“The Internet can bring an obituary to life.” It may sound like a contradiction, but this is what Barbara Stewart took away from a fourth-year course taught at the University of Victoria by The Globe and Mail’s chief obituary writer, Sandra Martin.

Martin has been covering the dead beat at the Globe since 2004. Four years after she took this job—arguably making a morbid career change, switching from her longtime position as an arts and culture writer—she wrote that her profession was on life support, and not solely due to cutbacks in the business. “Modern technology and the Internet are having a radical impact on how we, as a society, commemorate a life,” Martin wrote, “and it’s not all for the good.”

Four years later, Martin says she’s now much more optimistic about the obituary—as long as newspapers develop their websites, exemplified by The New York Times’s obituary section, which features archived pieces, videos, and photo galleries.

In keeping with this approach, Martin focused her course on biographical writing in the digital age when she taught Stewart and about 50 others as University of Victoria’s Harvey Stevenson Southam Lecturer in 2009. Her students were responsible for creating a website featuring an obituary that included multimedia components. “If you’re writing an obituary for Oscar Peterson, how great it would be to have some of his music so you can hear it,” Martin says. “Those types of things can really enhance obituaries. Easier than having to describe how someone plays; you can illustrate it.”

Still, one of the things Martin continues to worry about is the prospect of just anyone posting online. “It’s a sort of free-for-all of who’s dead today. That kind of frenzy about reporting, and often inaccurately reporting, that people are dead, when they aren’t.” Case in point: the many celebrities whose “deaths” begin with a rumour and often end with news reporters’ retractions. In September 2010 for example, NHL coach Pat Burns was pronounced dead by major news outlets, including CTV and TSN, two months before his actual death. The message to journalists: it’s not always best to be the first to break a story.

Nonetheless everyone wants to be first in a technology-driven world where smartphones in the hands of journalists are a given and the constant updating of social media applications is expected. However, Martin notes that it’s important to make clear the distinction between a news report that someone has died and an obituary. Twitter is just fast and brief, whereas an obituary is a written discursive form, she says.

Krishna Andavolu, managing editor of Obit, an online magazine that “examines life through the lens of death,” says the online obituary—if thought about in expansive terms—can include anything from a Twitter post, to a Facebook status update, to a blog post. “What you see now is a shorthand of ways people express their feelings right off the bat when someone dies,” Andavolu says. “Social media has taken over with the RIP, the shorthand for ‘this person is dead.’ So if you look at the obituary technically as a death notice, or that which communicates news of a person’s death, then that death notice has become less of a recording of the history and more of a recording of how people are reacting to that death.”

Andrew McKie, former obituary editor for The Daily Telegraph, also stresses the difference between reporting a death and writing an obituary, pointing out, “There’s now this tension between being able to do a good job and being able to do a quick job.” He says reporting Elizabeth Taylor’s death would read something like: “‘Elizabeth Taylor has just died. She was a famous actress who had been married umpteen times,’ and so on. I think an obituary is a totally different thing. It’s like an essay. It’s got to be a comprehensive biographical account of a life,” McKie says. “They are not needed to be done elegantly and beautifully and well and fast. I mean, it was my job to do them elegantly and beautifully and fast on occasion. But there’s a big difference between being in the office at five o’clock at night and having three hours starting from scratch to turn out 3,000 words about somebody, and being asked to do it in 15 minutes from home. And of course the thing that makes people think that it’s possible to do it in 15 minutes from home is that so much information is available online.”

This hints at another aspect of the internet that is both a gift and a curse for obituary writers: its effect on their research process. Alana Baranick, director of the Society of Professional Obituary Writers, says while research is easier and faster, obituary writers still need to evaluate whether content found online is legitimate, and to ensure they add context. “I think in some cases it makes reporters lazy, and that applies to all forms of news. I personally have known a lot of younger reporters who have been using the Internet since they started, who oftentimes just pick up on something they found online without considering the whole picture,” Baranick says, citing the death of Penn State football coach Joe Paterno, who was implicated in the child sexual abuse case against his former colleague, Jerry Sandusky. “The current controversy was a big part of his story, but the man was a legend. If he had lived another 10 years, I wonder how prominent the controversy would be in his obituary, because he wasn’t really the person who committed the crime.”

One of the major impediments to producing authoritative work is use of the Internet as the only research tool, McKie says. The web, along with LexisNexis and various subscription services, has come to replace physical libraries filled with the hundreds of carefully fact-checked reference books that used to be present in newspaper offices.” But, he believes, “Actually they’re not as good,” citing the overwhelming amount of content, a lack of context and unreliable sources as reasons for his assertion.

“You can’t just trust anything you read on the Internet, but you really can hear things faster,” Martin says. She provides this advice for those interested in covering the dead beat: “I would bring all my internet skills, all my multivisual skills, because that’s what obituaries need. That’s exactly what I would do, and that’s what I try to do, too.” She also emphasizes the importance of getting it right: “The obituary is really about the life of the dead. The death is the only occasion for writing the story of a life,” Martin says. “You’re never going to write that story again.” This is a point she obviously drove home to her students at UVic: “It’s a one-shot deal, there’s no comeback,” Stewart recalls learning. “An obituary is—pardon the pun—the last rite.”

McKie agrees: “Part of an obituary is that it is a snapshot of a moment in time when a person dies, and it’s not about death, it’s about a life. It’s about providing a view of that person’s life, as it is understood by the writer,” he says. “We don’t want to revise this.”

Aimee Moore, a 28-year-old woman from Stratford, Ontario, walks on to the stage of the Dr. Phil show in January 2008. Just before Moore came onstage, the crowd was shown a long tape of what a day in her life is like. In the tape they saw Moore gagging and vomiting into a garbage can, poking and prodding at her nearly naked, emaciated body, and weeping in a hotel bed as she describes her daily binge-purge routine.

Dr. Phil McGraw asks Moore how many times she hadthrown up that day. “About 40,” she says quietly. “You’ve purged 40 times today?” McGraw looks at his watch. “And…we’re not to noon yet.”

Conversations about dieting and weight loss surround us in the media. But Moore’s tale, and others like hers, is not a success story about weight loss and willpower. It is a narrative about eating disorders, a serious mental illness. They affect an average of 3.5 percent of Canadian women between the ages of 15 and 25, and have the highest mortality rate of all mental illnesses—between 10 and 20 percent die from related complications.

When talking about eating disorders, we have to seek out the uncomfortable, personal details in order to tell the whole story. But sometimes these accounts can turn into dangerous tools if they come into the wrong hands, like somebody struggling with a mental illness.

Where does that leave journalists? We have an obligation to share the little details, but what are we to do when they could possibly cause harm?

When not covered with care and attention, stories on eating disorders can unintentionally glorify certain behaviours without analyzing the causes and the bigger issue. They can also provide “useful” tips and tricks to people who may be at risk of developing an eating disorder, according Julie Notto, a program manager at a community-based support centre, Sheena’s Place, in Toronto, for individuals dealing with eating disorders and those close to them.

The Canadian Psychiatric Association (CPA) and the Canadian Mental Health Association have both published guidelines for the media about how to report on suicide, in the hopes that they will reduce the risk of copycat incidents.

The guidelines say not to sensationalize suicide by showing dramatic photos, to avoid technical details about the suicide, and to avoid presenting it too simplistically. Yet, often in stories about eating disorders there are stark images of a skeletal person accompanied by details about how many calories she eats a day or how much she weighs. If not reported with care, articles about eating disorders can suggest the issue is a simple desire to lose weight.

The similarities between the concerns about reporting on suicide and eating disorders raise a question: Should there be guidelines in Canada for journalists about how to responsibly cover eating disorders?

Sandy Ace, a registered dietician and nutrition counselor at University of Waterloo, thinks so. “To me, it’s like providing suicide tools for someone who is suicidal when you report about someone’s diet. You’re not reporting on how someone committed suicide because you don’t want to give anyone who may be in that framework any more ideas; you should be doing the same thing with eating disorders.”

Those with eating disorders have a high suicide rate and the highest mortality rate of all people with mental disorders, a fact that became all too real for Ace several years ago when she lost a student she was counselling to suicide. “People with eating disorders are either passively killing themselves by starving, or some are killing themselves actively by committing suicide. The results are just as deadly.”

Notto of Sheena’s Place has noticed the lack of official guidelines released in Canada for reporting on eating disorders. “There are standards when it comes to reporting on suicide, but when it comes to eating disorders we’re still blaming the victim.”

Guidelines do exist in other countries. In the United Kingdom for example, Beat (Beating Eating Disorders), a national charity, has published guidelines that are similar to the CPA’s for reporting on suicide, in that they recommend against oversimplifying and focusing on more graphic details, and also challenge the media to dispel the myths and stigma that surround eating disorders.
“People with eating disorders speak about being ‘triggered’—how their eating disorder behaviour and negative mental state can be stimulated, encouraged or reinforced by certain words, images or situations,” the guidelines say. They also recommend omitting specific weights, amounts eaten, images, oversimplification, dramatic portrayal of eating disorders, and/or portraying them as indicative of a certain kind of character (manipulative, deceitful, vain, et cetera).

Eating disorders associations in Ireland, Australia, and the United States also have guidelines on their websites, but none have received significant support from the media in any of their respective countries. Kathy English, the public editor at the Toronto Star, says that’s not because they are a bad idea, but that it’s a bit of a grey-area issue for journalists.

“Journalists deal with specifics and specific details. The debate here is [when discussing specific actions or details], that’s a fact, that’s what happened. That’s also in conflict with how we tell journalists to get as much detail as possible because the story is in the details. We’re not in the business of hiding facts.”

When any guidelines are issued regarding reporting on any topic, media outlets and reporters are not under any obligation to follow them. Whether a reporter adheres to any guidelines, even when reporting on suicide, depends on her editor or her employer’s standards and policies. “What’s more important is that all of the qualities of responsible journalism are followed and aligned with journalistic standards around fair and accurate coverage,” says English.

Every reporter and her editors struggle to find that balance between informative reporting and being sensitive in any story about a stigmatized subject. But every editor has different views and, as a result, what is deemed appropriate for a certain publication is pointedly subjective, says Joanna Frketich, a health reporter at The Hamilton Spectator.

As an example, she cites Beat’s guidelines, which advise against printing photos of someone with a severe eating disorder and writing about her weight loss and daily caloric intake. Frketich says including these elements can actually help to erase stigmas associated with certain topics.

Frketich and English also say the key to writing about any mental illness is putting things in context. For example, when writing a story about an eating disorder that includes details about that individual’s calorie consumption, how much weight she lost, and what she did in order to lose that much weight, journalists must also describe the effects that lifestyle had on her physical, mental, and emotional health; what it did to the people around her; why this person behaved the way she did; and how eating disorders develop and their long-term effects. The same rules should be followed when reporting on any health issue that can or used to be stigmatized like suicide, schizophrenia, depression, or cancer.

“A lot of stigmas come around from people not really understanding a topic or an issue. So I think when you show a picture of someone that looks like a skeleton and you write how much weight they lost and how few calories they eat a day, and the ravaging effects that had on their bodies, and then you tell people that when that person looked in the mirror, they still saw fat…. That really drives home to you that this is an illness,” says Frketich.

She adds, “It always comes back to who are you writing for, and without a doubt that’s just the way it is in journalism. There will never be a perfect match between what organizations would like to see [in the media] and what journalists do because we serve different purposes.”

For more information, please visit the National Eating Disorder Information Centre, Sheena’s Place, and the Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention.

There aren’t enough spots for the people who have showed up to fill Lorna Dueck’s CBC studio space, which comfortably fits 50. But after more chairs are brought in and people scramble around the room, the audience is finally seated.

It’s a Monday night in mid-December on the set of the independently produced Christian news program Context with Lorna Dueck, a weekly half-hour show

that explores news and current affairs stories from a Christian world view. It airs across the country on a variety of stations, reaching a total audience of 81,000.

It’s no secret that religion reporting has been disappearing from Canadian newspapers and airwaves for decades. The reason given most commonly is that there isn’t a demand for it in such a secular society.

Yet, as I sit here on set, surrounded by the large, engaged studio audience, I can’t help but think otherwise. I wonder, too, what exactly is a Christian journalist and how does her personal faith shape her journalism?

A journalist is someone who seeks the truth and reports it. What makes up journalism practice is being fair, accurate and honest. But what about a Christian journalist? Does her faith allow her to do the same?

According to Dueck, a Christian journalist looks for four things when considering a story. First, she must determine where the character of God is in the story. She’s also looking for the reality of sin, essentially where something has gone wrong and isn’t God’s ideal. She’s also looking for the offer of Jesus in a story, and lastly, she’s looking for a surrendered life—that is, someone who says she will put God first.

Tonight, that translates to a segment on multiculturalism in Canada. What sparked the idea for the show is that Canada’s policy on multiculturalism is now more than 40 years old. In Context looks at how Christian communities all over the nation work to help newcomers integrate into their new environments. The show’s guest speakers include MP Chungsen Leung, Muslim author Raheel Raz, Ivana Piscione, from Tyndale Intercultural Ministries, and Julius Tiangson, executive director at the Gateway Centre for New Canadians.

The Christian spin here is: “What lessons can we learn from the Bible about the concept of community?” Canada has long been referred to as a cultural mosaic, and with the topic of multiculturalism and communities, the show works to uncover how Jesus viewed this topic. Dueck refers to the book of Genesis story of how God created multiculturalism by dispersing the people of Babel and “confusing” their language. On that note, Dueck ends by saying that while all cultures, created equal by God, have one common trait—the reality of sin in this story—we do harmful things and can’t use the excuse, ‘Well, that’s my culture’ as a result of these things. “Jesus, across the diversity of cultures, has always been God’s offer for wholeness.”

Does faith get in the way of Dueck and other Christian journalists delivering true, accurate news? Not according to Dueck, who explains that personal faith for Christian journalists is part of their reporting. “You look at something and say, ‘So how do I act in love for my neighbour for this story?’” she explains. That is, while you report based on the truth, you must do it in a loving and respectful way.

Dueck’s faith was certainly present during her trip to Sierra Leone in 2000 when she wrote an article for The Globe and Mail on the civil war taking place over blood diamonds entitled “Hell Has Had Its Turn.” She wrote the piece because she felt “it was our turn as Christian people and people of hope to speak into the war in Sierra Leone.”

And while faith is part of reporting for Christian journalists, being one doesn’t cause you to question it or to ignore stories that attack your beliefs, according to National Post religion reporter Charles Lewis. If anything, he says, Christian journalists are more likely to cover those kinds of stories: “Let’s put it this way; I wouldn’t not do a story about the abuse scandal in the Catholic church because I’m Catholic. In fact, I’ll do those stories easily because I think they need to be done.’”

The question of neutrality arises when it comes to religion and journalism, says Joseph Sinasac, editor of The Catholic Register from 1995 to 2009. He explains that this has been a heated topic of debate since he first got into journalism in the ’80s. “I think what you need is someone at arm’s length, meaning they operate under the same principles that any secular journalist would operate under. That is, principles of fairness, principles of accuracy and of a search for truth. If you have somebody operating under those principles, they are going to give you a fair and balanced report of something.”

Deuck’s perspective on this differs from Sinasac’s. “I don’t think I’m neutral,” she says. “I think I’m looking very specifically for a Christian angle.” She adds that she doesn’t leave out “messy stories” or fail to tell stories that people don’t want to have told.

And though neutrality may be a large issue with Christian journalists, an even bigger one is the lack of Christian journalists in mainstream media in Canada. The reason for this, as Dueck explains, is that there aren’t enough of them nor are there enough places for them. She hopes that will change. “This is a very real part of people’s lives. Their walk with God is very deep, it’s very personal, it’s very tangible. When you’re a reporter who has that specialty in that area, you do get access to some stories that are incredible.”

Back at the set, while the show has wrapped, Dueck isn’t finished for the night. She still has another segment on aboriginal housing to tape, and smiles to her guests as she goes for a wardrobe change. People gather in the back to help themselves to sandwiches and beverages. They stand around, chatting with each other about the night’s show. I can see that these stories certainly are a very real part of people’s lives and I suddenly understand why Dueck does what she does.

Kelly Caldwell’s baby had surgery four weeks ago and is on her way to recovery. “She injured her knee and had to have two pins put in,” Caldwell says. Her baby, Dottie, is a year-and-a-half-old Boston terrier that has an appointment with the vet. “She’s going for a little bit of dog physiotherapy today,” Caldwell says.

Her love of dogs doesn’t end with the two she has at home (She also owns a 14-and-a-half-year-old Basenji named Jazz), as the editor-in-chief of Dogs in Canada magazine, Caldwell cared about all dogs. But that wasn’t enough to keep the 122-year-old magazine from being put down after the December 2011 issue hit newsstands.

The longest continuously running consumer magazine in Canadian history, Dogs in Canada comprised a monthly magazine, an annual magazine, and two websites that took pride in informing dog owners about the best ways to care for their pets. There was no room in the magazine for superficial stories like “how to dress your dogs.” There were, however, thousands of words devoted to keeping your pets healthy and cared for. Dogs was run by passionate canine lovers reaching out to like-minded Canadians. In recent years circulation for the niche publication was respectable, so Caldwell says. “We were surprised, on the one hand. But at the same time, we felt like the writing was on the wall some time ago.” Part of the reason for this outcome was the Canadian Kennel Club’s ownership of the magazine.

The CKC was founded in September 1888 when dog fanciers (the term used to describe people who are involved in the world of purebred dogs and shows) wanted their own governing body that was separate from the American Kennel Club. In February 1889, the first issue of The CanadianKennel Gazette was published by the owner of the Canadian Poultry Review. The CKC formally took over in 1912, naming the new publication Kennel and Bench. The name changed to Dogs in Canada in March of 1940 to appeal to consumers.

In 2005, after years of being without an editor, Caldwell—who had a background in writing but was working as a professional photographer—was brought on as the new editor-in-chief. The publisher at the time, David Bell, had made it his mission to get Dogs to the newsstand as a consumer magazine. After much persuasion to the board, he succeeded, and Caldwell was hired to usher in fresh content that would appeal to both pet owners and dog fanciers. Right away, more stories about mixed breed and rescue dogs filled the pages of the magazine.

This shift brought Dogs its highest newsstand numbers. The Annual set sales records in 2007 and 2008. In March 2010, a year before the magazine folded, the circulation of Dogs in Canada magazine hit 47,000. More Canadian dog owners were buying the magazine and relating to the stories. But the reporting on mixed breeds meant less coverage of purebreds, and the Canadian Kennel Club was dissatisfied. Longtime contributor Leslie Smith couldn’t fully understand the issue. “The broader the appeal, the bigger the audience, the more people will see the breeders’ ads,” Smith says. She adds that owners of mixed breed dogs had almost double the reason to buy the magazine. “If you get a boxer/terrier mix, your dog is going to be exhibiting facets of a terrier and facets of a boxer—you’re going to want to know what those facets are. This was the ideal place to talk about these things.” At the September 2010 board meeting, Ann McDonagh, the last publisher of Dogs, was given a directive: the magazine had to go back to reporting exclusively about purebreds. McDonagh had tried to resist the change for more than a year, and told the CKC that financially it was a bad decision. According to McDonagh, the CKC membership was declining every year.

Sonny Allinson, the manager of communications and marketing for the CKC, assured that extensive research within the club’s membership had been done before the decision was made to change the magazine’s mandate. The CKC was not able to provide any official figures from this data. There was no magazine consultant overseeing the changes—the fate of Dogs rested with the APEX board, made up of three CKC board members who had no background in magazine publishing. The Dogs staff began a slow transition back to the old ways, and in January 2011 the editorial direction was once again exclusively purebred. Dogs, according to Caldwell, “lost its heart and soul.” At the same time, the distribution of Dogs to CKC members was also changing. Until 2007, members had been given a subscription to the magazine with their membership fee. In order for the magazine to meet the guidelines given by the Department of Canadian Heritage for the Aid to Publisher’s Grant, McDonagh had to take away this membership perk. Members instead and had to opt in for a subscription.

Consumers not interested in purebred content stopped buying the magazine and purebred fanciers, who were the reason the editorial changed to begin with, failed to subscribe. “It’s hard to know what happened,” McDonagh says. “But our subscriptions dropped by about 40 percent from the members and the only thing that had changed was the editorial.” The distribution for the December 2011 issue was 18,379.

At the September 2011 board meeting, exactly one year after the CKC had forced the mandate of the magazine to change, the board members told McDonagh that Dogs in Canada magazine was ceasing publication. They said that the magazine had no foreseeable growth prospects, but that DogsinCanada.com would remain online and continue to publish new material.

The last issue of Dogs and the Annual appeared in December 2011. McDonagh resigned in October; the rest of the staff was terminated by email days before Christmas. The website was supposed to remain online, but with no one to maintain it, slowly became static, the only new content coming from disappointed readers commenting on old blog posts. The site is now offline. Dottie is recovering. In the right hands, the hands of a caring and responsible owner, she’ll be back in good health in no time. Unfortunately Dogs in Canada, neglected by its owners, didn’t get the same chance.

The Silver Snail comic shop on Toronto’s bustling Queen Street West is jam-packed with thick graphic novels, skinny superhero comics, and countless action figures. Wooden bookshelves line every wall and from ceiling to floor, colourful book spines fight for your eye’s attention. Scattered among the superheroes, monsters, villains, and fantasy creatures are a few non-fiction graphic novels—visual, visceral works about people and places around the world.

From Joe Sacco’s stories of the Gaza strip to Guy Delisle’s portrait of North Korea to Chester Brown’s escapades in the sex industry, each tells an important story through a visual medium. Jeffrey Brown, an American autobiographical cartoonist, describes comics journalism as something “along the lines of what someone like Hunter S. Thompson did, taking journalism and twisting into something more or different.”

Chester Brown, a Canadian graphic novelist, puts it this way: “Comics give you that sort of sense of immediacy with the visual images that you can’t get in prose.” In comics, the pictures are the “base story,” and words simply clarify an image.

An image can also act as a lens for readers. “For traumatic events, a photograph representation can hurt and scar the mind,” says Joanne Hui, an illustrator working on a travel memoir about the 2010 Shanghai World Exposition. “Whereas, the drawn image in journalism acts through the filter of a fellow human being, a direct but mediated interpretation of an event.”
Though non-fiction graphic novels can cover many topics, they are not exactly well understood. As Richard Poplak, a South African-Canadian journalist and author of 2010’s Kenk: A Graphic Portrait, says in an email, “You’d be shocked at how many people have no real concept of what a graphic novel is, and don’t actually understand the medium, or the language.”

Perhaps part of the confusion arises from the fact that comics are thought of as kids’ stuff. But more often than not, the subject matter in graphic novels is “pretty touchy,” according to George Zotti, owner of Silver Snail. One of the most famous examples is Art Spiegelman’s Maus, the Holocaust tale told using cats and mice that won a special Pulitzer Prize 20 years ago. “Maus took a softer tone because it turned all the characters into anthropomorphic animals to take the edge off; then you’re seeing mice die as opposed to people die,” Zotti says. But not soft enough for the average 10-year-old.

Authors choose visuals over words for different reasons. For some, like David Collier, a social and political cartoonist, the importance of a story is often the reason he chooses to spend time illustrating it. “If you start a picture and you know it’s going to take a lot of time,” Collier says, “you know it’s going to be a long haul, it has to be something that you like.”

Topics that writers like are often ones they know best. Chester Brown, who reads a lot of history books, wrote a biographical graphic novel on Louis Riel. But he is also a self-professed “john,” and his most recent book, Paying for It, explores that aspect of himself. “Write about what you know about. It seems natural,” says Chester Brown. “If you see a situation in society and you want to change people’s minds about it, you explain how things look from your perspective.”

For others, drawing more truthfully conveys the author’s perspective. Hui finds that her “scratches of incomplete thoughts” when watching scenes, places, and people end up being a more honest depiction than if she were to use plain words. “Drawing is a form of bearing witness to an event that evades the trappings that words can sometimes have for particularly spectacular or traumatic world events,” Hui says.

Complicated events and stories can be less dense, and therefore often more accessible when they appear in the visual form of a graphic novel. This is especially true for younger readers, who, when choosing a graphic novel, may be “reading about subjects and stories with complex subject matter that is over what their reading level would otherwise suggest,” says Peter Birkemoe, owner of The Beguiling comic book shop in Toronto. “So, you’ll get high school students reading Joe Sacco’s Palestine, but it’s not like they’re going to be reading Edward Said or another writer from the Middle East.”

“The more mediums you have disseminating a message, the wider potential audience you have for that message to reach,” Jeffrey Brown wrote in an email. “Comics would generally expose these subjects to a wider audience. For example, Marjiane Satrapi’s Persepolis probably introduced a lot of people—both comics readers specifically and among the wider population in North America—to the politics and contemporary history of Iran.”

The downside? “You can’t cover as much territory in the same number of pages as you can in prose,” says Chester Brown.

Sales can also be modest. Poplak’s portrait of Igor Kenk, the prolific Toronto bike thief, “found a very niche audience, and perhaps brought a few neophytes into the fold.”

However, Zotti says most people who walk into a comic book shop are open to pretty much anything. “If you’re coming into a comic store, you usually have a reasonably liberal mind,” he says. “So even if you’re into reading superhero books, you still have a usually pretty liberal idea and you’re interested in what’s going on in the world and also locally.”

For Zotti, the central appeal of comics journalism is simple: “It’s just about human nature, the human condition.”

“I just don’t know what I do,” he says. The University of British Columbia cafeteria is quiet; the tone of his nasally voice—the loudest thing in the room—is thoughtful, honest. That famous tam sits atop his head of frizzy brown hair as he munches on a sandwich similar to an Egg McMuffin. A to-go cup of green tea sits steaming. “And I can’t really explain what I am.”

“I’m still trying to get to the top of the rock pile; I’m still trying to get there,” Nardwuar the Human Serviette says. “That’s why it’s kind of hard to comment on what I’m doing and what’s worked and what hasn’t worked, because I still don’t really know.”

Recognized for his unique fashion sense—plaid tam and plaid pants—his oddball questions (“There’s a new zine out called Stone Grass and they talk about this girl from Washington, D.C. that says she had sex with you and that your cock is shaped like a soup can…?”), and most of all, his ability to dig up the most obscure information about whomever he is interviewing (“Your mom worked at Good Vibrations. You did your homework at Good Vibrations, literally, didn’t you?”), Nardwuar has become something of a Canadian treasure. People love him, people hate him; but everyone knows him.

Over the years, Nardwuar has developed into his own category of journalist, combining theatrics with hardcore reporting. He always brings along props (CDs, album inserts, records, MiniDiscs, posters, pictures, dolls) to his interviews, finding ways to connect them to the person he is speaking with. As longtime friend and admirer Leora Kornfeld says, “I would describe [his work] as walking this razor blade edge between chaos, humiliation, scholarship, and vaudeville. It’s this circus-like event and you never know at any given moment which one is going to rear its head.”

Born July 5, 1968, in Vancouver, B.C., Nardwuar (who asked that his real name not be published) is known by many for his MuchMusic freelancing gig from the late 1990s to late 2000s. His music journalism career began much earlier, though, in 1987, when he began classes at the University of British Columbia and found himself addicted to the atmosphere at the student-run CiTR radio. A year later, he had his own show: “Nardwuar the Human Serviette” (the name “Nardwuar” is, he says, just “a dumb, stupid name like Sting or Sinbad;” “Human” came from a Cramps song called “Human Fly”; and “Serviette” came from the fact that “in the U.S.A. they don’t have serviettes, they have napkins”). Since then he has created an all-encompassing brand for himself, incorporating his video interviews, his radio show (which he still does every Friday at 3:30 p.m.), his punk band

The Evaporators, DVDs, and anything else he sees fit. Nardwuar’s career has seen him interview everyone from Henry Rollins (twice), to Snoop Dogg (five times), to Kurt Cobain, to Cults.

“He’s good at digging up things that make most people go, ‘Holy shit, how did you know that?’” says Georgia Straight music writer Mike Usinger. “And you see that repeatedly over the course of his interviews. He’s extremely thorough and puts an incredible amount of work into finding these things. I don’t even know how he finds them.” When asked how he finds said information (his research time is minimum one week), Nardwuar’s answer is simply, “Everything is out there; it’s just people are too lazy to look.”

It’s an idea that resonates deeply with Nardwuar. He is forever second-guessing himself, endlessly conscious of how little he knows.

“I always get scared. I get nervous,” he says. “I think it’s good, because you’re nervous, you think you want to give up, but in actual fact it actually spurs you on to want to do things. So it’s, ‘Oh, my God, I know nothing about this person I’m about to interview. I’d better find some information on them.’ Whereas sometimes if you’re not nervous, you might be like those traditional journalists who are like, ‘Yeah, I’ve got an interview coming up at three. I’ll look at the bio maybe for a second, ask a couple questions.’ Because they are confident, they don’t look. But if they were nervous they’d realize how much they didn’t know.”

This need to keep searching, to dig deeper, is something that works to Nardwuar’s advantage, resulting in hilarious and insightful interviews.

“He’s got definitely a very unique persona,” says fellow CiTR radio host Tyler Fedchuck (whose show, Radiozero, airs right before Nardwuar’s). “Beyond just the superficial outfits that he’s got, he does better interviews than anybody, I think. His skill at digging up information on people that seems impossible that he could find is remarkable.”

Part of Nardwuar’s ability to commit so much research time comes from a deep curiosity about the world around him and a deep passion for asking questions to find out more. He strongly believes that working journalists should love what they do or should do something else. If you’re not looking forward to an interview, he argues, you shouldn’t be conducting it.

“I think that’s also why I get mad at those mainstream people; it’s like, ‘Yeah, I’ve got to do an interview,’ but it’s great!” he says. “If you’re not excited, then don’t do it.”

He longs for the access that the mainstream media gets for political interviews, and wishes those who had it would stop taking it for granted.

“I remember speaking to some lady and she was like, ‘Oh, an election is coming. Aw, I’ve gotta cover it,’” Nardwuar says. “And I’m like, ‘Oh, my God, you’re going to know when the candidates are going to be making their appearances, and you’re going to get the special press pass to do it? I’m just sitting at home on the internet trying to figure out when is somebody coming to town.’ But for the most part, the [mainstream] media, they just show up and it’s all there, they get all the press releases, all in the morning, all delivered right to their inboxes. And me, I was just totally hustling.”

Nardwuar has been able to interview many politicians (Jean Chrétien twice, Paul Martin, Jack Layton). In fact, his question about the use of pepper spray that he put to then-Prime Minister Chrétien at the 1997 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation resulted in a quote that was used by media outlets all over the country: “For me, pepper, I put it on my plate.” Nardwuar points out the media—and politics—are shifting.

“Now the politician might appear only on one show,” says Nardwuar. “But it would be on Stephen Colbert or Jon Stewart, whereas before they would only want the exclusive on ABC News or something. So I think it’s shifting slightly. So I’m not as jealous of the mainstream people now because there isn’t much mainstream stuff left.”

Forever the anecdote and information sponge, Nardwuar (whose mind is “like a steel trap,” says Fedchuck) is the media and the anti-media, the journalist and the fan, the insecurity and the confidence. As Usinger says, “Most of us don’t have the balls to dress up in a plaid tam and speak in a voice that sounds like a nail factory being dragged across a chalkboard.” And it rings true; Nardwuar is wonderfully weird, charmingly strange, and unafraid to let his freak flag fly. And it just so happens that it scored him a winning ticket—although he wouldn’t put it that way.

“If you think you know it all, you kind of get lazy. I’m always thinking, ‘There’s another interview happening, and I don’t know anything about it, and I’m going to have to figure it out really soon,’” Nardwuar says. “The minute I think I’ve figured it all out is probably the minute I should quit.”

Photos of Henry Rollins and Cults via Nardwuar.

On teen website RookieMag.com, today’s background is a photo of Winona Ryder in Edward Scissorhands, and the title of this month’s theme, “Obsession,” is handwritten in red crayon at the top of the page. “Literally the Best Thing Ever: Degrassi” and “How to Approach the Person You Like Without Throwing Up” are typical headlines. Yesterday’s posts are perched at the top of the page—it’s 2 p.m. and the first post of the day won’t go live until after school, followed by two more, at dinner time and before bed.

After school? The timing makes sense when you know that the editor-in-chief of this ambitious site, Tavi Gevinson, is 15 years old. Rookie got its start almost two years ago, when Gevinson announced on her blog, “I have a bit of a request, my dear friends. I, like many, would like another Sassy magazine.” Jane Pratt, former editor of the iconic title, heard her plea, and the pair decided to start a new magazine for teenage girls. “Of course, it won’t be Sassy (or the rebirth of Sassy, or Sassy 2.0) and nor do we want it to be,” explained Gevinson at the time. “For one, you can’t try to recreate something that good. For another… this world calls for something different. Something that will use Sassy as a point of reference for the whole teen-magazine-that-doesn’t-suck thing.”

By September 2011, Gevinson had split from Pratt—no hard feelings, she just wanted editorial independence—and launched Rookie, a self-proclaimed “place to make the best of the beautiful pain and cringe-worthy awkwardness of being an adolescent girl.” As Gevinson’s first editor’s letter said, the magazine would be neither a “guide to Being a Teen” nor “a pamphlet on How to Be a Young Woman.”Instead, it began as a refreshing antidote to the countless teen-girl publications that treat their readers like mindless consumers always in need of self-improvement.

Six months after launching, how effectively is Rookie fulfilling its mandate?

I directed a close friend’s sister, who was 14 at the time, to Rookie the day it launched. I knew she read Toronto’s feminist teen magazine, Shameless, and that she occasionally checked Gevinson’s fashion blog, Style Rookie. The new online magazine quickly became Ellie Ellwand’s homepage. “I love that it’s like the polar opposite of Seventeen,” she told me. “Instead of telling you how to be, it just gives you tips on how to deal with this crazy period of adolescence. I think for girls, now, that’s the best thing.”

“What Rookie does really well is it doesn’t try to censor information that girls need to hear,” says Anna Fitzpatrick, my colleague at Worn Fashion Journal and a Rookie contributor. Rookie’s writers are frank and honest when discussing things like sex, mental health, and drug use. “That’s not to say that this information isn’t available elsewhere,” says Fitzpatrick, “but I think a lot of teen girls might be more comfortable reading a magazine or an online magazine and hearing this than going to a counsellor or some other place that might have stigma attached.” Rookie is something of a “no-fear zone,” where you can read a celebrity interview or fashion tips in the same context as more taboo subjects that are often watered down or sugarcoated in mainstream media sources.

Molly Fischer wrote in n+1 magazine that Rookie is perhaps more suited to nostalgic adults than to teenagers, who spend a lot of their time “imagining what life will be like when one is no longer a teenage girl.” Fischer writes, “The idea of being an adult is totally fascinating to teenagers. The idea of being a teenager is interesting primarily to preadolescents and adults.” Ellwand would have to disagree. While she admits to “dreaming about the future, always,” she also thinks teenagers are self-absorbed. “It’s fun to have our own thoughts and worries translated into entertainment,” she says. One article Ellwand especially liked is called “How Not to Care What Other People Think of You.” In the article, Gevinson addresses the “depressing number” of reader-submitted questions Rookie has received about low self-esteem and how to overcome it. “It identified with so many of the things that I think about all the time,” says Ellwand. “Sometimes I don’t know how to articulate those feelings.”

Fischer’s n+1 article also posits that “[Gevinson’s] vocabulary, which includes My So-Called Life, Daria, Clueless, and, of course, Sassy, belongs to an adult cohort that came of age in the nineties.” Ellwand, a Grade 10 student at Etobicoke School of the Arts, says it’s true that many of the pop culture references on Rookie are lost on her, but that doesn’t stop her from reading the site daily. What matters to Ellwand is the way Rookie treats its readers. Unlike so many other teen magazines, it doesn’t categorize or stereotype young women, and it doesn’t treat them like empty heads with dollar signs for eyeballs.

Since its launch, Rookie has developed an advertising agreement with New York Media, the owner of New York magazine, but advertising on the site has remained minimal. “One of many benefits of being online is that we don’t rely so heavily on advertisers, and we don’t feel pressured to push certain products,” says Gevinson. “We have ads for beauty and fashion, but we don’t have to do these cheesy, stupid giveaways, and we don’t feel any need to write a bunch of articles about all the different ways that you need makeup.” Beauty and fashion are covered in Rookie, but as forms of self-expression rather than as tools for self-improvement. “I think that’s my biggest problem with so much of what’s aimed at teenage girls—and women, but I think it’s more dangerous when your self-esteem is still developing—is that it’s like there’s always something on the to-do list,” Gevinson says. “There will always be something wrong with you.”

Despite sincere attempts to throw off the beauty ideals portrayed in so many female-centric publications, Gevinson has found it difficult to present a more diverse image in Rookie’s photo shoots. “I don’t want to make excuses,” she says, “but when we started, we didn’t realize how involved we (me and Anaheed [Alani, Rookie’s story editor and editorial director]) would have to be in just about everything. So we would be like, ‘Yeah, of course, shoot your friends.’ Not everyone grows up in, like, the United Colors of Benetton—a girl justends up taking pictures of her sister and her friends, and they all happen to be white and skinny. So, now we’re more involved in casting.”

Spencer Tweedy, who contributes to Rookie’s “About a Boy” column, says that although the site’s tagline claims it’s for girls, he doesn’t see it as exclusively so. “Almost everything can just be applied to thoughtful teens that want something more out of a teen publication,” says Tweedy, who has been blogging on his own since he was 12. “I think [the teen media industry] is not really a culture that honours or at least encourages kids to be expressive with their feelings, for better or worse.”

Despite Gevinson’s early insistence that Rookie isn’t Sassy 2.0, Marisa Meltzer, co-author of How Sassy Changed My Life, sees it as an heir to the much-loved and missed teen magazine that had its heyday in the ’90s. “I think Rookie has had more freedom than Sassy had,” says Meltzer, mentioning problems Sassy had with advertisers, boycotts, and Focus on the Family. “And Rookie so far seems to be able to do its thing without any big problems,” she says. “There’s something about a print magazine that can be bought by parents in a drugstore that makes it more liable to being a source of outrage.” Meltzer applauds Rookie’s honesty, its mix of serious and fun content, its do it yourself projects, and its encouragement of reader involvement. “In some ways [Rookie is] better than Sassy was, because there’s no leash.”

A glass of wine sits on the floor of Massey College, casual yet precarious. I overhear a suit talking about someone doing “great work for the Huffington Post” as well-dressed intelligentsia move into the lounge for drinks and pleasantries.

“This is where we drink port and discuss Plato,” quips Rob Cribb, investigative journalist for the Toronto Star, as we slowly file in to the small library and wait. The shelves are filled with books on ethics and the history of journalism. We’re here for a debate.

In November 2009, Quebec Communications Minister Christine St-Pierre commissioned a report (PDF link) on the status of journalism. This led CBC journalist and Laval University professor Dominique Payette to suggest a status of “professional designation” for some Quebec journalists. This would entail preferential treatment by government sources and further protection of journalists under a code of ethics.

The reaction in English Canada, based on ensuing editorials, could only be described as a shit storm. The National Post’s Graeme Hamilton said that Payette “does not have faith in the laws of the market to provide adequate news to Quebecers.” Ezra Levant, in a Calgary Sun column, called St-Pierre “a natural censor,” made three references to the Soviet Union, and wondered “what kind of self-respecting, free society has a minister of communications?” (For the record, Canada did for almost 30 years. In 1996, when the position was abolished, our country re-emerged from a socialist dystopia and became free again.)

Three of the four debaters—Josh Meyer (national security journalist for the Los Angeles Times), Bert Bruser (a media lawyer at the Toronto Star), Esther Enkin (executive editor for the CBC), and Lise Millette (of the Presse Canadienne)—are in opposition to the move, one is in favour. (Guess, just guess.) Moderating is Julian Sher, author and award-winning freelance investigative journalist. The debate progresses as you’d expect, with most of the audience being in opposition.

And then an older woman, stone-faced through the rest of the proceedings, calls out to the three opposers without raising her hand: “It sounds like you’re just worried about this for yourselves!”

So, is she right?

——

At the controversy’s centre is the Fédération Professionnelle des Journalistes du Québec (FPJQ), a conglomeration of 2,000 Quebec journalists from Radio-Canada, Le Devoir, TVA, and other outlets. This debate has happened before—most recently in 2002—but this is the first time a full-fledged report has been produced and long-term action has been taken to negotiate with the Quebec government. (Two thousand and two’s proposal was killed on the floor.) When the designation issue was voted on for further action by the Quebec Press Council, the proposal gained seven yes votes and two nos, with three abstentions (including the CBC). The two opposing votes were The Gazette and an online publication called Rue Frontenac. But support during the fall and winter months has been withering during talks between the government and the press council.

“They couldn’t agree on who would have the greater say,” says David Johnston, The Gazette’s representative on the council. “The press council said—in its brief to the public hearings last week [the week of November 13]—it invited the government to set the rules on how that joint committee would work. In other words, government—whether directly or by arm’s length—would be deciding who a real journalist is and who isn’t.”

But in relation to government intervention, Dominique Payette herself wants to see the government very far from journalism: “What we wish to see is journalists talking to journalists and deciding who’s a journalist and who’s not.”

“The problem was that the day after we published the report, there [were] many mistakes [in] the way it was reported, especially in The Gazette,” Payette says. “They were talking about an ordre professionel—‘professional order’—which is very different from what we are promoting. So I knew that it would be difficult to go against a first mistake like that.”

In a way, this issue stands for two larger ones: a restructuring of Quebec politics on left-right lines as the threat of separation recedes, and a gap of misunderstanding between Québécois and anglophone journalists. Julian Sher, who works in Montreal, is in opposition to the FPJQ’s proposal, but holds a more understanding view of where it’s coming from.

“Quebec journalists didn’t suddenly drink stupid Kool-Aid in the morning and say, ‘We wanna be state-sanctioned stooges,’” says Sher. “And yet, if you look at some of the reaction in the rest of the country, that seems to be misinterpretation. [The FPJQ] are now saying that they’d walk away if the government was involved or was in control in any way. The main reason they want to do this is for protection of journalists dealing with big media monopolies.”

That the commission of the report has coincided with Britain’s News of the World phone-hacking scandal is strangely relevant, and may explain why the issue has pressed further ahead than in prior years.

And yet, the question of how the measure would deal with bloggers and “citizen journalists” is a key point for those in opposition. “They could’ve done that two, three years ago, when bloggers were less credible than they are today,” says David Johnston.

The official response from the Canadian Association of Journalists brought up that the public will return to bloggers if they, the public, have faith in the writer’s or blog’s practices, regardless of whether any of them receive a “professional” designation.

“There are so many people trying different kinds of journalism,” says Bert Bruser, media lawyer for the Toronto Star. “You have this concept of citizen journalists—people who are trying to get journalism into the world in different ways—and I think that that sort of thing needs to be encouraged, and it needs to flourish. And some sort of system where we’d license journalists in traditional media, well, I would counter that.”

But antagonism toward the FPJQ might be misdirected. It’s in fact the FPJQ itself that has raised concerns over the encroachment of government into the proposal’s sheer semantics. FPJQ president Brian Myles is assertive in his desire for government to be distanced from licencing itself: “I’ve stated many times that we don’t want to force this on everyone—we just want to provide certification for reporters and media outlets who want it. And you should have the chance to choose which model you want to follow.”

Complications have arisen, not unexpectedly, surrounding the disagreement between government, unions, and the press council over precisely what would define a journalist. Different perceptions mean difficulty in setting one specific code of ethics into place.

Millette elaborates: “The press council wants a law to force every enterprise to be a member of the press council. And if you are a journalist and you work for an enterprise who is not a member of the Press Council, you can’t be a professional. And we are opposed to that, too, because this is exactly the opposite of the spirit of the title.”

“Let’s say we give the state the right to create new organizations,” says Myles. “And we agree that, ‘well, your definition is sound. It’s gonna be put into effect in law.’ What happens in 10 years in our line of work, if the profession of reporter—if the business changes so much—that what was considered a reporter today is not the same thing in 10 years? For sure it’s gonna happen. Guess what happens for us? We have to knock on the National Assembly’s door to have those changes. So therefore, it’s not fully self-regulated any more, and this is why I’ve raised some red flags.”

Perhaps what’s most incensed anglophone journalists is the French-language test that comes in tandem with a status application. But Belgium and France already have professional status for journalists, with a test not unlike a bar exam for lawyers, or an exam that’s already taken in Quebec by translators, wherein those who apply to be a “professional translator” take an exam to become certified, even if they don’t have a diploma in translation.

What the debate reflects, though, is an anxious state of being in modern journalism. I’ll defer to Millette, relating an anecdote from the Massey College debate:

“There was someone from CBC, an old man, who said, ‘There was a time when I told my family member—or whoever—when I told them I was a journalist, I inspired something.’ And actually, I say exactly the same thing, and I don’t see the same light in their eyes.”

The next day, former News of the World reporter Paul McMullan told a public inquiry that “phone hacking is a perfectly acceptable tool, given the sacrifices we make, if all we are trying to do is get the truth.”

Casual, yet precarious.

On the evening of November 16, 2011, right around 6:30 p.m., a group of 10 women—editors, former co-workers, and friends—gathered at Sally Armstrong’s condo at Yonge and St. Clair streets in Toronto, in honour of what was once seen as just a “little book of recipes”; one that brought them all together once and has kept them together ever since.

“Typical of them—we were really a team—everyone brought something,” Armstrong says, laughing. “First of all, I prepared—I’d invited them for dinner! But they came tumbling through the door; with wine and presents, and stories—and that’s the best part. And we all shared these stories.”

When Armstrong received an urgent message in late October to contact Homemakers publisher Lynn Chambers, she was slightly perplexed. Chambers was set to make an announcement later that day about the magazine. But Armstrong, a founding editor at Canadian Living, had been editor-in-chief of Homemakers from 1988 to ‘99, and had hardly seen the magazine since leaving to pursue her master’s in women, health, and human rights.

“It didn’t occur to me she was telling me the magazine was going to close,” says Armstrong. “Because why would she want to tell me first?”

“Then I got an email from one of the editors who worked with me, who now lives in Ohio, Jennifer Elliott, saying, ‘I just heard the news that Homemakers is closing.’ And I really heard it first from Jennifer Elliott.”

“And then the screen just filled up with my fabulous old staff,” Armstrong says, laughing. “All of them just, ‘Oh my god! Did you hear? Did you hear?’ And reading their messages, I thought, you know, we really did something together. It was 10 years ago, but we did something together that I’m really proud of.”

That “something” was the legacy of Homemakers as the thinking woman’s magazine, something that started shortly after its launch in 1966 as an in-store giveaway, when Jane Gale Hughes took over as editor-in-chief. Both Hughes and Armstrong brought a dynamic blend of food, fashion, and lifestyle service for married, educated women aged 25 to 54, together with harder-hitting stories involving international, political, and social issues that were relevant to women.

“It was Homemakers magazine that started the campaign to drive with your lights on,” says Armstrong. “It was Homemakers that did the first Mothers Against Drunk Driving campaign.”

But since its 2003 super-digest-sized relaunch, and then a major editorial repositioning of the TC Transcontinental publication in 2009, Homemakers became less of a maverick in its own genre, let alone its publishing company.

Still, in her 2006 anniversary letter, reflecting on Homemakers’ 40th birthday, editor-in-chief Kathy Ullyot, like Armstrong, seemed proud of the groundbreaking content the magazine had always prided itself on: “The magazine born at an awkward time grew into a magazine that could have existed at no other: one that serves up revolution along with recipes, that tells the story of Canadian women’s evolution through a unique amalgam of their public and private lives.”

So, why the decision to fold the magazine?

Jocelyn Laurence, a freelance editor and writer, started a regular column for Homemakers in 2005, but had been freelancing for the magazine for almost 20 years. “You know, it’s a tricky business!” she says. “Keeping a magazine going is extremely expensive, whatever kind of magazine it is. I’m sure [the publishers] were just looking at the bottom line.”

And it was those expenses that resulted in the budget cuts that brought Jessica Ross from the role of executive editor to acting editor in August 2011, mere months before the magazine’s closure. “Through budget cuts, our staff size reduced, so that’s why I moved into the senior role,” explains Ross.

But the common thread among most of the Homemakers editors and publishers—as well as its readership—seems to be their loyalty, to each other, and to the magazine. And Ross, like her predecessors, takes pride in how she directed it.

“Homemakers was a terrific brand, and a fabulous audience to write for. Just a really wonderful group of readers—very loyal, very dedicated, very engaged in the content. And I think that we’re all really proud of the repositioning through which we took Homemakers in 2009. It was a move away from some of the historical positioning of the magazine, with respect to some of the long-form features and so forth, but it certainly reflected what the readers wanted.”

But despite a thriving readership of more than 1.4 million and a circulation of more than 300,000, the shift away from its more revolutionary content may have been the cause of Homemakers’ demise. Publishers found it too difficult to maintain a health and fitness brand not very different from their other titles, and saw profit in exploring new territory.

New territory like Juice, Transcontinental’s new media brand (created in conjunction with Loblaws) that launches in April. The multi-platform project will bring healthy living content to Canadians, including a full-size print magazine published six times a year.

Many of the former editors were surprised to hear about the new project.

“Talk about getting into bed with the advertisers!” says Armstrong with a laugh. She believes that relationships in this industry are key, and that like any family, there should be a healthy balance of friction, respect, and admiration.

And the women who worked for Homemakers were just like the audience they wrote for. At least, that’s how they felt about each other.

Jocelyn Laurence and Kathy Ullyot met twice a year for breakfast at the Luna Café, just west of Ossington Street, close to Laurence’s home, to plan her next few columns—and to indulge in some terrific eggs and toast.

“Kathy was very funny and very charming, and I can be funny and charming if I put my mind to it,” Laurence jokes. “So we talked about the ideas that I had, but out of those ideas came other discussions about life.”

Cheryl Embrett, a former senior editor at Homemakers, was part of, as Armstrong called them, her “best team,” and was there for Armstrong’s dinner of salmon, salad, and roasted potatoes on that November evening; she even brought a cake with “Homemakers 1966-2011” written on it—a small tribute to that “feisty magazine.”

“We all felt that we had met some of the most important people in our lives during our time at Homemakers,” says Embrett. “We had always been a tight-knit little group and had lots of fun together, and that evening was no exception,” she says. “Lots of stories, lots of wine, lots of laughs.”

As she struggles to remember the speech she gave that night, Armstrong promises no regrets. “People used to chuckle about this little magazine with these fabulous recipes—” she says, “and turn the page and someone was telling you how to change the world.”

“But I feel really lucky, and when those bright, charming, clever women poured into my little condo the other night, I thought, ‘Well, aren’t you just the best?’”