Dampness at WOTS, BCAMP, Walrus

Word On the Street in Vancouver was heavily rained on for the first time in its history yesterday, and it was cold and windy and you had to keep jumping up and down to stay warm. The crowd was thin and hardy; indeed, heartiness was evident everywhere. CUPE picketers sang and led revolutionary chants. It was impossible to stand still long enough to grill members of BCAMP in a search for answers to

BCAMP demurs

Silence continues to emanate from the tiny headquarters of the British Columbia Association of Magazine Publishers in the tower of the historic Sun Building in Vancouver, where as reported in an earlier post, the air has been rank with unpleasantness. Nine months or more have passed since the eruption of a “labour dispute” that has yet to be named or discussed before the membership, or even

MediaScout & Maisonneuve: a mystery

Today in the email, another edition of MediaScout, the news digest prepared daily by Maisonneuve magazine in Montreal, containing another brilliant precis (by Daniel Casey) of the so-called news of the day. The topic is the Montebello Summit as covered (or not covered, or covered up) in what MediaScout calls the Big Seven (Globe & Mail, National Post, La Presse, Ottawa Citizen, Toronto Star, CBC

BCAMP up in the air

For the last six months, the BC Association of Magazine Publishers has been stumbling along under veils of secrecy thrown over a putative “labour dispute” that has been boiling away since February, an odd state of affairs for a staff consisting of two people working in one room. No mention of the dispute was made at the BCAMP Annual General Meeting in June, and the only committee that made no

What we forget when we forget about magazine awards

As the recent leaf storm of magazine awards fades completely but not quite from memory, I can still (barely) recall observing aloud the day before the so-called gala evening of the National Magazine Awards that cultural magazines can barely afford to participate in these events in a meaningful way—a meaningful way being to enter as many contenders in as many categories as possible—as Maclean’s

The Summer Fiction Question

When the summer fiction issue of the New Yorker hit the newsstand a short time ago did you feel a familiar twinge when again you did not buy a copy precisely because it was the summer fiction issue, and then did you fail to suppress the querulous flood, the peevish trickle of nagging familiar questions that one never speaks aloud in bookstores or libraries, or in the halls of the CBC?What is it