Another Blast From the Past: Introduction

Trumpeter swans, Leslie Street Spit, February 21, 2021

Working on The Hearsay when I was at law school was the closest I ever got to achieving my dream of editing the great Canadian humour magazine.

The Hearsay was a student magazine that was at least supposed to be humorous. Most of the time it published a mishmash of rarely funny offerings by law students, some of them plagiarized. 

Submissions often began "...well, I guess I better write something for The Hearsay..." and then jabbered on for far too long about nothing interesting.

A few of the contributors had some talent. One of them reads this blog. And if I mention his name - Michael Piaskoski - he will send this blog to his friends and spike my page views. 

That's how the world works.

Anyway, The Hearsay. 

In 2nd year I was a junior editor, subject to the will of the two 3rd year students who were also posing as editors. I kept my head down and my mouth shut - or as much as I could reasonably be expected to.

But in 3rd year, I was the senior editor. I had big plans. Under my watch we revamped the dreary Student Orientation Guide (wittily changing the name to "DisOrientation Guide"), and improved The Hearsay's typography and design, transforming it from utterly ghastly to merely awful.

The Hearsay, being what it was where it was, attracted controversy from time to time. Once, on charges of an alleged anti-Semitic statement in an issue, a fellow student seriously threatened he would get a big downtown firm to demand the death of publication (we survived).

Big reactions to small slights is nothing new on a university campus. But The Hearsay under my leadership burst beyond the confines of the University of Toronto and brought a Bay Street law firm to an almost complete standstill. For two days.

Law school was a long time ago. I've forgotten lots of what happened, especially what happened with The Hearsay. But, in December 1992, I wrote my friends the Jewinskis and told them how I made a big splash with the unfunny student humour rag I edited. I'll share the details over the next few weeks.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen