Toronto Life catches on

The cover story of the May issue of Toronto Life is about dating and being single. The cover itself features the usual bland-looking woman, which it apparently must do to sell on newsstands, but the inside is a pleasant surprise. There's a trenchant, brave essay on being single by Anne Kingston, which is surrounded by first-person mini-profiles of various single people in the city, with good-sized black-and-white photos. What's so surprising is that in addition to white male and female 30-somethings, the people profiled include a lesbian, a Muslim woman in traditional garb, another young woman whose last name is Singh, and a white man of 79. Not one of the women is skinny; two are reasonably hefty-looking. (Kudos to Denise Balkissoon for these choices).

Contrast this with the cover story of the February issue, "The Condo Generation: Living Large in 700 Square Feet," which featured only condo owners in their 30s, all of them in media-related fields. A friend of mine who's in her 50s and is thinking of buying a condo downtown said she was initially intrigued by the article but upon reading it felt that it displayed a world she didn't belong in. I know a couple who are 71 and 75, who lived in a non-descript (not to say bleak) suburban neighbourhood in Scarborough, with an enormous yard and beautiful garden, and gave it all up to move to a tiny condo at Bloor and Church a couple of years ago. Both lively jazz fanatics and amateur musicians, they're ecstatic about the change, the easy access to theatre and concerts, the ability to walk wherever they want to go, the fact that they don't have to garden anymore. Are seniors and empty-nesters presumed not to be readers of Toronto Life? Is that a demographic editorial choice the magazine makes (not in keeping, incidentally, with their sometime contributor David Hayes's article last year, I can't recall where, that suggested marketers ignore the spending power of boomers at their peril).

The editorial staff members at Toronto Life are mainly under 40 (I know most of them, and respect their intelligence and skill). But as a former employee there myself, a longtime reader and occasional contributor, I often despair of the isolated, youth-centred, too-cool-for-school tone that creeps in, not to mention the WASP-ishness. They've redeemed themselves with this issue.