Frank's A Lot To Mac
Saturday, February 07, 2015
Sometime in the late 80s a young man suddenly appeared at
Vancouver Magazine, then on the corner of Richards and Davie. The young man was
an “aw shucks” sort of guy I often found in the corner office of
the editor, Malcolm Parry whom, then, we all called Mac.
It would be disingenuous on my part not to attribute
fully my success as a magazine photographer in Vancouver to the fact that I was
under the wing of Parry. Many others
were including quite a few writers, photographers, illustrators and art directors of note who since the 70s and 80s
broke out on their own.
I often chatted with the young man and when he found out
I had been assigned to photograph local fashion designer Catherine Regehr he
offered to assist me with the styling. I wrote about it here. Few who have
followed the career of the young man are aware that he wrote many articles for
the magazine downstairs from Vancouver Magazine, Western Living. Coupland
championed the grass-free lawn garden and revealed to us all the charm of the
English trug.
In September 1987 Parry launched a wonderful issue of
Vancouver Magazine that had all sorts on National Geographic-style photographs.
It was also the first appearance of Coupland’s Generation-X.
In today’s Malcolm Parry column in the Vancouver Sun
(Town Talk) Parry tells us about Coupland’s start in Toronto for a magazine
called Vista. Following my excerpt of that column there is Malcolm Parry’s bio
in the Vancouver Sun. Read it carefully and if you can read between the lines
you will know what I have always known. I was not the only one under Mac’s
wing.
Malcolm Parry was born and educated in England, where he
studied civil engineering and worked as a part time musician playing the
saxophone.
In Canada he worked as a commercial and industrial
photographer and later as the advertising and public relations manager of a
telecommunications manufacturing division of New York based General Telephone
and Electronics International, now the Verizon Corporation. He also freelanced
extensively as a writer and photographer for regional and national newspapers
and periodicals in Canada.
In 1970 he was the founding editor and later publisher of
the Vancouver-based business periodical B.C. Affairs and founding
editor/publisher of its spinoff periodical B.C. Industry Reports. In 1974 he
was founding editor and later publisher of the city monthly periodical
Vancouver Magazine. He remained editor for two terms totalling 15 years, during
which time he, the magazine and its contributors won many regional and national
and some international awards.
During that period he was founding executive editor of
Edmonton and Calgary Magazines and of the B.C. business periodical Equity. For
briefer periods he was editor of Western Living magazine, which publishes
editions in B.C. Alberta Saskatchewan and Manitoba, and was also editor of a
Vancouver city affairs publication titled V.
He was founding editor of the Toronto based business
magazine Vista, where he won a national award for art direction.
A Vancouver Sun columnist since 1991, he has written about all manner of social, cultural, entertainment, business, education and political doings and has photographed for publication well over 10,000 individuals and a lesser number of animals.”
