Frank Magazine R.I.P.

Frank Magazine was folded this week. I don’t have any great connection to Frank Magazine, which was published in Ontario, featured Upper Canadians in the main, and had a poor grasp of BC politics and life out here in general. However, they were one of Canada’s few native jesters in print, and they will be remembered fondly.

I’m convinced they once stole an idea for a gag from me and my friend Adam. In 1995 I was just getting a grasp of this thing called the World Wide Web (Wired mag says we don’t have to capitalize this phrase, or even “internet” anymore). While having breakfast at Cafe De Soleil on Commercial Drive (Vancouver’s famous left wing enclave) with my pal Adam Bullied we were discussing the legal troubles the former Prime Minister Mulroney was having. I think he was accused of pocketing kickbacks around jet purchases for a Canadian airline.

I don’t think either one of us had any political agenda at the time except to make fun of public figures we were bored with. We cooked up an idea called the Brian Mulroney Reputation Restoration Fund. I was becoming a Photoshop nut around that time, and created a lovely $2 bill (this is pre-twoonie) with Brian’s smiling face on it. Laurie Mercer, who was then running MusicWest, and his pals provided us free hosting at “conspiracy.com/oink/”. Laurie squatted that domain name for years, and they decided to make the sub-directory a reference to a pig.

The page, which I must dig out of archives and re-post someday, was a seemingly earnest attempt to fundraise for the ex-PM to “restore his reputation”. We created this faux e-commerce form and allowed you to post comments. The comments were hilarious, mostly because nobody knew it was a joke.

I was pretty pleased with our little online spoof. I thought Frank (which was really just Michael Bate) would get a kick out of it so I sent them an email. I never heard back from them, and didn’t expect a reply.
A few months after our August ’95 launch of the BMRRF web page Frank ran a fairly elaborate spoof with the exact same theme. They left phone messages with a bunch of old Tory hacks saying they were creating a legal fund to defend the former PM. They documented the responses for Frank, and publicized their little joke. There were a few red faces as I recall, such as Barbara MacDougall.

Anyway, maybe it was a case as they say of “great minds thinking alike” or we were the inspiration for Bate & co. to one-up our little joke.