Happy birthday to This
Editor’s Note
A few days before I started this job eight months ago, I gave an interview to a student journalist about my impending career move. Most of his questions elicited a gushing response—I was thrilled to have been offered the position, and the lots and lots of work part was still theoretical. One question though, confused me: “Naomi Klein, Rick Salutin, Clive Thompson,” he began, listing some of This’s notable contributing editors, “those are big shoes to fill. Are you intimidated by all the heavyweights who have come before you?”
Slightly alarmed, (should I be intimidated?) I answered that no, the opposite is true. Looking at the names of those who have come and gone from the magazine buoys me, and I feel proud to be part of its troublemaking tradition, and lineage of smartypanted pioneers.
Working on this 40th anniversary issue—which, in my totally unbiased opinion, is phenomenal—affirmed that feeling completely. This alumni are like an extended family, and the goodwill and generosity surrounding the magazine is incredible.
From day one, when we were still This Magazine is About Schools, This has punched above its weight, and demanded attention beyond its resources. A great example of this, which didn’t make it into Annette Bourdeau’s anecdotal retrospective of the magazine, is the fact that starting in the late 1970s, Rick Salutin and Robert Fulford would frequently go head-to-head from their respective publications—Salutin from the pages of This, Fulford from the much higher-profile Saturday Night.
Naturally, we have changed over the course of our 40 years. We dropped “is About Schools” in 1973, and broadened our focus to politics in general. Over the 1970s and 1980s This was a socialist magazine, which changed again in the early 1990s, when we became more youth-culture oriented.
This reinvents itself to respond to changing times, but it is always a magazine about ideas, idealism and the possibilities of what can be. It’s a tricky being a lefty in the early 21st century. The struggle for social justice is an important as ever, but the playing field is ever-changing. (You’re certainly not likely to find someone on the pages of today’s This declare that “We are at a very early stage of a typical revolutionary process,” as did one optimistic contributor in the late 1970s—click here for more This trivia.)
With its mix of past and new contributors, this issue of This captures a reflective, playful left that has grown wise with its 40 years, and one that is looking toward a bright future.
Our cover story features 40 This Mag contributors—and some distinguished guests—responding to the question, “What’s a big idea whose time has come?”. The contributions range from the wonderfully earnest to the absurd, from the practical to the abstract, and each one of them is my favourite.
Elsewhere in the issue, Rick Salutin offers a wry and poignant argument for why not everything is political; fiction and poetry editor Stuart Ross gives us an incredible selection of new work by past contributors; editor emeritus Mel Watkins resurrects his long-running Innis Memorial Column and, in case you feel like dancing, Mason Wright shares his playlist of 40 essential resistance songs from 1966 to the present.
Forty years, and still going strong—who would have guessed it? I’d love to thank everyone who has contributed to This over the years, those who have made the mag what it is today. You are far too numerous to list (but you know who you are). After all, it takes a village to raise a socialist indie rag.
Here’s to the next 40 years.
Jessica Johnston editor[at]thismagazine[dot]cap.s. For readers in Toronto, come to our 40th birthday party on November 8. There will be cake. Click here for details.
