Lloyd Hodgkinson, who championed Canadian magazine publishing, dies at the age of 96

Time was, Maclean Hunter was the core of Canadian consumer and business to business magazine publishing. And presiding over that for close to 40 years was Lloyd Hodgkinson, who died on April 8 at the age of 96. As his death notice in the Globe and Mail reports, 

"During his career, he published and founded many of the country's most influential magazines including Chatelaine, Châtelaine, Miss Chatelaine/Flare, Saturday Night, Canadian Home Journal, Canadian Art, L'Actualité and his pride and joy, Maclean's, Canada's first newsweekly magazine....During his tenure as head of the Magazine Publishing division of Maclean Hunter, he also championed women's magazines: from Chatelaine with fabled Doris Anderson at the helm, to FLARE (formerly Miss Chatelaine), which he founded for the growing female workforce by appointing Donna Scott as publisher and Keitha Maclean as editor."

Perhaps his most signal accomplishment was the rebirth of Maclean's, one of Canada's oldest periodicals, repositioned to become a newsweekly under the editorship of Peter C. Newman. It's rare these days to find publishers who are both business leaders and nationalists, but Hodgkinson was one. 

He served as director and vice chair of the Audit Bureau of Circulation International board of directors (1968 to 1985), chairman of the Magazine Publishers Association of Canada, president of the Periodical Press Association. He retired as group vice-president of Maclean Hunter Limited in November 1985. The company that he had built was acquired by Rogers in 1994.