A magazine with no page numbers, with layout so complex that one wonders if the text is meant to be read, with lengthy articles that spread across the glossy pages like sunsets drying over the winter plains of Canadian culture, diverge is a road-sign pointing in countless directions, a promise in the form of a lie, a run-on sentence that looks a lot like a great new magazine. Twentyish types with a lot of time and education have often decided to make magazines devoted to being twentyish types with a lot of time and education. Generally, these magazines start off with a limited vision and a restricted appeal, become even less relevant, and die a slow death vowing each slimmer issue to expand their editorial mandate by remembering that one disaffected generation in one disaffected city cannot by itself support a glossy new magazine. diverge nicely captures the spirit of these countless failed ventures — their verve, their brashness, their we’re-angry-but-we-still-want-to-belong spirit — but without the pandering conformity one finds in magazines devoted to culture in Canada. Through an interview with rogue economic guru Herman Daly, an exposition on the phenomenon some call body piercing and others call self-mutilation, a noble look at Montreal skate-rat culture, a ‘letter’ concerning wood-theft in the Yukon, and an exegesis on the Celts, diverge detours across the globe of this country without CBCing us to death or making us feel like Canada is some sort of subsidized lunch we have to eat because someone else paid for it.
magazine / #1, 48 pages / publisher: Loon’s Cry Press / main creators: Jon Sarin, San Grewal, Jason Edgerton / $3.95, 14.95 for four / 21-828 Preston Ave, Winnipeg, MB, R3G 0Z4