Walrus
From Canadian Dimension, Jan/Feb 2004

If The Walrus were a person, and someone set you up on a blind date with him (this magazine is definitely male), you'd have plenty to be excited about. Your friends would have told you about his huge, $5-million endowment from two separate charitable foundations and repeated the rumours that he pays his writers $2 per word. Not only does he have money (despite being a non-profit venture), but this guy is stylish, erudite and witty -- a combination of the New Yorker and Harper's, with a dash of the Atlantic Monthly thrown in for good measure.

Expectations duly raised, you eagerly await your first meeting at the magazine rack, only to be disappointed when the special day (September 25, 2003) finally arrives. Like an on-line personal ad that distorts and overpromises, the cover of issue one features a dull-gray, grainy photo of a steamship to illustrate an overlong, 10,000-word investigative feature on Paul Martin, the first-date equivalent of nervous babbling. And, while you try not to judge by appearances, you notice the layout has been executed poorly, making certain sections difficult to read.

But the worst thing about your first encounter with The Walrus is that you can't seem to figure out where to situate him politically. He name-drops Margaret Atwood, Lewis Lapham, Stephen Lewis and Tariq Ali, but like a veteran politician, keeps his pronouncements vague, deftly occupying the mushy middle. After a few hours, you come away with the impression that The Walrus is intelligent and particularly sharp on world politics, equipped to discuss preservation of Bauhaus architecture in Tel Aviv, China's mishandling of the SARS crisis, Moscow's homeless children and the German obsession with Native Indians with equal insight and strength. But that spark, the vital chemistry that keeps a reader passionate about a particular magazine, is missing. Still, you're willing to give The Walrus a second date (he paid for dinner and drinks, after all), simply because you haven't met another Canadian magazine like him in a long time. You might not ever love him, but perhaps one day you'll grow to like and respect this guy -- or at least figure out who he'll be voting for come election day.