The Walrus

The Walrus

The Walrus cover, October 2013 edition, featuring photograph by Edward Burtynsky
Editor	Jonathan Kay
Categories	Canadian and international affairs
Frequency	10 issues per year including 2 double issues
Circulation	60,000 (March 2010)
First issue	September 2003
Company	The Walrus Foundation
Country	Canada
Based in	Toronto
Language	English
Website	thewalrus.ca
ISSN	1708-4032

The Walrus is a Canadian general interest magazine which publishes long-form journalism on Canadian and international affairs, along with fiction and poetry by Canadian writers.

In 2002, David Berlin, a former editor and owner of the Literary Review of Canada, began promoting his vision of a world-class Canadian magazine. This led him to meet with then-Harper's editor Lewis H. Lapham to discuss creating a "Harper's North," which would combine the American magazine with 40 pages of Canadian content. As Berlin searched for funding to create that content, a mutual friend put him in touch with Ken Alexander, a former high school English and history teacher and then senior producer of CBC Newsworld's CounterSpin. Like Berlin, Alexander was hoping to found an intelligent Canadian magazine that dealt with world affairs.

Before long, the Chawkers Foundation, run by Alexander's family, had agreed to provide the prospective magazine with $5 million over five years, and the George Cedric Metcalf Charitable Foundation promised $150,000 for an internship program. This provided enough money to get by without the partnership with Harper's.

Shortly after Berlin and Alexander hired creative director Antonio de Luca and art director Jason Logan to envision the launch of The Walrus.

The magazine launched in September 2003, as an attempt to create a Canadian equivalent to American magazines such as Harper's, The Atlantic Monthly or The New Yorker. Its mandate is "to be a national general interest magazine about Canada and its place in the world. We are committed to publishing the best work by the best writers from Canada and elsewhere on a wide range of topics for readers who are curious about the world."

The "walrus" name was at first a working title, but quickly grew on the staff of the magazine. According to their website, the rationale behind it was "to dissociate this country with the 'log chomping' and 'earnestness' of our national animal (and cliché), the beaver"; the walrus, just as much a Canadian native, is "curmudgeonly but clever, bulky but agile (if only in water)." Most importantly, in the words of David Berlin, "No one ignores a walrus."