place where strings of toddlers shuffle in and out of play areas throughout the day and teenagers shoot pool… Continue reading Hot Topic

The nightmare that would culminate in such e-mail venom as “I hope your wife gets ovarian cancer” and “Your mother should have aborted you” began on an early summer evening in rural Connecticut. Two middle-aged men sit in the loft of a refurbished barn, riffing off Gershwin’s “I Got Rhythm.” Every Sunday they get high… Continue reading Deconstructing Barry