After being gone for a while, then in the bush, I returned to Whitehorse to find a new local magazine. I’ve tried to collect the first editions of local publications, like the now-gone Unicorn and Sam Holloway’s magazine. This one, Midnight Sun News - Yukon Unfiltered had a heavily camouflaged person on the cover.
After a quick skim of the contents, I checked out the names of people responsible for the magazine. Some of the names seemed familiar so I did some research and found some very interesting information. The publisher, the editor and the advertising agent are all significant members of the Yukon Party. Ryan Leef and Mike Nixon, two prominent Yukon conservatives, are featured, as is conservative Conrad Tiedeman, who advocates reduced house-building standards and development of Porter Creek D.
Then there is an article by a Debby Simms from Ottawa. To fully critique her incredibly misleading, biased and carefully crafted misrepresentation supporting Prime Minister Harper’s reduction of environmental assessments won’t fit in this letter. Suffice to say she sounds like a Harper hack or just a very poorly informed person.
And, ah yes, the story about the military wannnabe. I could, but won’t, go on about boys (men?) who like to play soldier by dressing up and pretending to shoot one another. The article and pictures about Airsoft Yukon conjures up memories of paramilitary wackos. The pictures of heavily camouflaged guys and their arsenal seems more like Soldier of Fortune, the mercenary magazine.
There was one surprising, but probably unintended, message on one page. Apparently, the magazine did a phone survey and found out Yukoners support the Peel Land Use Planning Commission land-use plan. I suppose the addition of a picture of an anti-Peel-plan bumper sticker on that page was to skew how readers interpreted the survey results.
Maybe the camouflaged person on the front cover is actually quite fitting for the first edition of the Midnight Sun News. After all, it seems to be a camouflaged, unofficial publication of the Yukon Party; or at least a clandestine attempt by some of its leading members to promote Yukon Party and Harper government misrepresentations.
Dee Hardly
Whitehorse