[LINK] Two Maisonneuve Articles

[rfmcdonald]

I should read the Montréal-based English magazine Maisonneuve more often. (What is its Toronto equivalent, incidentally?) Siri Agrell's "Are Canadian Bloggers Pussies?", for instance, is an interesting commentary on how traditional Canadian journalistic ethics have crossed over into the Canadian blogosphere.

"It's not that we're pussies or afraid," says Catherine McMillan, the Saskatchewan-based author of the Canadian political blog Small Dead Animals. "The key difference, I think, is that our traffic levels need to build and the network itself has to build. But it's growing, it's coming."

My favouirte, though, is Matthew Fox's "Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret", an interesting interview with Margaret Atwood first linked to by zarq among others. A snippet:

MF: Okay, so let’s go back to Moving Targets. In the introduction, you said that you crossed the line between what Mordecai Richler used to call “world-famous in Canada” and “world-famous.”

MA: Canada crossed a line.

MF: So you feel that Canada crossed a line, not you?

MA: I crossed the line, too. But Canada crossed the line in that there are now a number of writers who are not just world-famous in Canada.

MF: Do you feel that you and Canada crossed that line at approximately the same time?

MA: No. I did it a little bit earlier.

MF: When do you think you crossed it? Was there a particular moment when you realized it?

MA: I think when people stopped yawning when I said I was from Canada.

MF: And when do you think Canada crossed the line?

MA: About the eighties. The later eighties.

MF: Is there an event that you can associate with that?

MA: No. You’d have to go back and do your social history. This is your piece, not my piece.

MF: Of course. Is Canada a good place to start, as a writer?