Happy Birthday Edwards!

Five years ago I was 26 years old. I was newly married. I was excited to embark on a career path. I hadn’t yet had my daughter, but I did give birth to my other baby. Edwards Magazine was first published on December 6, 2005.  Five years ago . . .

As I sit here trying to reflect on the past five years, I can’t help but shake my head, bulge my eyes a little, and have what I’m sure will be a similar reaction when my daughter turns five: how did that happen? Where did the time go?

Five years ago I welcomed you all to the first issue of Edwards Magazine.

I actually want to take a moment and share with you the first letter I wrote as Editor of Edwards in December 2005:

Hello and welcome to Edwards Magazine!

One of the greatest benefits of an online publication is its ability to draw people together from across the country and around the world. We want to create a network of people willing to recognize and stand for change, a network of people who are making a difference, whether it be globally working in national and international organizations, or in the quiet of their own personal homes. Edwards exists to inspire, inform, and celebrate.

Recently I found myself standing in line for a washroom in a Toronto-based MacDonald’s restaurant. It was during the very popular downtown Santa Claus Parade, and there must have been at least 20 women standing in line. Noticeably, there was no line-up for the men’s washroom (why is that?). So we stood and shifted position and as the minutes passed, we began to laugh at our predicament, exclaiming frustration that our gender warranted such waiting times. We began to share our stories. I found myself telling the person in line behind me all about why I was visiting Toronto and the things I hoped to accomplish while there. She, in turn, began to tell me about herself.

Why were we doing this? Yes, sure, most of us were bored and needed to take our minds off of the fact that we had a long wait ahead of us before relief was to be found. But we all had a common goal, bonded by the need to pee. Quite frequently, women are accused of back-stabbing each other and not coming together. I couldn’t help but notice that our common goal united this particular group of women, and I couldn’t help but smile and hope that this connection was found more often.

Coming Together. Being United. The goal can be as simple as wanting to use the washroom, or as complicated as trying to reduce poverty. Regardless of the desired purpose, something magical happens when people come together, and that’s what I hope Edwards can achieve.

As we continue to form and grow, we will be expanding our selection of articles, offering regular columns on health, politics, society, and business. We hope you like Edwards and find something in it that speaks to you. We hope we can help people unite and reach a common goal of inspiration, information, and celebration.

I hope I have fulfilled all those promises.

We’ve done a lot at Edwards. We’ve had themed issues. We launched a Book Club. We added a huge environmental theme to our mandate, and we even started talking money issues. We tackled issues many shy away from and we also shared more than a laugh or two along the way. We changed from publishing issues with all new content, to publishing articles as soon as they were ready, reflecting the need of readers today to keep sites current and changing. We formed connections with local schools and national publishers to encourage reading in our school-age children, and we furthered this promotion of literacy by getting the kids themselves to write reviews and engage with other readers.

Over the years, our face has changed (literally: we went through a couple of makeovers). I have found myself stepping back, not having my voice as prominent as it once was, in order to highlight our talented writers. Our volunteers have changed over the years, but the one thing that has stayed the same is the loyalty to the magazine; the dedication of my volunteers; the kindness of our readers.

I know Edwards isn’t like most magazines. It’s online, for one, and doesn’t quite fit into a neat little category. Is it a newspaper? Is it a blog? It doesn’t have a regular publication schedule—we used to, back before most of us had kids—, but I think it’s the irregularity of it that makes the publication that much more special. It shows that everyone involved cares; that, despite all the busyness of everyday life, we still want to connect.

And connected we are. I’m proud to say that five years later, we continue to have readers and writers from all over Canada. We’ve expanded our connections, too, through the power of social media. We can now be found on twitter (@edwardsmagazine) and Facebook (facebook.com/EdwardsMagazineandBookClub) and we enjoy the various conversations happening in each medium.

In recognition of our launch date (December 6) and our continued promotion of women’s rights, I would like to end this reflective piece, not with my words, but with our contributors’. Please find some links listed below to stories based around what December 6 means to young Canadian woman.

Thank you for your support of Edwards. Thank you for reading, for writing, for encouraging, and for passing the word along. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Let’s all go and eat some cake now.

http://edwardsmagazine.com/2005/12/15/we-are-not-feminists-the-legacy-of-the-montreal-massacre/

http://edwardsmagazine.com/2006/11/15/a-look-back-at-the-persons-case/

Christine Gordon Manley tries to update Edwards Magazine as often as she can, given her hectic employment schedule (managing editor of two academic journals, communications person for UPEI Faculty of Education, one half of the brain genius that is Manley Mann Media, and marker for a business communications course) and her other commitments including an energetic three-year-old and two less-than-energetic (but darn cuddly) dogs. She doesn’t wish to discuss the fish or the plants.

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2. We are Not Feminists?: The Legacy of the Montreal Massacre