Campfire LETTERS | CAMPSIGHTS | EDITORIAL | READER’S TIP | PROFILE | CANOESCAPES | Future editor of Friendly and
Interesting People Monthly. PHOTO: SCOTT MACGREGOR
[ From the editor ]
A Complete Sentence W
elcome to the women’s issue. Or is it the woman’s issue? One thing it is
not is the womens’ issue. That’s because even though there is an exception to punc- tuation rules which says the apostrophe is supposed to come after the final s of a pluralized possessive noun, “women” is an exception to that exception, because it is a plural that doesn’t end in an s. There is no such thing as a group of womens, despite public places being filled with washrooms for them. This is how an editor makes a living. Most
people just pick up a magazine and leaf through, looking for a good place to begin reading—the tip on where to hang a food pack (page 19) comes to mind. Editors have to think about not hanging modifiers. How low can a preposition dangle before a bear can reach it anyway? Careful readers of this magazine might
be skeptical about claims of grammatical vigilance. I encourage sticklers (and I use that term with respect) to write and point out all the errors of usage and style in this issue. It would be a great way to welcome
6 SUMMER/FALL 2009
the new editor and instill a sense of high standards. You see, for this issue I’ve been concerned not just with apostrophes, but also with periods, the things that come at the end of a sentence. Or fragment. Or job. With two new small but squirming items
to carry over the portage now I’ve decided to shake up my life a little (see Hap Wilson’s article “Tripping with Toddlers” on page 20 for a glimpse of what is in store for me). After five years of editing Canoeroots I’ll be leaving it to a new editor to steer through the February issue and beyond. Five years doesn’t sound like much per-
haps. After all, it’s only twice as long as one of the canoe trips featured in this issue (see page 13 for the real-life legend of Don Starkell). But it was long enough to change at least one paddler’s perspective on the sport. When I started at Canoeroots I consid- ered canoeing and isolation to be a natural fit. A canoe was something to take you away from other people. Now I know canoes are even better at bringing people together. The canoeing community is strong when it is connected. As the article on the weaken-
ing of the Navigable Waters Protection Act on page 17 shows, that is important if the values we share and the wild spaces we en- joy will have any supporters. So by all means, write and tally up all the
sentences in this issue that start with a But or an And. Whatever you write, it is a plea- sure to know that there are people at the other end of the presses who love canoeing like we do. And now that no one remembers how small the print size was in the Spring 2006 issue, reader emails are our favourite kind. Until I become editor of Friendly and Interesting People Monthly, I won’t expect to be in regular contact with such a great group of readers and enthusiasts. Finally, I should thank publisher Scott
MacGregor and, of course, Bill Gates. To MacGregor for starting Canoeroots and making my job possible; and to Gates, for refusing to add a Canadian dictionary to Mi- crosoft Word’s spell check and making my job necessary. And if that last sentence didn’t call for
a semi-colon, the address is editor@cano-
erootsmag.com. » IAN MERRINGER
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