Good night, Alberta Report

Many respectable writing careers were launched there. Not mine, though--I freelanced for Alberta Report report for a few months and they published half a dozen of my articles. But I was just a kid who wanted to try writing before deciding what to do about university. I didn't fit in with their newsroom menagerie.

I'll never forget the editor I worked with, Terry something-or-other, who claimed that he was really an anarchist and not a conservative. His fingers were stained yellow from his hand-rolled cigarettes, and he looked a little like the shaggy deaf-mute Liam Neeson played in that Cher movie. But shorter and creepier. Thick glasses covered the parts of his face that his beard didn't. The frames were once clear plastic, but they'd taken on a murky-urine tinge thanks to his everpresent filter-less DIY Players.

I later heard, second or third-hand, he'd sued them for wrongful dismissal and moved to Mexico. Anyway, after a few months we both realized I lacked the conviction, desperation, possibly both, to cut it there. But I continued to read the magazine and enjoyed it all the more for having experienced its editorial distortion field first-hand.

When I joined the Alberta Government I had to fight off my co-workers when the latest Alberta Report came in (Wednesdays, I think). Everyone took a perverse pleasure in soaking up its refracted Christian logic and populist drum-beating. Here's another thing: Every government office had a subscription to the Report, sometimes more than one. You got the impression that if the Byfields found out your office didn't have a subscription they'd find a reason to shit on you in the next issue.

Alberta Report had many talented writers--Kevin Michael Grace stood out for me--but I always suspected that the ones who didn't move to mainstream media (and there were many who did) had tasted the Byfield's kool-aid. (Also, if I remember correctly, AR was Ezra Levant's springboard to ignomy.)

Most of the interesting commentary on the folding of the Report is coming not from the media, but from the blogs of former staffers. In particular:

• there's a funny discussion on the Alberta Report movie
• Marnie Ko pens a scathing memoir
• Jeremy Lott remembers the ideological diversity at AR