With a total of nine gold and silver awards, Report on Business magazine came in second to The Walrus on Friday evening as the most frequently honoured publication at the 34th annual Canadian National Magazine Awards ceremony in Toronto.
Published 15 times a year by The Globe and Mail, Report on Business earned three golds and six silvers, while The Walrus, an independent current affairs monthly based in Toronto, finished with six gold awards and four silvers. The Walrus, which has dominated the NMAs since its inception in 2003, went into the 2010-11 finals with a total of 35 nominations -- the most of any single Canadian magazine -- with RoB in second place, at 32. Nominees were announced May 2.
Gold and silver awards were handed out in 43 categories, from a total of more than 350 nominations representing 88 different magazines. Prevailing over Cottage Life and Canada’s History (formerly The Beaver) to score magazine-of-the-year honours was MoneySense, a personal finance periodical published seven times yearly by Toronto-based Rogers Publishing. Another Rogers publication, Macleans.ca, online complement to the weekly newsmagazine of the same name, was named digital magazine of the year, besting nine other finalists.
RoB magazine art director Domenic Macri established an NMA record, becoming the first art director in the awards’ history to win the gold and silver in the “best art direction for a single magazine article” category. Macri also won silver in the “best art direction for an entire issue.” He went into Friday’s finals with a total of seven nominations.
Taking his first NMA gold, in investigative reporting, was The Globe’s Rome-based European business correspondent Eric Reguly for “The New Romans,” published last fall in RoB magazine. Writer John Gray took two silver awards for one RoB article, “We’ll Think No More of Inco,” published in spring 2010. The article had been nominated in the “business” and “society” categories.
Swerve, a weekly entertainment supplement published by the Calgary Herald, earned the second most gold awards overall with four, plus two silvers. Tying RoB magazine for the third most golds was the Montreal quarterly, Maisonneuve. Winning two golds each were the Toronto-based outdoors magazine explore, Québec Science and L’actualité, Rogers’s French-language weekly newsmagazine. Ten periodicals took one gold each, among them Toronto Life, Air Canada’s enRoute, Alberta Views and Queen’s Quarterly.
Vancouver writer J.B. MacKinnon went into Friday’s ceremony with four nominations for work in three magazines, the most nods for a single writer. He took gold in the “essays” category and silver in “travel,” for work published, respectively, in The Walrus and explore. MacKinnon’s feat was matched by fellow Vancouverite, Tyee Bridge who earned gold in “travel” and silver in “essays” for an article published in Swerve.
Cambridge, Ont.-based D.B. Scott won the National Magazine Awards Foundation prize for outstanding achievement, for his well-regarded blog on the Canadian magazine industry and as president of Impresa Communications, a magazine and newspaper publishing consultancy.
A complete and detailed list of winners is available at www.magazine-awards.com.
Editor's Note: The original newspaper version of this article and an earlier online version incorrectly reported that the Walrus won nine gold and silver awards. It won 10. This online version has been corrected.
