About Natural Life

Natural Life

Natural Life is a Canadian sustainable-lifestyles magazine founded in 1976 by Rolf Priesnitz and based in Toronto, Ontario. One of the first Canadian magazines devoted to sustainable living, it pioneered the holistic merging of topics — organic gardening, renewable energy, green homes, natural health, sustainable business, eco-tourism, homeschooling, and natural parenting — within a single publication. It is owned by Life Media, an independent Toronto-based book and magazine publishing company owned by Wendy Priesnitz, who is also the magazine's editor, and it is published by the Alternate Press three or four times a year. The magazine carries the ISSN 0701-8002.

Overview

Natural Life has been published for nearly five decades, making it one of the longest-running environmental lifestyle magazines in North America. It was formerly published bimonthly; it is now published three or four times a year (triannual) and has been printed on FSC-certified matte coated stock since 2005. Its website, started in 1994, features more than 2,000 pages of free content from past issues, indexed by subject and fully searchable by keyword, making the site a widely used reference tool. The magazine has won awards for its balanced reporting of environmental issues and published its 30th-anniversary issue in November 2006.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the magazine published a U.S. edition and editions for various parts of Canada; it was relaunched in 1991 as one international edition and is now on newsstands throughout North America, with readers in more than 20 countries. Its pages have featured contributions from and coverage of leading environmental figures: the November 1995 issue carried a cover interview with broadcaster and environmentalist Dr. David Suzuki; a 2003 cover story featured humanitarian, conservationist, and chimpanzee expert Dr. Jane Goodall, who received the 1994 Right Livelihood Award; and writers including Dr. Stuart Hill — who described in 1976 how he was starting the Ecological Agriculture Project at McGill University's Macdonald College — contributed expertise to its pages.

History

Rolf Priesnitz founded Natural Life in 1976, in the ferment of the back-to-the-land movement and the early North American environmental movement. The magazine's first decades coincided with the rise of organic agriculture, renewable energy experimentation, and alternative education — and Natural Life documented all of them, alongside memorable events large and small, from coverage of the Mariposa Folk Festival in 1976 to profiles of figures like British Columbian environmentalist and peace activist Eve Smith and transportation activist Tooker Gomberg.

The magazine's 30th-anniversary retrospective, published in 2006, recalled the people who made it successful: the staff behind the scenes, loyal subscribers — some of whom had been with the magazine since the very first issue in 1976 — advertisers, and the photographers and writers whose work filled its pages. Figures from Canadian cultural life appeared in its pages over the years, including Astrid Lindgren, author of the Pippi Longstocking books, who posed for a cover photo in 1997, and the Raging Grannies, whose humorous protest songs were featured in a 2004 article.

The magazine's publishing history reflects the economics of independent media: after its early regional and U.S. editions, it consolidated in 1991 into a single international edition. Throughout, it has remained independently owned — first by its founder and now by Life Media under Wendy Priesnitz — which has allowed it to maintain its editorial focus on sustainability without corporate pressure. Its website, launched in 1994, was an early move online for an independent Canadian magazine and has since grown into an archive of more than 2,000 pages.

The anniversary retrospective captured the texture of those decades: Rolf Priesnitz setting up a worm composter before an audience at the Natural Life Festival in 1998; the bluegrass trio that illustrated an article about homegrown music in the early 1990s; timber-framer Stewart Elliott, author of The Timber Framing Book (1977), removing decay from an old beam for a feature on traditional building crafts. These vignettes reflect a magazine built around lived practice — its writers and readers were the people actually building the composters, raising the timber frames, and planting the organic gardens it wrote about.

Content

Each issue of Natural Life takes a holistic approach to sustainable living, with articles spanning organic gardening, renewable energy, green building and homes, natural health, sustainable business, eco-tourism, homeschooling, and natural parenting. The magazine's pioneering insight was that these topics belong together — that a reader interested in organic food is likely also interested in renewable energy, alternative education, and natural health — and its editorial mix has reflected that philosophy for nearly fifty years.

The magazine is known for balanced reporting on environmental issues, and its awards record reflects that reputation. Its articles combine practical service journalism — how to set up a worm composter, how to approach green home renovation, how to navigate homeschooling — with profiles, essays, and commentary on the broader environmental movement. The online archive extends the print offering with a searchable reference library covering fourteen-plus years of content.

That practical orientation has been the magazine's hallmark since 1976. Rather than treating environmentalism as an abstract cause, Natural Life has always written for people making concrete choices: what to plant, how to heat a home, where to travel, how to educate children, how to stay healthy. Its coverage of renewable energy predates the mainstream green-energy boom by decades; its attention to homeschooling and natural parenting addressed movements long before they entered popular conversation. The decision to print on FSC-certified matte coated stock since 2005 put the magazine's production values in line with its editorial message — a consistency readers of a sustainability title expect and notice.

Coverage & Audience

Natural Life is an international magazine with a Toronto base, on newsstands throughout North America and with readers in more than 20 countries. Its audience is the environmentally engaged general reader: people pursuing or exploring sustainable lifestyles, from organic gardeners and natural parents to renewable-energy enthusiasts and eco-travellers. The magazine's long subscriber relationships — some dating to 1976 — speak to unusual reader loyalty for an independent title.

The website's searchable archive broadens that audience to researchers, students, and general readers looking for reliable information on sustainable living topics, making Natural Life as much a reference resource as a periodical. Few independent magazines can claim subscribers who have stayed since the first issue; Natural Life can, and that loyalty — built over nearly five decades of consistent editorial purpose — is the foundation of its continued existence.

Ownership

Natural Life is owned by Life Media, an independent Toronto-based book and magazine publishing company owned by Wendy Priesnitz, who is also the magazine's editor. It was founded by Rolf Priesnitz in 1976 and is published by the Alternate Press. The magazine has remained independently owned throughout its history. Priesnitz also founded Life Learning magazine in 2002, editing it until it merged into Natural Life in 2008, and WorldCat records the title under OCLC 262204194.

Digital Presence

The magazine's website, naturallifemagazine.com (online since 1994), offers more than 2,000 pages of free archived content, indexed by subject and searchable by keyword. Its history is documented in its Wikipedia entry, in environmental periodical directories, and in the magazine's own 30th-anniversary retrospective, published as a PDF through Life Media's site. The title's longevity — nearly five decades of continuous publication — makes its archive a record of the evolution of sustainable living thought in Canada and beyond.