UPDATE (02/09/2018): A big, big thank you to everyone who donated to save This. The response to the campaign was amazing! Thanks to generous gifts from our readers and supporters we raised $15,064.82, exceeding our initial campaign goal of $15,000.
After being faced with an unexpected funding delay, the survival of This Magazine was uncertain. Thanks to your donations, subscription orders, and goodwill, that’s no longer the case.
We couldn’t produce the kind of independent, progressive journalism that we do, and have for 52 years, without your help. Thank you so much for keeping This Magazinealive.
If you missed the campaign and would still like to contribute, please feel free to do so. All donations are tax-deductible.
If you have questions about your donation and the work it supports, please contact Lisa at [email protected] or 416-979-9429/1-877-999-8447.
UPDATE (02/01/2018): This past week has been an incredible one! The response to our campaign so far has been tremendous. Thanks to the amazing support of our donors thus far, we are close to reaching our $15,000 target. We’ve already raised $11,284.06, leaving us just $3,715.94 shy of our goal! It’s this money that will help us continue to produce the quality, independent journalism we’re known for.
If you haven’t already given, please consider doing so today. We also accept donations through the mail and donations via credit card over the phone. Just call Lisa at (416) 979-9429/1-877-999-8447, or send a cheque to This Magazine at #417-401 Richmond Street West, Toronto ON, M5V 3A8.
Thank you so much for your support thus far! We couldn’t do it without you.
Dear This Magazine readers and supporters,
For the past 52 years, This has been your source for coverage of progressive politics, culture, and ideas. From our humble beginnings as This Magazine is About Schools back in 1966, it’s been our mission to produce the kind of journalism no other magazine has—stories that are underreported and overlooked by the mainstream media. If the countless awards and distinctions and our long list of alumni is any proof, we’ve done just that. It takes just a quick look through our archives—with more than 320 issues—to see just how much we’ve accomplished in the past half century.
This gave the two of us the opportunity to shine as emerging journalists. It’s the magazine where we learned how to fact-check, copy edit, and write longform journalism and grants. Now, we have the great pleasure of working with other fantastic journalists and creators—rookies and veterans—to produce this magazine six times every year.
Over the years, This Magazine has become a home—both for the treasured stories we publish, and for the writers, editors, illustrators, photographers, and artists we bring on board. In the past year alone, we’ve explored the ways our health care system excludes those from minority communities, the issues our country needs to address 150 years on, how mental health care needs to improve for its providers, and Vancouver’s growing opioid crisis. Our coverage has spanned Canada, from coast to coast to coast.
But that may be in jeopardy. We have recently come into a major funding delay, and the operation of This Magazine hangs in the balance.
As you probably know, the magazine industry has been especially precarious in the past decade. That’s never stopped us from pushing on to publish This—because we know how important the journalism we produce is.
To continue making our small but fierce independent magazine, we need your help. We’re asking our readers and supporters to make a donation to help keep us afloat during this difficult period. Every dollar makes a difference. Plus, we provide tax receipts for all donations.
Your donation will help us publish some of the amazing forthcoming stories we have planned for 2018: why many Canadians can’t afford to take long-term sick leave, why legalization won’t help medical cannabis users, the challenges Inuit Canadians face in preserving languages, and more. Plus, special packages about the state of mental health care in Canada and Indigenous issues, and our first-ever Pride issue.
Two years ago, when This celebrated its 50th anniversary, we had a wild thought: What if this scrappy indie mag could continue publishing for another 50 years? Help us get there, to make This a home for great journalism for years to come. Help us save This Magazine.
ERICA LENTI, EDITOR
and LISA WHITTINGTON-HILL, PUBLISHER
This Magazine laid the foundation for my entire career as a writer. It was one of the only publications that gave me a platform to speak my truth, that pushed for the stories of marginalized peoples, that upheld the core principles of being a progressive and independent publication. When I started an internship at This Magazine as an unemployed student in 2014, I was uncertain about my future as a writer and artist in an industry where writers of colour are frequently pushed out. Now in 2018, I’ve become a successful writer and artist with a book launch on the horizon. None of that would have been possible without This. The charisma, passion, and hard work ethic of the This team is hard to come by at many publications that have fallen prey to large media conglomerates. I urge avid readers of This to keep the publication alive.
—HANA SHAFI, writer and illustrator, 2014 This intern
***
When I first moved from the Maritimes to Toronto in the late 1980s and began my career as a writer and editor, I aspired to write about things that mattered—about social justice, about feminism, about racism, about the environment and more. While I’d grown up in a home that valued being fair and kind to people, we weren’t a family that talked politics, and my political and social knowledge seemed full—was full—of gaps. Filling in those gaps happened in Toronto, with conversations with new friends, books bought in stacks from the Toronto Women’s Bookstore, and the stories I read on the pages of This Magazine. There, I read about environmental issues I’d never considered, discovered perspectives on sexual politics and gender that pushed me to look at the world in new ways, and listened to the voices of Indigenous writers like Dan David who introduced me to issues I was embarrassed to admit I’d never considered. The people who edited and wrote for This Magazine were thoughtful, passionate and smart. And reading them made me smarter—because reading them made me think harder about the most critical issues facing us, as Canadians and as citizens of the world.
In the years since then, the conversations on This Magazine‘s pages have continued to engage me, to push me, to educate me, to inspire me. The people who edit and write for the magazine continue to be some of the smartest, most thoughtful and passionate thinkers on social justice you’ll find anywhere. Fifty years after its first issue, This Magazine continues to be an essential voice on social, political and progressive issues—and the voices on its pages are more important than ever as local and regional media disappear across this country. We need This Magazine. And This Magazine needs us. I’ll be giving. And I hope you will too.
—KIM PITTAWAY, award-winning writer and former This board member
***
The first feature article I ever wrote was about a feisty scientist determined to sound off on the deadly legacy of New Brunswick industry towns. In a province controlled by business interests, government brushed off her data and concerns and tried to silence her. She kept fighting, of course, and uncovered the unsettling truth about why residents were getting sick in strange and predictable ways. Her spirit—independent, dogged, ruthless in the pursuit of truth and justice—was something I admired and strived to emulate as a rookie journalist. It’s the same spirit that drew me to This Magazine, where I published that first article, and where I’ve been a section editor ever since. This, to me, is the benchmark of journalistic integrity that reporters should aspire to and citizens should expect. Certainly now, more than ever, we can’t afford to neglect the bold, sometimes uncomfortable, truths laid bare on the pages of This.
—CATHERINE MCINTYRE, This & That co-editor and winner of Best New Magazine Writer at the National Magazine Awards in 2013 for her This feature, “Clusterf*ck.”
***
This keeps you awake and on your toes—it’s the best way to stay in touch with the emerging ideas, politics, and art of the next generation of progressives. A lot of magazines get set in their ways, but This keeps growing and renewing itself, and bringing new voices into the mix. I couldn’t support that more strongly.
—CLIVE THOMPSON, award-winning writer and former This editor
***
If only we could hear more—not less—from This Magazine. Long a source of insightful commentary, it’s clearly needed more than ever in the midst of today’s mindless Trumpism and other forms of corporate dominance.
—LINDA MCQUAIG, author, journalist, and This editor-at-large
***
This Magazine is a necessary condition for healthy political conversation in this country. It inspires, calls out, analyzes, and reports on issues in a unique and indispensable way. Canada without it would be instantly a lesser nation, a crucial voice silenced.
—MARK KINGWELL, author and This editor-at-large
***
This Magazine made me into the editor and writer I am today. And it’s done the same thing for countless other emerging journalists. With its mission to cultivate and mentor young, diverse creators, This has played an essential role in building not only individual careers, but in shaping a better, more equitable Canadian media landscape. Media—and in particular, alternative media—is a vital part of a functioning democracy, and This Magazine has a long, feisty history of shining a relentless spotlight on important stories that would otherwise fly under the radar. In a world of fake news and increasingly polarized discourse, smart, fearless publications like This are needed more than ever. I cannot imagine a world without it.
—LAUREN MCKEON, author, journalist, and former This editor