Jon Kay moves to The Walrus

Jonathan Kay ’85 reports to Veritas that he is having a great time in his new job as editor-in-chief of Canadian newsmagazine The Walrus.

“Working at the National Post was extremely rewarding,” he says, “but after 16 years there, I felt like I couldn’t bear to write another editorial about the Middle East, terrorism, Quebec separatism, federal politics or free trade.”

“I knew it was time for a career change when I would start to write a column, and then ask myself, ‘Hey, haven’t I written this before?’ Then I’d search Google and find out that, sure enough, I was effectively plagiarizing something I’d written years before.”

Jon had become a member of the National Post editorial board when the paper was founded in 1998, and was serving as editor of the Full Comment section until his recent departure.

On October 29, 2014, it was announced that Jon would become the fourth editor of The Walrus. He resigned from the Post the following month, but continues to contribute opinion pieces on a freelance basis.

Since its founding in 2003, The Walrus has been the most-decorated periodical at the annual National Magazine Awards.

“The Walrus is a monthly magazine instead of a daily newspaper,” Jon explains, “so I no longer feel compelled to write on short notice about the 24hour news churn. Instead, I can focus on long-form journalism requiring more research and refinement. It’s a nice midcareer change of pace. Since joining The Walrus, I’ve written about Mordecai Richler, Uber, the rehabilitation of pedophiles, journalistic ethics, HPV vaccines, euthanasia and (my personal favourite) monster trucks.”

“One of the big differences between this job and my old position at the National Post comes down to ideology. The Post is a right-of-centre publication, and the opinion pieces I was writing and editing largely reflected that. The Walrus, on the other hand, is a non-political outlet. In fact, we are run by a charitable entity, The Walrus Foundation, with an explicitly educational, non-partisan mandate. (Visit our website to donate!)”t

“That means I have to save my partisan fusillades for my occasional freelance columns in the National Post. Or for Twitter, where people can connect with me at @jonkay.”

After Selwyn House, Jon attended Marianopolis and went on to earn degrees in metallurgical engineering from McGill University and a law degree from Yale Law School. He is a member of the New York bar. After practicing as a tax lawyer in New York City, Kay moved to Toronto in 1998.

Jon has also had two non-fiction books published. In 2007, he co-authored The Volunteer, and wrote Among the Truthers: A Journey Through America’s Growing Conspiracist Underground, which came out in 2011.

Jon was a freelance editorial assistant on Common Ground, the memoir of Canadian Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, and contributed to Shakedown, by Sun News personality Ezra Levant. n

Jon Kay, left, and Geoff Moore ’83, right, in a charity match with tennis champions Simon Bartram and Daniel Nestor.