Hello, people.

I am so angry I am not quite sure that what I say will come across as coherent.

Albertans are living in a time where we are governed by people of so little integrity and of such warped intelligence that it leaves me both depressed and furious. Here is the bottom line just so you all know precisely what is happening in Alberta: Danielle Smith will say or do anything she needs to say or do to gain and retain power. She has proven that her whole career. She also knows that she cannot retain power without the backing of the eternally discontented rural vote. So she panders to them. It’s important the rest of Canada sees this infantile and dishonest separatist charade for what it really is — namely, Danielle Smith floating a referendum so as to mollify a bunch of angry farmers and trick them into voting for her again (a vote count she requires to offset the growing power of the urban centrist vote in Alberta).

Don’t get me wrong. I love Alberta’s rural history and traditions. I’m part of it. And rural Albertans have legitimate fears and concerns about their way of life and place in the world. But Danielle Smith is not trying to honestly address those concerns. Instead, she’s manipulating their fear to her own ends. It may not be the blatant middle finger Donald Trump keeps giving democracy and common decency, but it’s cynical and devious nonetheless.

Anyway, I’m here to tell you that the vast, and I mean vast, majority of Albertans want nothing to do with separation and everything to do with Canada. Do not let the amplified ravings of a few delusional souls lead you to believe otherwise.

Below is a PDF of an article I wrote for Alberta Views in the fall of 2025 on Danielle Smith’s ill-advised flirtations with the American right and the implications of her hubris.

Until next time!

Curtis

What A State

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Although 18B #13 turned out to be our final issue, we had no idea that it would turn out that way while we were in the middle of working on it. We were just happily bumbling along as usual.

The wonderful local writer, Scot Morison, had pitched us a story on his cousin who had grown up male and transitioned to become a woman later in life. It was an unusual story, because not only was it a deeply touching story about Bobbi’s journey, full of so much poignance, but it was also a very insightful story about the relationship between the cousins and how it also changed over time. That issue also featured a funny yet astute essay by Scott Messenger on running. It was, on the face of it, about trying to reach one’s potential as an athlete. But, of course, it was really about something altogether more profound, namely, the race that none of us are going to win.

The third feature in that issue was by Lyndsie Bourgon, and it deserves special mention. Lyndsie bravely chose to write about a girls’ hockey school in southern Alberta that found itself locked in a controversy. It was not an easy story to research or write, but she did a superb job of both.

Add in short features by Richard Haigh, Doug Horner and our own personal 18B patron saint, Alissa York, and it meant for a truly outstanding issue of the magazine.

But as it turned out, it would the final issue. We had no idea at the time that this would be the case. A host of other factors were at play, factors that were partly unique to us and partly things the industry as a whole was grappling with. I’ll add a short coda on all that in a final post. But when we sent 18B #13 out the door, we did so in the same spirit as with the previous twelve issues—proud, hopeful, a bit nervous, usually kind of exhausted and always intensely gratified to be part of an ecosystem we all loved.

And then it was over.

As always, you can find the PDF of the full issue below.

Curtis

18b #13

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I’ve never quite been sure why, but 18B #12 remains one of my favourite ever issues of the magazine. Partly, I think that was due to the actual physical formatting of the magazine. We found what I thought was the absolute perfect size, weight, feel and look for the magazine. We always believed that reading a magazine had to please multiple senses, not just in terms of how it read and looked, but also how it felt in one’s hand. To me, we really nailed it with this issue.

I also fell in love with the cover art and how evocative and simple it was. It truly fit the tone and voice of the cover story. Speaking of which, Robbie Jeffrey’s story on the slow and inexorable decline of rural culture in Canada and particularly on the prairies, was a melancholy and yet oddly beautiful celebration of a way of life we may never see again. I’m partial, I guess, having grown up on the prairies, but it was a lovely and deeply felt piece of writing. Somewhat different, but just as gripping, was Emily Urquhart’s amazing story about a house from her youth that held wild secrets. Mad scientists, buried nuclear fuel, all of it a kind of metaphor for radioactive politics, ha ha, and the future of our energy usage. We also had the award-winning and always compelling writer Bruce Grierson on the hidden costs of hearing loss, not to mention new fiction from one of Canada’s greatest writers, Lisa Moore.

And although I am no poet, and although we always left the poetry in each issue up to the experts, I have to say that the poetry of this issue was especially great. I respect the craft too much to ever attempt poetry myself, but I love reading it and this issue, guided by our poetry editor Matthew Stepanic, featured Lisa Martin, Erika Luckert, Ben Hertwig and Billy-Ray Belcourt. Brilliant stuff.

All told it was an issue of the magazine that, to me, was evidence we were truly now operating on all cylinders. It was all coming together so beautifully. Superlative writing about compelling local subjects that spoke to universal issues. Writing from internationally renowned authors gracing our pages. Fantastic design and visuals. It felt great to put this issue out into the world.

But who would have ever guessed this would be our second to last issue…?

As always, you can find the PDF of the full issue below.

Curtis

18b #12

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Talk about an ambitious issue of a magazine! Eccentric is one word for it. Inventive, another. Whatever way you choose to look at it, 18B #11 was very different for us. Primarily, this was because it was a collaboration with not one, but two different organizations. The first was the Edmonton Community Foundation. The ECF has been a significant force for good in Edmonton for decades. It was founded half a century ago by the Poole and Stollery families, the Poole family having founded PCL construction, one of Canada’s biggest construction firms. And Bob Stollery was president of PCL for a time, and his philanthropy was responsible for the creation of the Stollery Children’s Hospital here in Edmonton. Together, those families created the ECF and it was one of the early and ongoing supporters of 18B.

And so, when it came time to dream up an issue of the magazine to celebrate Canada’s 150^th birthday, we met with some people at ECF and thought it would be fun to do something together. They then suggested it would be even more fun to involve LitFest, Edmonton’s non-fiction festival. Excellent idea, we thought! (Especially as I was involved with LitFest for many years as a volunteer.)

The result was 18B #11. What we devised was simple in theory, slightly more complicated in execution, and amazing in the results. All we did was pick great writers with some kind of connection to Edmonton and then ask them to write whatever they wanted, with the only parameter being that it had to have something to do with what they thought about Canada.

The essays that came back were diverse, beautiful, strange, hypnotic, poetic, startling and inspiring. Rollie Pemberton (aka the rapper Cadence Weapon) on what the concept of time meant to him as an Edmontonian. Journalist and Senator Paula Simons on revisionist history. Jenn Cockrall on Edmonton’s unique food scene. Omar Mouallem on the meaning of home when you’re abroad (for which Omar won Gold at the National Magazine Awards). And one of the more memorable pieces 18B ever published, Jalal Barzanji’s staggering essay about emigrating to Canada years after being imprisoned in a library converted to a jail, a library he used to visit as a student, by the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq. What a piece of writing.

But they were all great. We celebrated many of these essays with public readings and events that autumn during Litfest. I wouldn’t say that I place a lot of stock in public displays of patriotism. They too often strike me as misguided. But that fall, as this amazing group of brave and talented writers shared what Canada meant to them, I will admit that I felt just a smidgen of pride to say that I shared the same country as them.

As always, you can find the PDF of the full issue below.

Curtis

18b #11

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I wouldn’t go so far as to say that 18B #10 in the Spring of 2017 was a “fun” issue, because there were most certainly stories that spoke to some serious and important issues. The most notable of these was Omar Mouallem’s superb story of the challenges that newcomers to Canada face. But it was just one of those wonderful circumstances in magazine publishing where we were presented with ideas that were serious and thoughtful and yet reminded us that life can also be about enjoyment. And maybe more than anything else, about noticing and paying deep attention to what is going on around us. That can mean the plight of newcomers, but it can also be Amy Rosen looking at how cuisine can reflect the culture of a specific place (and vice versa). Or Kate Black on what it means for a woman to learn how to box. Or Kit Dobson on the meaning behind a Walmart opening in Whitehorse.

This was a highly eclectic issue of 18B. It also featured the renowned playwright Conni Massing exploring the special magic of live theatre, Richard Haigh writing about everything else going on in the world of criminal justice while we were obsessed with Jian Ghomeshi, and Tim Querengesser deftly writing about the aftermath of a car accident. It was all topped off by a truly magical short story by Anosh Irani.

This issue was, to me, yet another reminder of the unique and powerful nature of a general interest magazine. It was an issue full of great writing and real surprises for readers. Immigration, Chinese food, Walmart, Ghomeshi, female boxing. It had it all!

As always, you can find the PDF of the full issue below.

Curtis

18b #10

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Sometimes things just unfold in a way that you would not have predicted, but that, upon reflection, were the only way they could have ever gone. Such was the case with 18B #9. I had long known Lisa Gregoire as a friend. She and her husband, the wonderful writer Dan Rubinstein, lived in south Edmonton before they moved to Ottawa. Both are great people and great writers. Anyway, one day, Lisa sent a note saying that she had an idea for a piece. Maybe a week later, I was driving down to Calgary and we chatted while I drove. It was highly personal story she wanted to write (I won’t give it away here…just go read it) and we talked our way through how she might approach it. There was no doubt it was going to be a very difficult piece to write, and we agreed that she had to go into the piece from a specific angle and tone, from a point of view that was going to be personal and risky.

To say she accomplished what she set out to do is something of an understatement. Wow. It was without question one of the best pieces of writing ever published in 18B or in the Canadian magazine industry, imho. It won a Gold Medal at the National Magazine Awards, but it was about so much more than that. It was a devastating, uplifting, miraculous piece of personal journalism. We were so honoured to publish it.

I will also never forget the cover art that Robert Carter provided. It was deeply haunting, and it perfectly supported and captured the tone and feel of the story, while also creating a graspable narrative of its own, which all great magazine art does.

Astonishingly, this was not the only amazing piece in the issue. Scot Morison gave us an unforgettable look into the world of Palestinian cinema. And Virgil Grandfield produced a courageous and compelling story of terror and corruption in post-tsunami Indonesia (which also won a Gold NMA).

Amazing short essays from Alyssa York, Richard Haigh and Steve Neufeld. A brilliant piece of short fiction from Laura Trunkey. The usual awesome Can-Icons from Clive Holden.

I look back at this issue and even today I remain in awe of the power and sweep of the stories in that issue. It’s impossible to say that we ever “peaked” with one issue or another, but whenever someone asks me about 18B, this cover image always seems to pop into my head and that always makes me think of what’s inside. That has to mean something. This was an issue of 18B that, to me, demonstrated the power of magazines. All three features were brave, unique stories about very troubling subjects, but even though this may not be quite the right word, all three were thrilling to read, thrilling in the sense that they made you proud to be human, proud to know there were people out there who even in the face of darkness were willing to look for the light.

As ever, you can find the PDF of the full issue below.

Curtis

18b #9

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We were back! After a long hiatus of close to 18 months, we returned with #8 in the spring of 2015. We had spent most of 2014 trying to find some money to keep the train rolling, with some success. Essentially, we restarted knowing that we had enough funding in place to make it work for another couple of years, while we tried to figure out ways to reach long-term sustainability (spoiler alert: we never did!).

But getting back into publishing unique and surprising and thought-provoking stories was a hell of a lot of fun. We published a story about food culture by the wonderful Toronto food writer Amy Rosen (who, incidentally, has just published her first novel). And we did a deep dive story by Carissa Halton about the changing relationship between Indigenous people and the police in inner city Edmonton (who also, incidentally, has just published her first novel!). In some ways, it was a blessing to have all that time off, because Carissa’s story took an enormous amount of reporting. We gave her the space to tell the story she wanted to tell and she delivered. Boy, did she deliver. I don’t remember exactly how long the story was, but it had to be around 7000 words. And although that sounds long, it was a masterpiece of empathy and precision. It was deservedly recognized the following year with a Gold medal at the National Magazine Awards. I also have to point out the fantastic photography that Jessica Fern Facette provided for that piece.

(Speaking of awards, by the way, I forgot to mention in my previous post that Omar Mouallem also won a Gold medal at the NMAs for his 2013 profile of Eddie Haymour!)

But EB #8 was so wonderful for us to work on because it felt like we’d been away forever. It wasn’t just being able to work on great features by Amy and Carissa. There was a wonderful piece about the NYC borough of Queens by Craig Taylor. There was a subtle and beautiful short story from the Booker-nominated English-Sri Lankan writer Romesh Gunesekera. Fantastic short pieces from Katherine Ashenburg, Steve Burgess and Richard Haigh. Great poetry from people like Christine Wiesenthal and Steven Heighton. It was all rounded off by two more of Clive Holden’s iconic Can-Icons.

As always, you can find a PDF of the full issue below. Enjoy!

Curtis

18b #8

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18B #7

Putting out Issue #7 was, as with every issue, its own mini victory. It was our second issue that year, but it came after a slew of nominations and wins at various magazine award ceremonies for work published the year before. Jessica Johnson won a Gold NMA for her fantastic humour piece that I alluded to in my 18B #1 reflections and Christine Fischer-Guy won a Silver for her reporting on Attawapiskat. We also won a ton of Alberta Magazine Awards, as well as numerous Western Magazine Awards. We were kind of flying along!

And that sense of making great things happen continued with 18B #7. The lineup of stories in the issue was beyond remarkable. The iconic Marni Jackson wrote about why there weren’t more women making films. The Vancouver writer Kevin Chong wrote about the gentrification of Vancouver’s downtown east side. Elizabeth Withey contributed an essay about what we get from our parents, whether we like it or not. Omar Mouallem wrote a sui generis piece about a guy named Eddie Haymour. Jasmina Odor provided a powerful story about war in the Balkans. Add in Michael Hingston on reading translations, Connie Howard on hormone therapy, the Irish writer Siobhan Mannion on a bridge near the beach in Connemara. Oh, and Tim Caulfield offering his first take on what would eventually become his best-selling book about Gwyneth Paltrow. What a great issue that was.

Unfortunately, our funding was running dry. There had been changes in some key roles at various funding bodies in Edmonton and Alberta, and, somehow, we found ourselves with enough cash to get 18B #7 out, but not enough in the coffers to start planning #8. Well, actually, we planned it…we just didn’t assign anything. We had some nice relationships with advertisers. We had garnered a volume of subscribers that always surprised and pleased us. We were getting a few grants here and there. But our problem, so to speak, was that we paid people what we thought they ought to be paid. Meaning, we paid writers properly. Let me rephrase that. They were still underpaid, but we were paying them more than most if not all other magazines. That was something that Lynn and I had agreed on as a foundational principle – that writers should be reasonably paid and not asked to produce work for peanuts.

You might wonder exactly what kind of dollars I’m talking about? Well, we negotiated every assignment separately, but on average we tried to pay feature writers of stories that required primary research around $1 a word. Just to give you a basis for comparison, The Walrus was paying about the same rate, but no other magazine to my knowledge was paying at that level. Sadly, not much has improved. These days, very few magazines are coming even close to paying that much, and this is over a decade later. That is a comment on both those times and these times.

At any rate, the practical upshot of it all at the time was that we decided to take a “time out” to “renew our focus on securing a sustainable financial future” (translation: hunt around for some cash). That meant taking a hiatus for 2014.

Issue #7 also marked our final formal connection with Connie Howard, who passed away from cancer at the age of 60 in 2016. She worked first as a volunteer and then as an assistant editor (a volunteer with a bigger title) for a short spell, and she was always a funny and spiky presence, an expert at popping balloons of pretension in any situation. But in the 18 months or so between Issues #7 in 2013 and #8 in 2015, her health deteriorated to the point she was unable to work with us, and she passed away the following year. She was a real supporter of 18B and was greatly missed.

As ever, you can find the PDF of the entire issue below.

Curtis

18b #7

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18B #6

As with the preceding five issues, publishing 18B #6 felt like a kind of a gift. Considering it was now the spring of 2013, that meant we had put out a magazine in four consecutive years! That alone felt like a massive achievement. It also felt like a superior achievement to me that not only were we printing stories of serious weight in every issue, but they were stories that were also just plain amazing reads. Tasty and nourishing! Of course, the cover story on the twilight of the patriarchy, by Lynn Coady, was never going to be anything but brilliant. That’s just how Lynn rolls. It was smart and funny and irresistibly readable. Don Gillmor contributed another thought-provoking piece about the intersection of climate change and leisure pursuits, but which naturally wasn’t quite exactly about either of those things. The hugely underrated Alex Pugsley delivered a strange and hypnotic short story. Marcello di Cintio took us to a whole other place with a piece about a Palestinian circus troupe. Also notable was the fantastic poetry of that issue, with people like Barry Dempster, Sue Goyette and one of my favourite writers in Canada, Elizabeth Philips from Saskatchewan. Kudos also must go Kim Larson and her design team for what was another superb and imaginative cover.

What was coming down the road, however, was the cash crunch that I alluded to in an earlier post. I can’t speak for everyone on the team, but I know I was already starting to find I was spending more and more of my 18B energy allotment on looking for money and doing fundraising than I was assigning stories and working with writers. I think we were beginning to realize that there was a big difference between start up and sustainability. We had hundreds of subscribers, and we had some loyal advertisers, which was great. But we were paying our writers what we thought was fair market value for quality work and we weren’t bringing in enough revenue to match what we wanted to pay. There were storm clouds of financial disruption looming on the horizon (a line I would immediately cut if a writer ever submitted it!). More on these and other matters in the next post.

As always, you can find a PDF of the entire issue below. Enjoy!

Curtis

18b #6

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18B #5

Issue #5 from the winter of 2012 felt like an important moment in the lifecycle of the magazine, for many reasons. First off, it signalled that we’d been around three years and were getting ready for year four. That fact on its own was incredible.

Second, Issue #5 was remarkable for its visual content. Not only was it a cool cover (the brainchild of Kim Larson, Ruth Kelly and Joyce Byrne), but inside the magazine we had amazing work from Cam Chesney, doing a comic strip-style interview with Sarah Leavitt, on the ups and downs of being a graphic storyteller. It was unique and insightful and fun. We also had Clive Holden’s typically excellent Can-Icons. And although it wasn’t strictly speaking a visual piece, the brilliant Kate Beaton contributed a short essay about the Canso Causeway from her home province of Nova Scotia.

Third, and one of the reasons I have always loved this issue, was that all three of the major pieces were written by “lesser known” writers. I use the quotation marks, because of course all three of them – Max Fawcett, Russell Cobb and Christine Fischer Guy – were and still are superb writers. But it was the sheer quality of their ideas and prose that won out, rather than being the standard names we might see crop up in general interest magazines. We took this as a sign that 18B was developing an identity, a personality, that being a home for compelling stories told in a strong narrative voice and a place where ideas were infinitely more valuable than reputation. Both Max and Christine were honoured with NMA nominations and Christine won Silver.

Of course, sometimes reputations are earned, and in the case of Caroline Adderson, who allowed us to publish one of her short stories in Issue #5, her reputation as one of Canada’s best writers is well-deserved. She was also nominated for a National Magazine Award for that story and I might be biased, but she should have won.

There were also some funny moments during the production of that issue. One I remember clearly came when Max first approached us to say that he wanted to write something about the institution of marriage. We asked him why that would be interesting and he said, Well, because from the point of view of a younger person I actually think marriage still might have value in our society. We said, Okay…and? He said, Oh yeah, and my mom and dad have each been married four times. We told him to get to work immediately.

And with that, we published Issue #5 and readied ourselves for our fourth year of ops. Who would’ve thought?! On the horizon, though, was that thing all independent publishers fear, the funding crisis. Our first real cash crunch was coming in late 2013, though we didn’t quite know it in the fall of 2012.

As always, you can find a PDF of the entire issue below. Enjoy!

Curtis

18b #5

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Eighteen Bridges #4 - Spring 2012

Issue #4 was notable because it came in the spring of 2012, which signified that we were into our third year of publishing. This meant a lot to us. We were surviving, somehow.

I think it’s appropriate to quote some of our Letter from the Editors of this edition, because it captured what was so cool about this issue. “This issue of Eighteen Bridges is all about writers peering beyond their national borders and experiencing the thrills, pleasures and apprehensions inherent in striking out into foreign territory. A playwright travels to Pakistan and tries to keep his head while interviewing three locals who have defiantly made themselves at home with terror. A would-be Canadian novelist wakes up one day to find himself the hottest property in American television. A Vancouver writer hits the Boston bar district on Super Bowl Sunday. A nice Toronto girl embarks upon a hair-raising flirtation with Brazilian beauty culture south of her own personal comfort zone.”

Not only were we surviving, we did something for the first time in this issue, which was assign a story based on what we thought would be cool, as opposed to working purely through the pitch pool. We felt it would be interesting, given the zeitgeist of the time, for a writer to look at our societal obsession with sports and its intersection with faith. Timothy Taylor accepted the assignment, which was a gift to us, given Timo’s inherently curious mind, nose for reporting and golden prose style. It resulted in a great piece of longform journalism.

Of course, that was not the only highlight of that issue. We had Jonathan Garfinkel reporting from Pakistan, Giller winner Linden McIntyre handling the fiction and Madeleine Thien writing about a fantastical bridge from her youth. A truly stellar lineup.

Having said all that, one of my favourite pieces we ever published in 18B was in this issue, which was Jessica Johnson’s essay about waxing down under. And no, I’m not talking about polishing floors in Australia. You’ll have to read it to see what I mean. To me, it was a nearly perfect magazine essay. Funny, smart, surprising, thoughtful. Jessica went on to become the editor of The Walrus from 2017-2023 and we at 18B like to think that we somehow helped, I don’t know, smooth the way? That issue received numerous National Magazine Award nominations, including two for Jessica’s piece, but she was the only winner, receiving a Gold Medal that year for Humour writing. It was well deserved.

As always, you can find a PDF of the entire issue below. Enjoy!

Curtis

18b #4

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Eighteen Bridges #3 – Winter 2011

There was a real sense of exhilaration to working on Issue #3. By this time, we’d actually gotten some coverage in the media for what we were trying to do, and luckily it was mostly positive. One thing that Lynn and I really wanted to do with 18B was to give writers the space to tell stories that they were fascinated by, that they wanted to tell. Around this time, I seem to recall one or two consultants we talked to felt we should do a readers survey to find out what stories our readers wanted to hear. And in that way, we could hew towards subject matter that might be popular. I remember one consultant even suggested that we take a poll and do one story an issue based purely on what won a readers’ vote.

Well, to us, this was looking through the wrong end of the telescope. One thing we had always loved about magazines likes Harper’s and The New Yorker was how engrossed we would become by stories that completely surprised us. Our contention was that our readers wanted us to tell unexpected stories and take them on journeys they hadn’t anticipated. It was, we felt, our job to open up new worlds for our readers.

And so, in Issue #3, we had a superb roster of writers telling stories from far and wide, from the hugely political to the deeply personal, from the environment to menopause to Buster Keaton to bison to fear of flying. This was an issue of the magazine where we felt like we were embracing the world as best we could and letting writers bring home the news of what they were seeing, feeling, touching, noting.

Some things from that issue do bear specific mention. It was the first issue Greg Hollingshead appeared in. Greg was a prof at the U of A. He was one of my teachers (and a good friend), he was a friend of Lynn’s, he taught Scott Messenger (our music critic and eventually an associate editor), as well as Paul Matwychuk (our film critic). Greg was also, of course, a Governor General’s Award for Fiction winner for his book, The Healer. He published “The Drug-Friendly House” in Issue #3 and it was funny and dark and memorable. We also introduced Can-Icons in Issue #3. They would become a regular feature and were the brainchild of Clive Holden, the Toronto multi-media artist (and husband of Alissa York). Can-Icons were Clive’s visual and written odes to iconic Canadian symbols and featured his great artwork and droll literary style. They remained one of my very favourite things we ever put into 18B.

And when you top all this off with work from people like Chris Turner, Jane Silcott, Jan Zwicky, Bruce Grierson, Charlotte Gill, Russ Cobb and many others, well, you’ve got a pretty damn good issue of a magazine. We left Issue #3 feeling like we were establishing an identity and gaining a bit of momentum. It was on to Issue #4!

As always, below you’ll find the cover from that issue, as well as a downloadable PDF. Enjoy!

18b #3

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Eighteen Bridges #2 – Spring 2011

If 18B #1 was one small step for magazine kind, #2 was a giant leap for 18B. We secured enough funding to guarantee two issues a year for a couple of years, so we were feeling like we could start to lay down some principles and ideas. We also began to develop a stronger sense of the design and visual element of what we were looking for, working alongside our wonderful art director, Kim Larson.

And as with #1, we were kind of floored by the ideas pouring through the turnstiles. We never published more than two issues a year, but, if we’d had the funding, we could have easily been a monthly magazine. Such was the quantity and quality of the pitches we were getting.

But in my memory, there were a few things that stood out from that issue. One was publishing two of Canada’s most talented women writers, and talented writers, period, the gifted and funny Alissa York, and the funny and gifted Caroline Adderson. Another was the introduction of Omar Mouallem to readers as a longform narrative writer. Omar was full of great ideas and tons of passion, and although he didn’t have a lot of experience in the genre, he proved to be a quick study, as his glittering career since has shown. Another element of that issue that stands out for me was Don Gillmor’s memoir about his friend, the writer Paul Quarrington. It was a deeply moving and original piece of work, which used the poker game as its guiding metaphor. Not only was it a great essay, but I think we truly began to express ourselves visually as a magazine with the design and layout of that piece, which leaned into Don’s poker metaphor. It’s a piece that has stayed with me all these years later.

And these stories obviously resonated beyond our own office walls. Caroline, Alissa, Omar and Don all received National Magazine Award nominations, two in Don’s case. Alissa won a Silver medal and Don won Gold. These were our first NMA nominations and wins, and we remain proud that we were able to publish these great writers, and many others, in 18B #2.

That was the fun part. The other part of publishing a magazine is the money part, which is not the fun part. Even though we were only putting out our second issue, it was already starting to become clear that finding great writers to tell compelling stories, editing them with clarity and empathy, and surrounding their words with strong design, was a piece of cake compared to finding money to publish a longform nonfiction magazine. If Lynn and I spent an hour doing some editing and story development, we spent three trying to find funders, generate advertising or work on a subscription campaign. It was still a blast, but the reality of how much work, and the kind of work, it takes to keep a magazine going was beginning to hit home.

It was also an interesting time to be trying to raise money for a cultural project in Alberta during these years. There are things you don’t really think about when you’re starting out, and one of these was the philanthropic ecosystem we had to try to access. Ed Stelmach was Premier when we launched and Alison Redford succeeded him shortly thereafter. What they faced, and what we faced, was that Alberta was “wealthy” in theory, but was, in reality, confronting a massive infrastructure deficit due to the fact that Ralph Klein had stopped putting money into the province so as to balance the books. What this meant for us, functionally, was that every time we met with a potential donor or investor for the magazine, they’d say something to the effect of, “I’d love to invest in your magazine, but if I do that, I can’t donate to the hospital for sick kids or the inner-city school lunch program.”

But we always managed to forget about such problems when great ideas came across our desk. Which they always did. Even as 18B #2 was heading to the presses, we were well under way working on #3. As usual, at the end of this post, you’ll find a photo of the cover and a downloadable PDF of the entire issue.

Curtis Gillespie

November 2025

18b #2

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Eighteen Bridges #1 – Fall 2010

This Substack was the idea of the accomplished journalist and writer Alison Motluk. Well, she might not know precisely that it was her idea. She reached out to me one day asking where she could find a copy of an essay the great Alissa York had published in Eighteen Bridges. The website had fallen dormant and because we had ceased publication a number of years ago, I had to scan the article from a hard copy of the magazine and send it to Alison. (This kind of thing had happened more than a few times in the years since we closed up shop.) I apologized to Alison that I didn’t have an easier way to do it, and she replied, fairly casually, that we should just repost articles or even issues on a Substack platform. It probably seemed obvious to her, but it was a revelation to me. What an idea! Of course!

Anyway, so here we are. The plan is to post all 13 issues of Eighteen Bridges. I’ll offer up some brief commentary about each issue and, who knows, maybe even some of the others writers and editors will, too.

Since this is the first post about the first issue, it seems appropriate to share a bit of the back story about the whole enterprise. It all started when Lynn Coady and I first met at the Banff Centre around 2008 (where we both had been hired by the wonderful Fred Stenson to teach at the Writing Studio he ran). We bonded immediately over a few things. One was the love of a good beer and the second, usually discussed over a good beer, was the disastrous state of the Canadian general interest magazine landscape, primarily evidenced by the demise of Saturday Night magazine. Lynn is known in Canada for her fiction and has won the Giller Prize, but what people maybe didn’t or still don’t know is how great she is in every genre, including nonfiction. She’s got it all.

Anyway, one thing led to another after we returned to Edmonton from teaching in Banff that year and our idea kept percolating. To condense hundreds of meetings into a sentence or two, we found some money from a few granting agencies in Alberta and got some admin support from the University of Alberta and the Canadian Literature Centre (CLC). Then came the thing that ultimately made it happen—Edmonton Mayor Stephen Mandel decided it was a pretty cool project and he helped the Edmonton Arts Council find a way to secure a seed grant for us. We were off and running!

Of course, we only had enough money for a couple issues and had no idea how to actually run a magazine, but we thought, hey, let’s just dive in and see what happens. And what happened was that people rallied around the idea. We found a community of like-minded souls in the magazine industry in Edmonton, people like Joyce Byrne, Ruth Kelly and Kim Larson, who provided invaluable expertise in publishing, circulation and design. Others joined in, stalwarts such as Scott Messenger, Mifi Purvis and Craille Maguire Gillies, to assist with editing. The staff and volunteers at the CLC pitched in with fundraising support, office support and moral support.

And writers responded, too. When word started getting around that Lynn Coady and some guy were starting a new magazine, Canada’s finest writers began to hit us with ideas.

I’ll document some of the more detailed stories around certain articles of note as we move through the issues. But by far the most exciting thing about it all was just the sheer number of people who would become involved over the next eight years, who as individuals I would be proud to work with but as a collective still leaves me humbled that they shared their gifts with us and our readers.

Issue #1 was a joy to produce. We were delighted to be the publication that kickstarted Timothy Caulfield’s mainstream career. The great Marcello DiCintio contributed. The star power in that first issue was breathtaking: Lisa Moore, Robert Kroetsch, Marni Jackson, Timothy Taylor, Marina Endicott, Bruce Grierson, all literary and journalistic standouts. We had the iconic and now sadly deceased Don Domanski as our first guest poetry editor. Even the celebrated American icon Richard Ford contributed an essay. It was kind of miraculous and when we had the launch of the first issue at the Matrix Hotel on October 7, 2010, we were all a bit giddy. At one point, I think Lynn and I clinked a beer bottle and said, “Holy crap, we actually might just pull this off.” And we did, for a while anyway, and the result was, I believe, some of the best longform journalism Canada has ever seen.

And that is ultimately what is behind starting the 18B Archive. We will post all thirteen issues in their entirety over the next few months. Then they will be there for people to read and enjoy, either all over again or for the first time. In our short lifespan, the magazine won or was nominated for literally hundreds of awards, including Magazine of the Year at the Alberta Magazine Awards. In fact, and still somewhat astonishingly to me, work published in Eighteen Bridges was nominated for 47 National Magazine Awards and won 13. This is miraculous for a small magazine.

But don’t read the Archive for that reason. Read it for the sheer pleasure of it all. This is one superb set of stories. We don’t publish Eighteen Bridges anymore, but we remain extremely proud of what we accomplished with a bit of moxie, a dollop of cash and some awesome volunteers. Eighteen Bridges didn’t publish all that often and it didn’t last all that long, but while it was around, some truly gifted writers created work that is just as fresh and captivating now as it was when we published it.

Oh, and the name? Lynn and I were trying to come up with something that signified it was made in Edmonton, but that didn’t have the name Edmonton in the title. At the time there were eighteen bridges that crossed the mighty North Saskatchewan river inside the city limits of Edmonton and that seemed kind of cool. (The elegant line drawing above is of the High Level Bridge in Edmonton and was drawn by my good friend Madeleine Floyd. We toyed with using the lovely cursive up top, also Madeleine’s, in the publication, but never did.) We joked that we ought to change the name of the magazine every time the city put up another bridge (there are a couple dozen now). The name did lead to some funny moments, such as when one intrepid young journalist from Toronto asked me why we created a magazine called Eighteen Brides. Perhaps there is a market out there for a polygamist publication, but we never did look into that too closely. Longform nonfiction seemed challenging enough. At the end of this post, you’ll find a photo of the cover (featuring the work of the digital media artist Marilène Oliver) and a downloadable PDF of the entire issue. Enjoy!

Curtis Gillespie

October 2025

18b #1

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