In ancient Roman mythology, the god Janus, for whom January is named, was portrayed with two faces: one face looked back, while the other looked forward.
I thought of Janus recently when I had a lovely opportunity to look back at the genesis of Leaside Life after being asked to talk about our magazine to the Toronto-Leaside Rotary Club. I thought that taking a look back should also mean taking a look forward as we welcome the new year.
Looking back
I remember sitting in Ruth and Harry Goldhar’s living room in the fall of 2011, along with my then across-the-driveway neighbour, Andrea Villiers, as we made a lot of decisions still in play today: the name, Leaside Life; the page size, semi-tabloid; the frequency, once a month to publish just at the end of the month before; the circulation, to all homes, apartments, condos and businesses in M4G courtesy of Accurate Distributing for houses, and then providing the paperwork for postal delivery for the others; and importantly, the focus on Leaside-specific stories. We thought we might be able to put together a 12–16-page monthly edition. To our surprise, that first issue was 24 pages. Many issues since have been 32, and some even up to 48 pages.
The size of the issue all depends on the ads. Harry and Ruth, with their previous publishing experience, came up with ad prices that would be attractive to local businesses, knowing that our readership was too specific (the M4G postal code) and too low (now a print run of 10,000) to attract most national or even Toronto-wide advertisers. Ruth did a great job selling those ads. We never lost money, always made a bit, even though we agreed up front that we’d split the loss three ways (Goldhars and me).
Changing times
In March of 2017, Stan Flemming and Jeff Hohner signed on as the new owners of Leaside Life when the Goldhars retired. They agreed to keep me on as publisher. I appreciate providing that continuity from issue #1 to now #152 and counting.
Jeff and Stan have made a point of making donations in the name of Leaside Life in a wide variety of ways, such as with the Georgia Walsh playground at Trace Manes Park, the Leaside Sports Hall of Fame, the Leaside Toy Drive, and the UHN Run for Rehab. They continue to look for ways that Leaside Life can contribute meaningfully to our neighbourhood.
In a fractious world, Leaside Life provides a place where there won’t be “fake news.” Because of our timing, we can’t, in fact, do “news” that quickly, but we do keep on top of local doings. Only Carol Burtin Fripp and I remain from the original team of writers in issue #1, but in the December issue we featured bylines from 11 more, as well as a welcoming note from our editor, Jane Auster.
Our online version, www.leasidelife.com, continues as a way for non-Leasiders to stay in touch and read past articles. Various versions of social media continue to be challenging for our webmaster to navigate for us, as the rules keep changing, but we persevere.
Looking forward
So, nothing startling for the start of 2025… which may be a good thing. With our advertisers, and you as readers and suggestion-makers for future articles, we continue apace.
Happy New Year, happy reading!
