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t its regular meeting on 21 September 2017, the A Board of Directors of The Friends of Fort York appointed Bob Kennedy managing editor of our newsletter effective 1 January 2018, and elected him to be a director of The Friends of Fort York effective immediately. Bob Kennedy, new managing The board also appointed six diseditor of The Fife & Drum. tinguished people to an Editorial Advisory Committee to work with Bob and the board to keep the newsletter fresh and relevant going forward. As the newsletter’s current managing editor, I have indicated a desire to step down from the job after holding it continuously since November 2003. The December 2017 issue will be my last. Since last February Bob Kennedy has worked as one of the four editorial associates appointed to help produce the newsletter and its anthology spinoff, giving us a chance to work with him and know that the fit as managing editor would be a good one. Prior to this he saw five years of service in the Parliamentary Press Gallery; was a former senior proofreader for the National Post; and long-serving officer in the media relations branch of the Canadian Army, from which he retired in 2014 with the rank of captain. He had some involvement with the fort and The Friends during the War of 1812 commemorations, and lives in the Fort York neighbourhood. The Editorial Advisory Committee appointed by the directors is intended to give them and Bob a source from which to draw ideas for new articles in Fife & Drum and to identify the people who might be their authors; new perspectives for the publication; efforts that might be made to increase circulation, currently running at 2300 subscribers; and other ways of improving the
newsletter’s support for the operation of The Fort York National Historic Site. The following are the inaugural members of the committee, but there’s no reason others should not join—particularly members of our planned Neighbourhoods Advisory Committee, for example. Dr. Carl Benn, author, professor of History at Ryerson University and former chair of the History Department; former chief curator for Toronto museums, including Fort York. Karen Black, a consultant interested in strategic planning and community engagement with the goal of revitalizing historic sites, former head of Toronto Museums Services in Toronto Culture. Matt Blackett, publisher of Spacing magazine and former director of The Friends of Fort York. Dr. Gary Miedema, former associate director of Heritage Toronto, heritage planner with Toronto Heritage Services, currently project manager responsible for the city’s Canada 150 program; contributor to Fife & Drum. Christopher Moore, author, journalist, contributor to Fife & Drum. David Roberts, author, contributor to Fife & Drum, and longserving editor at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, now retired. It has been my great privilege to serve The Friends as managing editor of its newsletter for a long time, and to see it through its various changes from a black-and-white hardcopy edition dispatched by Canada Post to a few hundred readers, to its present electronic form in full colour sent quarterly to a few thousand subscribers. When asked a year or two ago to provide an estimate for budgeting purposes of the annual cost to publish Fife & Drum, I suggested $200 would be adequate. It is a purely volunteer effort in which I have been aided immeasurably by Patricia Fleming and Ted Smolak, and upwards of a hundred people who have written for the newsletter and provided its illustrations. I thank them all.
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