Frank's A Lot To Mac

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.

FRANK’S A LOT: Perhaps self-made billionaire Frank Stronach will visit Douglas Coupland’s exhibition at Toronto’s Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art. If he does, the Magna International firm founder should be applauded for launching the West Vancouver-based writer-artist on his journey there. It was 1988 when then-27-year-old Coupland joined the editorial staff of Vista, a magazine Stronach had funded to the tune of $12 million. As an artist, it amused and pleased him that Stronach’s daughter Belinda, then 22, would drop by to hang valuable works by Andy Warhol and suchlike on Vista’s office walls. Meanwhile, Coupland buckled down in the workstation he called a “veal fattening pen” to develop a feature-article-turned-comic strip he called Generation X. The magazine closed after two years. By then, though, Coupland had retained a New York literary agent who successfully pitched the catchy title to St. Martin’s Press. The subsequent 1991 book lit the fuse on its author’s stellar career. The title, along with Coupland-conceived terms like McJobs, became global catchwords. Such consequences would doubtless please the quirky Stronach, as visiting Coupland’s exhibition may, too.

Malcolm Parry

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.”



While Malcolm Parry was editor of Vista, journalist Mark Budgen and I were assigned to do two stories. For them we flew to Argentina and Uruguay. In my closet I have a black Generation-X Vista T-shirt.