The magazine industry in Canada has had a long history dating back to the late 1800s. Over time, many iconic Canadian magazines were founded but faced competition from American publications. This led the government to implement policies supporting the domestic magazine industry. By the 1970s, reforms helped Canadian magazines grow while reducing foreign influence. The industry also saw many technological changes as printing and publishing processes became computerized in the late 20th century.

1. A quickie history of the magazine industry The Business of Magazine Publishing (CDJN112)

3. 1873 Goldwin Smith used his Canadian Monthly to champion continentalism and free trade.

4. 1869 Canadian Illustrated News founded, and built a huge circulation by offering lurid and stirring images of the Northwest Rebellion.

5. 1887 Toronto Saturday Night founded. (It dropped Toronto two years later.)

6. 1893 Queen’s Quarterly founded.

7. 1896 The Busy Man’s Magazine founded, a digest of previously published pieces. In 1911, it was renamed Maclean’s and became well-known as Canada’s national voice – with a decidedly British and Imperial viewpoint.

8. 1900 Printers come to an agreement that four subtractive colours – CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow and black) are to be the standard for four-colour lithographic process.

9. 1900 The government of Sr Wilfrid Laurier reduced 2 nd class postage for publications by 75% “to foster national consciousness.

10. 1903 Ladies’ Home Journal , after 20 years in the business, is the first magazine to break 1 million in circulation.

11. 1906 C. B. Cottrell & Sons invents the four-colour press.

12. 1909 Condé Nast acquires a struggling society magazine called Vogue . He applied a principle new to publishing, targetting a specific audience. 2003 British Vogue

13. 1912 Photocomposition is invented by William C. Huebner.

14. 1914 National Geographic publishes the first colour picture – of a flower garden. Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) is created, to guarantee the accuracy of magazine circulation claims.

15. 1917 McGraw-Hill formed, from the magazine and book interests of John A. Hill and James H. McGraw. They started out with railroad magazines and grew to become one of the largest information companies in the world. Publish among other things, Business Week . The circulation of the top half dozen Canadian magazines during the Great War never amounted to more than 300,000 because of the flood of American magazines.

16. 1920 Canadian Forum founded by a group of faculty and undergraduates at the University of Toronto. The first editorial board was Barker Fairley as Literary Editor and C. B. Sissons as political editor.

17. 1922 DeWitt and his Canadian-born wife Lila Acheson Wallace found Reader’s Digest . Initial circulation was 1,500 (at 10 cents a copy) and grew to more than 100 million in dozens of languages and editions worldwide. It didn’t accept advertising until 1955, which forced them to pioneer the kind of databased marketing that is taken for granted now.

18. 1923 Starch Research is the first market research firm; offers its services to the magazine industry. Time magazine founded by Henry Luce

19. 1928 Chatelaine , modelled on American women’s magazines, was founded and gained almost 60,000 readers its first year.

20. 1930 Henry Luce launches Fortune magazine. (It cost $1 when a daily newspaper typically cost 5 cents.)

21. 1932 Family Circle receives in-store distribution with a complimentary offer to the customers of the Piggly-Wiggly supermarket chain; the first magazine to do so.

22. 1933 David and Alfred Smart (publishers) and Arnold Gingrich (editor) launch Esquire magazine, starting off distributing 100,000 copies free in clothing stores. It went on to become an elegant and innovative publication, carrying both non-fiction and fiction from such notables as Ernes Hemingway, Sinclair Lewis and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

23. 1942 During World War 2, two large American magazines – Time and Reader’s Digest – began Canadian editions, in partnership with Toronto entrepreneur (and publisher of Liberty ) Jack Kent Cooke.

24. 1946 John Johnson founds Ebony magazine, then Jet and Tan , becoming eventually one of the largest black-owned businesses in the United States.

25. 1947 Prime Minister Mackenzie King’s government banned the importation of U.S. pulp magazines and comic books, but exempted supplements with newspapers. The Toronto Star’s Star Weekly increased in size overnight because it became the exclusive carrier of the most popular U.S. comics like Terry and the Pirates and L’il Abner. In retaliation, the Montreal Star began Weekend magazine. By 1952, the combined circulation of the two supplements was almost 2 million, more than the total circulation of the four leading magazines of the time.

26. 1951 The Massey Commission reported on a bleak Canadian cultural landscape, with little theatre or professional music and an English Canadian book insutry that produced only 14 works of fiction a year. As for magazines, it noted the overwhelming dominance of U.S.-produced titles, saying “(gifted Canadians) must be content with a precarious and unrewarding life or go abroad where their talents are in demand.” The Commission recommended that the government pool $50 million in death duties from the estates of two major industrialists and create the Canada Council. It began in 1957.

27. 1952 Jack Kent Cooke purchased the weekly Saturday Night and converted it to a biweekly.

28. 1953 Hugh Hefner founds Playboy magazine, taking the “skin magazine” formula to the mainstream.

30. 1961 Toronto stock promoter Percy W. Bishop acquires Saturday Night , merges it with the Canadian and creates Canadian Saturday Night . (It collapsed in 1963 in a “shambles of debt”. Arnold Edinborough buys it for its debts.)

31. 1970 The Senate Committee on the Mass Media (the Davey Commission) recommended that the un-implemented O’Leary recommendations be carried out. It found that in the previous 10 years, Time ’s Canadian edition had doubled in circulation and its advertising revenue had tripled.

32. 1967 Jann Wenner founded Rolling Stone magazine, tapping into a booming youth culture and pop music scene.

35. 1974 Saturday Night suspended publication when Maclean Hunter refused to print it because of its outstanding $350,000 printing debt. The Canadian Periodical Publishers Association was founded to foster Canadian-owned and operated magazines. (Later became the Canadian Magazine Publishers Association and then Magazines Canada.)

36. 1975 The Liberal government enacted Bill C-58, which elminated the tax concessions enjoyed by Canadian editions of foreign publications like Time and Reader’s Digest. Almost immediately, Saturday Night resumed publication under new ownership and with $100,000 in cash from Imperial Oil. After Bill C-58 was passed, Time ended its Canadian edition.

37. 1977 The National Magazine Awards Foundation was founded and gave out it first awards in the spring of 1978.

38. 1978 Maclean’s became a newsmagazine, as a direct result of the improved economic environment under Bill C-58. It became a fortnightly, then a weekly.

39. 1979 Norman Webster, London correspondent and later Editor-in-Chief of the Globe and Mail , purchased the magazine through his family’s foundation .

40. 1981 IBM introduces the first personal computers. First step in widespread computerization of magazine publishing.

41. 1983 Apple introduces the Macintosh, ushering in the beginning of desktop publishing.

42. 1995 Salon Magazine , the first professionally staffed, internet-based magazine, is launched in San Francisco, offering “continuous publishing”

43. 1997 Life magazine’s December issue runs a photo essay by Stephen Johnson, the first story in the first national magazine to use computer-to-plate technology.