Walrus editor quits amid uproar

Jonathan Kay spent his first afternoon as the former editor-in-chief of The Walrus, the general interest and culture magazine that he left the National Post in 2014 to run, in the produce section of a grocery store in east-end Toronto.

Kay informed the world earlier Sunday, via Twitter, that he would be attending the Toronto Blue Jays game and sitting in the cheap seats, with his phone blissfully turned off. A joke, it turned out, in perfect keeping with the strident opinion writer’s sense of mischief, but also one that had theatrical impact, since it left media wags and the Twitter hordes wondering where, exactly, Kay could be and why, exactly, he abruptly resigned from his highprofile job at The Walrus to become, as he said Sunday, a “freelancer”?

Kay resigned from the magazine at 5:59 pm Saturday — 24 hours after a column he wrote appeared on the National Post website blasting the “equity task force” at The Writers’ Union of Canada for attempting to “shame” Hal Niedzviecki.

I DECIDED TO MAKE THE FIRST MOVE. I TOOK NO SEVERANCE.

Niedzviecki, the former editor of the organization’s in-house magazine, Write, wrote: “I don’t believe in cultural appropriation ...” while calling for an “Appropriation Prize” to be awarded in literature to a writer who writes about people who aren’t like them, an opinion he shared in a special issue of the magazine dedicated to Indigenous writing.

Niedzviecki has since resigned. Kay, meanwhile, was still editor of The Walrus Friday, when he waded into the cultural appropriation maelstrom.

“What takes priority,” Kay wrote for the National Post, “the right of artists to extend their imagination to the entire human experience, or the right of historically marginalized communities to protect themselves from possible misrepresentation? Personally, I land on the free speech side.”

Professionally, Kay was jobless Sunday, and paused in the produce section to provide an explanation.

“From the beginning, it was obvious that it was going to be difficult for me to balance my instincts as a National Post-bred opinion writer with the more staid responsibilities associated with the leadership of a respected media brand,” Kay wrote in an email. “In recent months especially, I have been censoring myself more and more, and my colleagues have sometimes been rightly upset by disruptions caused by my media appearances.

“Something had to give, and I decided to make the first move. I took no severance.”

Kay added that he felt he had a free hand in terms of running the magazine and the website — and the support of his publisher, Shelley Ambrose — and that the “pressure” he felt to censor himself was “related to articles, opinions and comments that I made under my own byline or on broadcast media.”

Neither Ambrose nor Kay’s former editorial colleagues responded to a request for comment Sunday.

The culture wars and conversation around cultural appropriation has become a minefield, where anything perceived as a misstep, a slight uttered, an indigenous past not properly acknowledged, a present not fully understood, or a joke made in poor taste, can carry explosive consequences.

Amanda PL, a non-indigenous painter, was recently accused of “cultural genocide” for painting in the style of Norval Morrisseau. PL described Morrisseau as an inspiration. A planned showing of her work at a Toronto gallery was cancelled after the blow-back on social media.

Kay tweeted Thursday that the “mobbing of Hal Niedzviecki is what we get when we let identity politics fundamentalists run wild.”

Ken Whyte, the former Rogers executive, the CBC’s Steve Ladurantaye, National Post editor-in-chief Anne Marie Owens and other influential — and white — players in the media, played off Kay’s tweet, turning a debate into a Twitter joke about donating money to fund the “Appropriation Prize.” The joke fell flat on social media. Most, including Owens, have since apologized publicly for it.

It was in this climate that Kay, The Walrus editor, appeared on CBC TV Saturday afternoon with Jesse Wente, an Ojibwe CBC columnist and indigenous activist. Kay reiterated his defence of free speech, arguing that there was a legitimate debate to be had around where a marginalized minority’s right to own and protect its identity ends and where artistic freedom begins. Wente insisted that the time for polite conversation and debate was over and that arguments around free speech were a distraction from the unresolved cataclysms of daily indigenous life.

“We continue to disassociate or disconnect the appropriation of culture, the loss of indigenous voice, with what is physically happening to us on this land,” Wente said. “My community has been without drinking water for 15 years. I wonder if there were senior indigenous journalists in all these locations, if the dialogue around some of these issues facing my community on a daily basis would have been elevated in the dialogue.”

Kay, from the produce section, said he would continue to support The Walrus. He is now a freelancer looking for work. Whatever restraints he felt as a manager are gone, and the debate around cultural appropriation, and the point where it collides with the sanctity of free speech persists, begging further commentary.

“Editors will often resign because their boss has spiked editorial content,” Kay said. “That wasn’t the case here at all.”

Jonathan Kay