Friday, January 15, 2010
Porn has been bad for The Beaver. As Canada’s venerable historical journal, The Beaver spent 90 years educating Canadians about important people and events of the past, but the modern euphemism “beaver” forced publishers of the magazine to change its name. “Use of the word ‘beaver’ on the Internet has taken on an identity that nobody could have perceived in 1920,” Deborah Morrison, president of Canada’s National Historical Society, which publishes the journal, told CBC News. “And increasingly, if we put ‘The Beaver’ in a heading, we would be spam-filtered out.”
Morrison said the name change wasn’t just about getting its emails into inboxes. The publication, with a current readership of about 50,000, needs a new generation of readers, and The Beaver title wasn’t catching on with younger people. Research showed that Canadians were “twice as likely not to subscribe because of the title of the magazine, even if they showed an interest in Canadian history,” according to Morrison. Some mistakenly assumed it was a publication about nature.
Beginning with the April issue, the journal will carry the title Canada’s History.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
The Beaver Gets a New Name (CBC News)
Canada's 2nd Oldest Magazine Sheds Its Pelt (by Randy Boswell, Canwest News Service)
The Beaver's Name Passes into History (by James Adams, Globe and Mail)
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