Editorin-chef
Malcolm Johnston, who recently rose to the top spot at Toronto Life, gives Shinan Govani a taste of the ‘Best New Restaurants’ issue
I’ll always be a reporter at heart, and I have no end of appetite for hearing other people’s stories and experiences.
MALCOLM JOHNSTON
He once dreamed of being in the big leagues.
A self-described “Jays fan from birth” who tells me he has “been to the Jays spring training facility in Florida more times than I can count,” Malcolm Johnston unsurprisingly found genuine catharsis when returning to live games recently.
“The home opener was exhilarating. I love the energy of the crowd, and I still get that special thrill when I walk through the gates and that giant, glittery green expanse opens up before me.”
It’s the next best thing, presumably, to a whole other expanse that just opened up for the guy — one seen from the top of the masthead at Toronto Life.
As the magazine’s new editor-in-chief, the first fresh face in the job in nearly 15 years, he is clearly as ardent about the gig as he is about the city in its purview.
“Emerging trends, development disputes, landmark court rulings, new ideas, big personalities, rising stars, troublemakers, geniuses, icons, luminaries,” he says, are all part of the whir. “Profiles, investigative deep dives, true crime, society stuff, poignant memoirs, real estate coverage — from homelessness to the rental market to the high end — food upon restaurants upon cocktail bars.” All in his day’s work.
“I’ll always be a reporter at heart,” Johnston, 39, says, “and I have no end of appetite for hearing other people’s stories and experiences.” Having been with the magazine since joining as a junior editor in 2011, he has witnessed no shortage of techno-social upheaval in the media-verse (look for the TikTok debut of Toronto Life soon).
He also makes a point of telling me this: “Readers are very smart, and there are no shortcuts to gaining their trust and attention. You can’t trick them with shiny objects. If you produce smart, ambitious, deeply reported, beautifully designed journalism, readers will reward you. But you must do the hard work: the scary reporting, the deep thinking, the writing and rewriting and rewriting.”
Word play
Having grown up in small-town Lakefield, Ont., where his mom was a high-school principal and dad a civil engineer, Johnston gives off a consistently menschy vibe. That comes to the fore when I ask him about his experience over the last two years, which, well … involved three young kids, a pandemic, and a wife who is a hospital physician. “It has been challenging,” he responds, “but we’ve been so lucky compared to so many who have lost loved ones. I cannot complain.”
I go on to poke him about one of the more interesting parts of his CV — that he once wrote an anti-money-laundering textbook for bank workers. “Yes,” he says, “this was post-9/11, and bank employees were expected to play a larger role in thwarting money laundering. The work was interesting, but it ultimately served as confirmation of what I suspected all along: I love writing. I don’t love finance.”
His own advice for writers? “Avoid clichés. Show, don’t tell. Quote sparingly. Write for the reader. Pick up the phone and call.”
Dinner service
We turn to Toronto Life’s “Best New Restaurants” issue, one of the most anticipated annual packages, hitting stands this month. It carries even more emotional freight this year because of the coma from which the city is just emerging. Johnston offers some of his own favourites of late: “For a special occasion: 20 Victoria, run by Chris White. Flawless, carefully constructed food in an unpretentious setting; the only beer on the menu is Miller Genuine Draft. The servers are laidback, unfussy, but they know everything about their craft. This, to me, is the perfect combination: extraordinary without the need to smash you over the head with their extraordinariness.”
Also close to his heart — and close to his home in the Beach (where he can frequently be found “running, biking, skipping stones with my kids”): the months-old Mira Mira. “It is a diner in a bright room in a former bank,” he says. “Eclectic, family friendly, with a big patio just steps from the beach.”
To celebrate the special issue, there’s a party set for May 30 at Evergreen Brick Works — a foodgasmic event (open to the public) that hasn’t happened in three years and will double as Johnston’s public debut as top editor of the 56-year-old magazine.
This year the magazine made the decision to publish the list without rankings, since, Johnston says, “the industry is still getting its sea legs. But we will in future.
“Fresh off the pandemic and its multiform carnage,” adds the man for whom Toronto is itself a feast, “it feels especially joyous to celebrate the bold culinary creators and applaud their return.”