Check Out These Vintage September VanMag Covers

A look back through the archives.

September 2007

We published our 50th-anniversary issue last month, and it was a tough assignment thanks to the high bar set by this top-notch edition celebrating VanMag’s 40th. In it, the magazine’s early years are well chronicled through a profile of long-time editor Mac Perry, who first hatched big plans for the magazine at the Ritz Hotel and threw legendary parties at the office at Davie and Richards. “Mac would invite up the ladies from the corner,” remembers Douglas Coupland, who published his first forays into fiction in the magazine. “He taught me that for any party to hop,  you have to have sexy people in the room.”

September 1975

Environmental activists hit the high seas to tail illegal Russian whalers on the hunt—though the Russians don’t seem too bothered by the pursuit: “They wave and cheer, under the impression we’re making a movie of them…then set about their grim business of blubber stripping.”

September 2004

As far back as 2004, Fraser Street was proclaimed to be “the new Main Street.” But writer Lila MacLellan was skeptical that the ‘hood could ever compete: “This is the most un-ironic street in Vancouver.”

September 1981

“That Kitsilano feeling, the macramé-and-gumboots outlook, probably went out with the discovery of cappuccino west of Commercial Drive.” Ah, yes: blaming gentrification on coffee. Some things never change.