About Western Living

Western Living

Overview

Western Living is Western Canada's home, design and lifestyle magazine, covering the houses, designers, food and travel that define how the region lives. Published in print and online from British Columbia, it organizes its coverage around three pillars identified by its publisher: home design and décor, food and wine, and travel. The magazine is produced by Canada Wide Media, the Burnaby-based magazine division of Alive Publishing Group, and it shares an editorial staff with its sister title, Vancouver Magazine.

The magazine's centre of gravity is the designed home. Issue after issue, Western Living tours architect-designed houses across British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, interviews the architects and interior designers behind them, and translates the region's West Coast modernist heritage into guidance readers can apply to their own renovations and rooms. Around that core sit a substantial food and drink file — chef profiles, restaurant coverage and recipes — and travel reporting that ranges across the West and well beyond it. Its best-known editorial franchise is the Western Living Designers of the Year awards, an annual competition, running since 2008, that has become a reference point for the region's design community.

History

Western Living was founded in 1971 by Liz and Jack Bryan, picking up the thread of an earlier title, Western Homes and Living, which had documented West Coast modernism through the 1950s and 1960s before folding in 1970. Liz Bryan had been an editor at the earlier magazine; as she wrote in her first editor's letter, when Western Homes ceased publication its absence "was felt by a great many readers and advertisers," and the Bryans set out to revive it. By the magazine's own account, the first issues were pasted up on the couple's kitchen table — Liz wrote the stories and Jack took the photographs. The very first issue featured a home designed by the firm Hassell/Griblin and furnished by interior designer Robert Ledingham, a fitting start for a magazine that would spend five decades chronicling West Coast design; Ledingham is now commemorated by the magazine's Robert Ledingham Memorial Award for emerging design talent.

For much of its life the magazine was published by Transcontinental's western media operation in Vancouver. Companion publishing included Western Living Condo, a controlled-circulation glossy aimed at Vancouver condominium owners launched in 2006. In May 2015, Yellow Pages Homes Limited purchased Western Living, Vancouver Magazine and their websites from TC Transcontinental, folding them into its YP NextHome real-estate media business. Three years later, in June 2018, Canada Wide Media Limited — the Burnaby publisher built by Peter Legge — acquired both magazines and their related print and digital assets, including WLCondo and the Vancouver Magazine City Guide. In the next ownership change, Alive Publishing Group, the Richmond, B.C. publisher of the natural-health magazine alive, purchased Canada Wide Media in February 2023. Western Living has continued publishing under the new ownership, and in September 2023 it announced that print subscriptions would be offered to readers free of charge. The magazine marked its 50th anniversary in 2021 with a special issue and a series of retrospective features drawn from its archives.

Content and Coverage

The print magazine's signature is the home tour: long, photograph-led features on houses and renovations across the West, from a gravity-defying West Vancouver house by McLeod Bovell — the firm whose work the magazine has followed for years — to cabins, condos and heritage conversions. Around those features sit design-service journalism on paint, furniture, lighting and fixtures; interviews with makers and artists; and seasonal trend reporting. The food file is a genuine second pillar rather than filler: Western Living recipes are a staple of its website, its writers cover the region's restaurant scene closely, and its travel coverage spans western Canadian getaways and international destinations alike.

The September issue each year is given over in large part to the Designers of the Year awards. Launched in 2008 — the first awards party famously crowded more than 300 guests into a show suite built for 150 — the competition honours designers across categories that include architecture, interior design, fashion, furniture, industrial design, landscape and, since 2016, a Maker of the Year category. Two memorial awards carry the names of figures from the magazine's own story: the Arthur Erickson Memorial Award, first presented in 2011, and the Robert Ledingham Memorial Award. Winners are chosen by panels of established practitioners — the 2026 architecture jury included Indigenous architect Alfred Waugh of Formline Architecture — and are joined by People's Choice winners voted by readers. The 2026 awards, announced in the magazine's September coverage, were celebrated at a party at Inform Interiors in Vancouver on September 10, 2026. A companion franchise, WL Design 25, showcases a further annual selection of standout projects and products.

Audience and Reach

Western Living addresses itself to affluent urban readers across the four western provinces who are renovating, building, furnishing and entertaining — the demographic its advertisers in the home, design and lifestyle categories want to reach. At the time of the 2018 Canada Wide acquisition, the publisher reported that Western Living was published 10 times a year with a readership of more than 287,000. The publisher's current advertising pages claim the magazine "delivers an impressive 442,000 readers in Western Canada" and reaches readers "with higher than average annual household earnings"; that figure is the publisher's own current claim and is not drawn from a published independent audit.

The audience relationship has been reshaped by the free-subscription model adopted in 2023: rather than selling subscriptions, the magazine now offers print delivery to readers who register, a controlled-circulation approach aimed at guaranteeing advertisers a defined western audience. The Designers of the Year competition gives the title a second, professional audience — the architects, interior designers, builders and makers of Western Canada, for whom a Western Living award is a career credential regularly cited in firm biographies and project credits.

Digital Presence

Westernliving.ca operates as a daily lifestyle service alongside the print magazine, publishing home tours, recipes, travel stories, shopping round-ups and design news; the site was being updated with new material in October 2026, including its full 2026 Designers of the Year coverage, at the time this profile was compiled. Recent web features ranged from a foraging excursion with a two-Michelin-star Quebec City chef to guides to Salt Spring Island and a "10 new furniture, lighting and decor finds for 2026" shopping edit — a mix that mirrors the print title's pillars at web speed. The magazine maintains active Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest accounts under the Western Living name, the last of these a natural fit for its image-led content, and its awards coverage is built for social sharing, with People's Choice voting driving reader participation each year.

Ownership and Organisation

Western Living is published by Canada Wide Media Limited of Burnaby, British Columbia, the magazine company founded by Peter Legge in 1976 and acquired by Alive Publishing Group Inc. of Richmond, B.C. in February 2023. Canada Wide continues to operate as the group's magazine division, publishing Western Living alongside Vancouver Magazine (with which it shares an editorial staff), BCBusiness, TVWeek and other western titles from its Burnaby offices. Alive Publishing Group's flagship is alive, the natural-health magazine founded in 1975.

The editor-in-chief of Western Living is Anicka Quin, who was discussing the magazine's design coverage and its 2026 Designers of the Year awards in industry interviews in October 2026. The editorial operation is based with its publisher in Burnaby, in the Vancouver metropolitan area; the magazine is listed under Vancouver, its historic home market and the centre of its coverage.

Contact and Availability

Western Living's publisher can be reached at Canada Wide Media, Suite 130, 4321 Still Creek Drive, Burnaby, B.C. V5C 6S7, telephone 604-299-7311. Print subscriptions are offered free to readers who register through the subscribe page at westernliving.ca, and the magazine is available in print across Western Canada. Pitches and reader correspondence are directed through the magazine's website, where the editorial team invites story suggestions. Current issues, the Designers of the Year archive and the magazine's daily web coverage are all available at westernliving.ca.