Maclean's covers provocatively highlight the pay gap between men and women

If the mark of excellent editing is to involve readers, then the current newsstand issue of Maclean's achieves both. The magazine has two different gender-specific covers intended to provoke conversation about the roughly 26% pay gap between men and women. One cover price is $8.81 for men; the other $6.99 for women. Readers can pay whatever cover price they want 

"After years of stasis, pay equity is having its moment as the next beat in the cadence of the #MeToo movement. Our hope is that these dual covers stir the kind of urgent conversation here that is already happening elsewhere around the world."

The initiative is a real credit to the editors and the art directors and we look forward to the reader response. 

Will Halifax ever be the same when the developers get through with it?

Halifax will never be the same once the developers get through with it; or at least that's the gist of the cover story in Halifax magazine. Kim Hart Macneill, associate editor at Metro Guide Publishing, has done a very thorough overview of various big developments and lamentable demolitions that have gone into the growing pains of the Halifax Regional Municipality. 

The central focus or the story is how the plan -- the "old plan" -- hasn't been updated since 1978 and is so out of date that developers are successfully dictating the rules. And there is a significant impact on small businesses.

Pride and prejudice: Legion cover story features Canada's first black battalion

Legion magazine July/August issue (on newsstands now) features a cover story by John Boileau about Canada's first black battalion and the struggle of its members to be allowed to fight in the First World War.

Despite offical government policy, commanders often refused to have "coloured" soldiers into their command. After considerable lobbying, a black unit was authorized in Nova Scotia. But the No. 2 Construction Battalion though it went to Europe, was tasked not with fighting, but bulding and repairing trenches, bridges and railways and doing forestry work. 

Rapper Drake is the poster boy for Toronto Life's "most influential" issue

Toronto Life magazine last night held a sprontzy launch for its December issue, featuring the 2015 ranking of Toronto's 50 most influential people. (Rapper Drake, chosen #6, is the cover subject because of his music (his most recent album won a Juno for rap recording of the year), but also because of his front row sway with the Toronto Raptors.) The issue is on newsstands November 19. By the way, Toronto's mayor John Tory was #1.

Maclean's cover story was an editorial opportunity seized

The outrage displayed by (among others) Britain's Daily Mail about Maclean's magazines's cover showing Omar Khadr is so clearly misplaced that it's hard to know how -- or whether -- to respond. 

(That the comments the paper cited came largely from Ezra Levant doesn't help matters. It is also perhaps one of a dozen times when Khadr's image has appeared on the magazine's covers.)

The story, written by Amanda Lindhout (who spent a year and a half as a hostage in Somalia) chronicles the unlikely friendship that sprang up between her, Khadr (who spent most of his youth imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay) and Rinelle Harper (the survivor of a vicious attack in Winnipeg). The magazine acknowledged that the connection among the three was "utterly improbable"

Is there an editor among us then who, when presented with such a story, would not seize the opportunity and publish it fully and prominently? And, having such a story in an issue, would not feature it on the cover? Magazines are in the storytelling business and this is a heckuva story. 

Pushing Quebec hydro into New England a hard sell: Maisonneuve

The spring issue of Maisonneuve magazine (on newsstands Friday 21st) has a major cover story on the contention over a major project that would carry Quebec hydro into New England. 

"Northern Impasse", by Michael Lee-Murphy, reports that for all the "green" benefits claimed, what's called the Northern Pass is proving hard to swallow for landowners and residents along the route. The story is illustrated with photography by Nate Mosseau; the striking cover (right) is by the magazine's art director Anna Minzhulina.

The massive transmission line in partnership with Hydro-Quebec would carry 1,200 megawatts of power into southern New England. It's a crucial part of the Quebec government's Plan Nord, which means to encourage northern development by finding hungry customers for power in the United States. The result, as Lee-Murphy says, is not quite what was expected:

"To a dispassionate observer, the transmission line looks like a win-win-win: cash for Quebec, clean power for New England and less carbon in the atmosphere. But like most development projects, Northern Pass will leave a certain amount of destruction in its wake. The transmission line would cut a gash through northern New Hampshire, marring some of New England's most beautiful wilderness and tarnishing the deep connection to the land felt by the region's residents. Many blame Quebec and its namesake energy corporation for their predicament. For a province rarely cast as the marauding bully, it's an unusual role."

Maclean's cover story features tough-guy Putin and impotent West

Maclean's magazine is pulling out the tab type for its cover story by Michael Petrou and commentary by columnist Paul Wells about the evolving situation in Ukraine. 

Rob Ford's "political train wreck": Maclean's

Maclean's magazine pulls no punches (as how could they?) with its November 18 issue on newsstands tomorrow. 

Astronaut finds himself making up for Maclean's

Apparently the flair for showmanship which astronaut Chris Hadfield showed when he was up on the International Space Station continues in the build up to the launch of his new book  An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth. Maclean's magazine's cover this week has him made up to imitate David Bowie, whose song "Space Oddity" Hadfield sang and broadcast online, to huge acclaim. The cover story is by Maclean’s national correspondent Charlie Gillis. 

Photographer Christopher Wahl asked the now-retired spaceman to do it, and he went along. http://www2.macleans.ca/2013/10/02/behind-the-scenes-on-our-chris-hadfield-cover/

“He went full-bore with it. I explained we needed bare shoulders as opposed to the collared shirt he was wearing, so he happily took it off,” says Wahl, who ensured the lighting during the shoot also matched Bowie’s album perfectly. “He was fully participating—it was awesome. I was on a portrait high for a day and a half afterward.”

The issue includes the first of two exclusive excerpts from Hadfield's book, on sale Oct. 29. 

Maclean's cover story reports on "slow-motion implosion" of Toronto mayor Rob Ford

In the June 10 cover story of Maclean's, senior writer Nicholas Köhler describes "the slow-motion implosion of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford", which Köhler says is following "a relentless chronology". The issue is on newsstands starting tomorrow (Thursday). An online sneak peek says:

The pressures of the job, one source tells Maclean’s, led Ford to drift into substance abuse problems early on in his term as mayor, when he stopped listening, came into work late or not at all, ceased alerting his office to his whereabouts, and refused to be accompanied by handlers from his office.

Soon top aides began hearing that Ford was buying mickeys of alcohol, purchases he asked his lower-rung staffers to keep secret.

His mayoralty has unspooled according to its own unforgiving logic since then, and his options have now diminished to one between resignation and self-destruction.