Does the Maclean's Magazine Archives still exist?

Some years ago, Maclean's magazine made something of a promotion of the availability of its entire archives online -- you could subscribe for a modest fee. I found it pretty useful a number of times. Since 1905 Maclean's has published a lot of on-the-spot reporting on Canadian matters.

Recently a look at the Maclean's archive site turned up "404 - Not Available" notices and warnings of dodgy links. Meanwhile, the Internet Archives holds pretty much the same collection, unlimited access, with similar searchability. And no doubt larger libraries will also offer accessibility, at least to older issues. Maybe you don't want to subscribe to the Maclean's one any more.

Jefferson and Baldwin: history of illusions about education

History News Network links to an essay in the current Atlantic magazine by the remarkable American historian Annette Gordon Reed. It's at once a review of a new book by another remarkable American historian, Alan Taylor; a sharp analysis of Thomas Jefferson's idea of republican education; and another proof of how deeply slavery warped the slaveholders as well as the enslaved. Being the Atlantic, it also offers links to related articles it has published: such as an essay on Jefferson and slavery the magazine published in 1862.

I try to imagine a Canadian magazine that might even consider attempting some similar treatment of a theme in Canadian history.  Oh, well, we are a small country.

Gordon-Reed's theme, via Taylor, is of Jefferson's dream of building the University of Virginia into a kind of seminary to train Virginia's future leaders in the virtues of study, contemplation, debate, and public service, the kind of education needed to preserve a republic. Being young masters from the slaveholding class, of course, the actual students mostly behaved like complacent entitled assholes, much to Jefferson's frustration and despair.  Gordon-Reed, who is African-American, may have smiled a little as she explored this story as a commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the University of Virginia.

This Jefferson story reminds me of the plight of his near-contemporary, William Warren Baldwin, the gentlemanly reformer of Upper Canada. Baldwin believed in the Law Society of Upper Canada and its college, Osgoode Hall, in the way Jefferson believed in the University of Virginia. "There was no society for which the country should feel so deep an interest as for the Law Society. Without it, whose property was safe? Whose life could be ably defended?" Baldwin declared Osgoode Hall -- in the building of which he was the prime mover -- was designed "not so much for the mere personal accommodation of students and barristers but for the nobler end of elevating the character of the bar and securing by early habits of honorable and gentlemanly conduct the respect and confidence of the public."

Baldwin's law students were not slaveholders' sons, but they proved about as rowdy, entitled, and complacent as Jefferson's. Baldwin was so shocked that he resigned as head of the Law Society and never held public office again.

This being Canada, there are not fifty articles and essays on Baldwin's thoughts about the role of education in shaping and preserving a constitutional monarchy. I crib the quotes above from my own paragraphs in The Law Society of Upper Canada and Ontario's Lawyers (1997), and there isn't a whole lot else accessible on the whole topic. We all do what we can.

This month at the Literary Review of Canada

The Jan-Feb Literary Review of Canada is available now in both print and digital form, and includes some notable historical content: Judy Fong Bates' very positive review of Susan Crean's Finding Mr Wong, (previously noted by us here), Suanne Kelman's equally positive review of Allan Levine's Seeking the Fabled City (ditto), Brian Stewart on D'Arcy Jenish's The Making of the October Crisis, and former immigration minister Chris Alexander on new books about the Scottish clearances. Plus Carol Goar on homelessness, David Malone on China policy, Susan Swan on truth in fiction... it's a strong issue.

This is the first issue brought to the press by new editor Kyle Wyatt, who will take responsibility for subsequent editions. Previous editor Sarmishta Subramanian had an admirable ability to find global perspectives from contributors whose names were as non-white and non-male as her own (and she was also willing to publish me). Subramanian left suddenly last fall, and in the new issue, the only name that suggests an of-colour identity is Fong Bates. I hope this is not a matter of  policy at the magazine, but am glad that they continue to publish me: I have an essay on the Senate coming in the next issue. 

History of magazine writing

Wonder why the writing in so many magazines seems so ... amateurish?  Michael Harris in Medium has a well documented explanation.  It's the pay rate, which has stagnated for fifty years and more.

Beyond the basic numbers, writers also told me about a grab bag of smaller frustrations and indignities that make the economics of their job problematic: checks that arrived on a geologic time scale while the landlord still charges monthly; publications squeezing out reprint, TV, and film rights; editors who assign and fix pay for pieces at word counts they know writers will likely exceed to meet the scope of the assignment.

Harris's material is all American. Canadian experience is less documented but surely worse. The Periodical Writers of Canada changed its name to Professional Writers of Canada years ago, because hardly any of its members seriously working as writers worked for periodicals anymore,

History of magazines: The LRC struggles

Ominous note:  we're a week into October, and the October issue of the Literary Review of Canada has yet to appear online. It could be just missing a deadline -- except that the September issue never appeared at all, and a money crisis seems to be behind recent changes in leadership at the magazine.  (Not to mention that the little pour-boire I'm entitled to for my contribution to the June issue has never arrived, either.)

The masthead includes a lot of well-to-do and/or well-connected people on its boards.  If they cannot save this one, you know it's tough out there.  (It's tough out there.)

Foran on nonfiction writing

Canadian Notes and Queries, with its now whimsical name and eccentric high-literary/low-income sensibility, has something surprising in nearly every issue. I subscribed on a whim of my own and have not regretted it.

This time it is Charles Foran's essay on the economics of nonfiction writing in Canada, and the problem of underfunded and"thin"books due to the sheer implausibility of having a writing and publishing culture in this country.

American Heritage magazine folds again

History News Network reports on the suspension of publication of American Heritage magazine, the old and once rather prestigious popular history magazine.  It folded a few years ago and was revived by Edwin Grosvenor of the National Geographic family, but has now entered another suspension.  The magazine website is still up, but does not look to have been updated for a while.

Maybe not coincidentally, they have a simultaneous non-profit, grant-supported project to make the whole contents of the magazine available "for education," apparently free. Strategizing for magazines is a tough business these days, I know, but if they price their accumulated inventory at zero, will subscribers feel differently?  The benevolent aims of would-be educators and the "how do we get 'em paying?" mindset of magazine people often mix oddly at historical magazines.

In other news, Canada's History just picked up a nom at the National Magazine Awards and a slew of them at the Western Magazine Awards.

History of Canadian magazines

In the late 1980s, historian Patrick Dutil was a policy advisor to the Ontario government. In the midst of the Meech Lake Accord controversies, he was appalled by the low level of discussion and commentary he found in Canadian journalism.  He had small children, a recent Ph.D, and neither knowledge nor connections in the magazine field.

But he thought something needed to be done.

The Apple Macintosh had recently appeared. Dutil took a night school desktop-publishing course from the Toronto school board, pulled together $5000, and started cold-calling people he thought might be willing to contribute to a magazine he called The Literary Review of Canada.  By then he was working for TVO, but he didn't tell them he was also becoming a magazine editor-publisher. The LRC was a nights-and-weekends avocation.  Dutil edited and published, and did everything from soliciting unpaid contributors to schlepping packaged copies down to the post office.

Fifty-five monthly issues in, Dutil had just secured his first grant for the magazine, $10,000 from the Canada Council, when Ottawa journalist and teacher Anthony Westell wrote him out of the blue: "I like what you are doing.  Do you need help?"  In the end, Dutil handed over the magazine, its subscription lists, and the $10,000 grant to Westell and some partners in Ottawa in exchange for his original $5000 investment.

I met Patrick Dutil last night at a fairly glitzy party the LRC was throwing to celebrate its twentieth anniversary.  It's still a shoestring operation, trying to run a literature-and-policy review on a subscriber base smaller than the number of people a single commuter train takes out to the suburbs every night  -- so subscribe! -- but it now has some significant angels and lots of prominente among its writers and supporters. It's back in Toronto, and it  looks strong and secure, as much as those thing exist in Canadian publishing, and there is excellent stuff in the magazine.  So there was a deserved amount of satisfaction and congratulation in the air.

Dutil and his role went largely unmentioned last night.  He chatted with friends about such issues as, well as the fact that a terrific and important work of Canadian history like his recent Canada 1911: The Decisive Election that Shaped the Country (co-written with David MacKenzie) goes unreviewed and unnoticed in the major newspapers and magazines of the country.  There's still work to be done....