About Canadian Dimension

Canadian Dimension

Canadian Dimension is a Canadian political magazine based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Founded in 1963, it is the country's longest-standing magazine of the political left, publishing analysis, debate, and reportage from socialist, social-democratic, and progressive perspectives. In 2019 the publication transitioned to a digital-only format after more than five decades in print.

Overview

Canadian Dimension — often abbreviated CD — is a left-wing political magazine covering Canadian politics, economics, culture, labour, the environment, and social movements. Its editorial range stretches from New Democratic Party–style social democracy to libertarian socialism, and it has described itself as a magazine "for people who want to change the world." The magazine is published by Dimension Publications Inc. and carries the ISSN 0008-3402.

Wikipedia lists canadiandimension.com as the magazine's website (not independently load-verified for this draft; the inventory flags the outlet as operating but its official domain as unverified in this environment). The magazine's offices have long been located in Winnipeg, with a listed address of 2E-91 Albert Street, Winnipeg, Manitoba.

History

Canadian Dimension was founded in 1963 by Cy Gonick, a Winnipeg economist and academic, to provide a home for the thinking and analysis of young leftists engaged in Canadian economic, social, cultural, artistic, and political issues. As publisher James Lorimer's description of Gonick's book Canada Since 1960 notes, Gonick had no grand plan — but the magazine was welcomed by intellectuals, scholars, and students, and it proved enduring.

From its earliest years the magazine drew on a wide spectrum of writers on the Canadian left. Early contributors included figures such as Charles Taylor, George Grant, Gad Horowitz, C. B. Macpherson, Kari Levitt, John Warnock, James Laxer, Leo Panitch, and Reg Whitaker. In 1975 a collective took over editorial responsibility, and the magazine came to be run by a diverse group of more than 30 writers and activists residing in major cities across Canada, with Gonick continuing as coordinating editor and publisher.

The magazine's scope evolved considerably over the decades. In 1963 it did not write about feminism, the environment, human rights, or gay and lesbian liberation; by the 1980s these had become standard fare. The publication has always regarded itself as socialist, though the character of that socialism shifted with the times. Later generations of frequent contributors included Bryan Palmer, Sam Gindin, Andrea Levy, Peter Kulchyski, Yves Engler, Joel Kovel, and Ian Angus, among others.

For most of its history Canadian Dimension published six times a year in print, with a circulation of about 3,000 copies as of its 2010 media kit. It also produced Alert Radio, an hour-long politics and culture radio show broadcast on community radio stations across Canada. In 2019 the magazine transitioned to a digital-only format, ending its print run while continuing to publish online.

The magazine's finances have at times been precarious — a common condition for independent political publishing. A 2018 GoFundMe campaign organized in support of the magazine described its coordinating committee as largely volunteer members who curate editions, supply original writing and analysis, run promotional campaigns and fundraisers, and even contribute personal funds; founder and publisher Cy Gonick was noted as having contributed $5,000 toward debt reduction as part of an effort to retire about $20,000 in debts. The campaign listed committee members in Calgary, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Montréal, and Toronto.

Content

Canadian Dimension publishes in-depth analytical pieces, reportage from the front lines of social struggles, and radical reviews of books, films, and culture. Its pages have covered virtually every major topic in Canadian public life over six decades: Canada's relationship with the United States, the development of the health-care system, Indigenous–non-Indigenous relations, labour struggles, environmental politics, and the role of cultural work in shaping Canadian society.

The magazine has positioned itself as a forum for debate within the left — "where red meets green, feminists take on socialists, socialists take on social democrats," in one description — drawing on trade unionists, activists, academics, and campaigners from all corners of Canada. Its 2010 media kit described it as one of Canada's most respected independent political periodicals, publishing six times a year and providing a forum of progressive debate from across the country, complemented by its radio show and website.

A measure of the magazine's intellectual footprint is Canada Since 1960: A People's History, a book by Cy Gonick built from the magazine's pages, offering an account of the most important developments in Canadian history from the 1960s onward as seen and interpreted by scholars and writers on the left. Its 27 contributors spanned the country, reflecting the breadth of the magazine's network.

Gonick the Politician

The founder's biography is inseparable from the magazine's. Cy Gonick (born April 8, 1936) was not only an economist and academic but a sitting politician: elected to the Manitoba legislature in 1969 as a New Democratic Party member for Crescentwood, defeating Progressive Conservative incumbent Gurney Evans by 273 votes, he served a single term as a backbencher in Premier Edward Schreyer's government. He was the only Manitoba NDP MLA of the period who was an avowed member of "The Waffle," the party's radical wing, and he frequently criticized his own government from the left — on medical billing practices, on the foreign ownership of natural resources — once introducing a private member's bill that would have required all medical doctors to make their incomes public. He did not seek re-election in 1973, returning to the University of Manitoba, where he coordinated the Labour and Workplace Studies Program until retiring in 2001. His son Noam Gonick is a noted Canadian film director.

That combination — academic economist, elected legislator, movement radical — shaped the magazine's DNA: a publication comfortable inside institutions and equally comfortable denouncing them.

The 2019 Transition and Harrison Samphir

The end of print was managed as a generational handover. In 2019, as the magazine ceased print publication and transitioned to a digital-only format, it appointed Harrison Samphir as editor-in-chief; Samphir had previously served as the magazine's web editor and associate publisher, and his elevation signalled that the digital future would be run by the people who had built the magazine's online presence. The University of Manitoba's digital collections now preserve the print archive — 1963 to 2019, from the volunteer-produced issues assembled in Gonick's home to the final print editions — as an "independent forum for left-wing political thought and discussion" covering the topics mainstream left politics overlooked, from the environment and family to gender and racial inequalities, food, and community development.

The contributor roll has kept renewing itself across that span: alongside the early names and the later generation already documented, recent decades have added Jim Silver, Pam Palmater, Rinaldo Walcott, David Moscrop, and the Russian socialist Boris Kagarlitsky to the magazine's pages — evidence that a publication founded in a Winnipeg living room in 1963 can still recruit new voices six decades on.

Coverage & Audience

Canadian Dimension's readership has historically been concentrated among progressive activists, academics, trade unionists, and students — readers its media kit described as regarding the magazine as progressive, motivating, insightful, and intelligent. With a print circulation of about 3,000 in 2010 and a digital presence since 2019, its audience is national in scope but rooted in Canada's left-wing intellectual and activist communities. The magazine does not publish current audited audience figures.

Ownership

Canadian Dimension is published by Dimension Publications Inc., based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Founder Cy Gonick has served as publisher and coordinating editor, working with a volunteer coordinating committee of writers and activists across Canada. The magazine operates as an independent, reader- and donor-supported publication.

Digital Presence

Since transitioning to digital-only publishing in 2019, Canadian Dimension's website has been its primary platform. The site publishes original material on social justice issues, analysis, and commentary from leading Canadian activists and intellectuals, alongside campaigns on issues including a living wage, free public transit, decolonization, and the fight against poverty and right-wing extremism. The magazine's six-decade archive represents one of the most extensive records of Canadian left-wing thought in print, and its history is documented in its Wikipedia entry, in Gonick's Canada Since 1960, and in Canadian media directories.