Alberta Report

The Alberta Report was a conservative weekly newsmagazine based in Edmonton. It was founded and edited by Ted Byfield, and later run by his son, Link Byfield. It ceased publication in 2003.[1]

Promoting his own successor publication in 2004, Ezra Levant described the Report as having been the only general interest magazine in Western Canada covering the news form a conservative perspective.[2]

History and profile

The magazine began as St. John's Edmonton Report in 1973. The founders were Ted and Virginia Byfield. It grew out of the older Byfield's lay Anglican religious order called the Company of the Cross which operated boarding schools in the 1970s, where employees were paid $1.00 per day, and lived in a communal apartment building.[3]

In 1990 a group of Calgary oil magnates offered to buy the report in an effort to provide financial stability to a journal they regarded as politically congenial.[4]

The magazine was published for a time in three separate editions, the Alberta Report, BC Report, and Western Report. These were merged in 1999 into The Report, later known as the Citizens Centre Report in connection with Link Byfield's successor organization, the Citizens Centre for Freedom and Democracy.

The magazine often struggled financially, with the senior Byfield mortgaging his own house four times to keep it afloat. It shut down in June 2003. According to the Edmonton Sun, some employees were still owed back pay nearly six months later, and complained when the Citizens Centre was directing money toward its political agenda.[5]

A number of right-wing journalists and commentators in Canada who are prominent today began their careers writing for The Report magazines, including Kenneth Whyte, the editor in chief of Maclean's; Colby Cosh of the National Post, Kevin Michael Grace, Lorne Gunter, Ezra Levant, Brian Mulawka, and Kevin Steel. Other former staff include: freelance journalist Ric Dolphin, former National Post writer Dunnery Best, U.S. food writer (and founding editor of Equinox magazine) Barry Estabrook, former Profit editor and publisher Rick Spence, author D'Arcy Jenish, and Paul Bunner, who in 2006 became a speechwriter for Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

The Western Standard, launched in 2004, by Levant with the participation of several other Report alumni, aimed to fill the space in the market that had been held by the Report. The Standard became an exclusively online publication in 2007.

References
  1. Olive, David (July 12, 2003). "Shelved Reports gave voice to right ; At its best, magazine told stories of local heroes and artists At its worst, it veered close to the rhetoric of hate literature". Toronto Star. pp. F.03. Retrieved 7 April 2010.
  2. Levant, Ezra (5 June 2004). "Western Standard will be antidote to Maclean's, the CBC". National Post. ProQuest 330078375.
  3. Canadian Encyclopedia Entry for Ted Byfield]
  4. Adams, Jeff (1 June 1999). "City group buying Alberta Report". Calgary Herald. ProQuest 244080191.
  5. "KevinSteel.com". Archived from the original on 17 July 2006. Retrieved 27 October 2003.
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