Compliments to Geist magazine received, and deserved

It doesn't happen very often (or, perhaps, not often enough) that one Canadian magazine sends a mash note to another. In the case in question, Toro magazine (now an online site only) has published a panegyric by senior writer Salvatore Difalco to the Vancouver-based literary Geist that must make founding editor Stephen Osborne blush, if only for a moment. [Disclosure: Osborne is an occasional contributor to this blog.]

The whole feel of the magazine is as inviting and comfortable as a family chesterfield, if at times a bit crowded, and yet smart enough to take on (or gently poke at) anything under the sun, especially anything Canadian – but, in a clear case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts, Geist is much more. It’s an intelligent magazine with a serious aesthetic that doesn’t seem to take itself too seriously. It’s a very Canadian magazine – and forgive me for saying this – that isn’t annoyingly Canadian....

Geist’s mandate states that the magazine's aim is to "register within its covers – in story, image, essay and the accumulation of little-known fact – the sensibility of a people whose imagined country may itself prove to be their greatest creative act." Indeed, Geist is as uniquely Canadian as toques and bloody Caesars, offering an elegant forum for Canadians to express and read about their culture and ideas. Any Canadian not reading Geist is missing out on a national party of sorts, and any non-Canadian interested in what makes us tick as a people wouldn’t be too far off picking up a copy of Geist and joining the fun.