bout de papier, Vol. 14, No. 2 (1997) — Summer 1997 // Été 1997, p. 2
Like the Canadian Foreign service as whole, bout de papier is both cursed and blessed with editors and board members (with some notable exceptions here) who rotate through the establishment almost as frequently as pizza delivery persons. It’s a curse for the magazine because, barely have they started to learn the ropes then they’re off again, to places exotic, leaving behind them piles of half-edited stories, photos with no names or captions and enigmatic lists of half-born story suggestions. A blessing because every new board member and editor brings in new ideas, new contacts and new energy.
What keeps the magazine from disappearing for months at a time and from lurching too erratically from one crazy idea to another is the tireless enthusiasm and institutional memory of managing editor Debra Hulley — who has silently (even smilingly) endured regimes ranging from the crackpot to the tyrannical — and the wisdom and experience of its senior editorial board, always there tactfully to remind overenthusiastic neophyte editors that there is little new under the sun.
Then there are the ranks of our contributors, unfailingly at hand to bail us out when ideas seem to be drying up. I wonder with all due modesty whether there is another small-circulation magazine in North America that consistently attracts contributions of such high quality, on an unpaid basis and with so little promise of glory? Extracting those long-promised articles via e-mail from colleagues on the other side of the planet sometimes feels like HQ wheedling performance appraisal input from a none-too-interested EX-5, but when my computer finally beeps to indicate an incoming story, I know I’m always in for an interesting read.
Our longest-standing contributor of all is of course the enigmatic A Aalto. He/she has been contributing to bout for fifteen years. One of his/her many fans — who happens to be the winner of the puzzle from our last issue — is Forrest Pass, who writes thus from Madeira Park, British Columbia: “I am sixteen years old and have been an avid reader of your magazine since I was sent a copy by my local Public Service Commission office almost two years ago. One of my favourite features is A Aalto’s puzzle, though I am rarely able to solve it completely… ’. Mr. Pass will no doubt be shocked to learn that A Aalto, like other faithful contributors, does not always receive the treatment he/she merits from philistine editors. This editor, for example, was frankly mystified by the title for his/her last piece, as submitted: “On the Steppes of Central Asia: A puzzle that Genghis Khan (but Immanuel Kant) Solve”. He mistakenly took it upon himself to correct what he perceived to be a typographical error (but was not) – think about it.
But there is another community of dedicated individuals that has, over the years, made bout into what it is, and whose names never appear in these pages. We are blessed, at Acart Communications Inc., with a team of individuals that consistently goes far beyond the call of duty and ensures that every issue of bout lives up to the high design and production standards for which we have become renowned. The team includes Al Albania (President), Nancy Boland and Leslie Babcock (Graphic Artists), Sarah Deschamps (Art Director), John Staresinic (Creative Director) and many others. Typical of the care with which they handle bout was the phone call we received when we were working on the cover for this issue. In Hartmuth Kroll’s original picture, the little girl looks out to the left. The picture would be more effective if we flopped it. But, by reversing the jewelry on the girl’s face, did we not run the risk of causing offence, perhaps to a religious community? India hands at DFAIT quickly did some research with Indian friends and reassured us — we could run the picture flopped. On this tenth anniversary of ACART’s relationship with bout, a warm thank you from all of us.
With this edition, I retire. The new editor will face many joys and some tribulations. But he/she will also become privy to some secrets: the story of the cover that was airbrushed to avoid seizure by the vice squad, the edition that wasn’t, the Fall edition that came out in January, what was said in those interviews after the tape-recorder was turned off…. It’s not The New Yorker, but then I’m not Tina Brown.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 14, No. 2 (1997) — Summer 1997 // Été 1997, p. 2. Read the rest of this issue →
