Happy Birthday to this Substack

A holiday reflection on writing, life and how I think you're all great

If you’ve ever wondered what my journalism would be like if I wasn’t writing about structural injustice, well, I have a Christmas present for you.

Or maybe it’s a miracle. We are day three into the time of miracles at my house and every night, as my kids light the hanoukiah, one of them admits that he’s very much afraid of miracles. We’ll have to unpack that when he’s older.

Can you believe it? A miracle. Me writing about … music. I have a secret life as a musician and, perhaps even more secret, as a music historian. If you’ve ever wondered about traditional Christmas carols, and why singing about spending Christmas Eve in the drunk tank is about as traditional as you can get, I’ve written this for you. Bonus: there is a YouTube playlist of every song that I mention in the piece. That is 19 of the best Christmas carols, performed the best I could find. Royalties for this piece should go to the Diocese of Hamilton for throwing me into the Christmas season as an organist from a young age.

https://thewalrus.ca/christmas-carols/?curator=MediaREDEF

I started this substack a year ago today, and so here is my reflection on one year of self-publishing.

Looking back

At least 107 Ontario workers have died from COVID-19 they caught at work

A year ago, I had finally got my hands on official numbers related to how many workers in Ontario had died from COVID-19 they caught on the job. I didn’t have any expectations for this Substack but I figured it was time that I try to do some of my reporting on my own. Having just finished this article for Chatelaine, knowing that my chances of doing another one similar any time soon were basically nil, I needed to create a new space for my writing.

This is the fatal flaw in Canadian media: there just aren’t enough places for us to write. If you write long features, you find yourself bouncing between a few spots. For me, that’s been the Walrus, Maclean’s, Maisoneuve and Chatelaine. What else is there? Toronto Life? Flare? There are smaller independents, like The Rover, for which I wrote this piece about the 60s Scoop, but really, the options for freelancers drop off pretty much right away. And there are too many of us and too few spots for them to be dependable.

Besides, I’m usually working on a larger project at the same time. That means that I have interesting pieces of data or tid bits of stuff that I think you’d be interested to hear about. Rather than waiting for years before that information appears in a book, I wanted this Substack to be a place where I could share that kind of thing. While I had hoped 2022 would deliver me a new book contract (it did not), I have been able to share information like this. In all, I’ve written 35 posts. Thanks to the generosity of nearly 200 paid subscribers, that has translated into $185 per post. But also, it’s helped subsidize my writing — like a feature that I have coming out in Briarpatch in January, or boosting the payment for my opinion writing at Passage to make it be more livable. It helped subsidize this Ontario election series that I wrote for The Maple and paid me a little bit for the weekly Twitter spaces that Christopher Curtis and I hosted during the Quebec election.

It’s been amazing to have you all along for the ride and I appreciate your interest deeply. Media in this country is changing and it threatens to destroy those of us who write from the margins. Your support means that we can keep going.

Looking forward

I’ll be honest: 2023 is about as unpenetrable for my mind as is Mars. I can imagine what it might look like but when I really try to place myself into it, I can easier picture myself as a robot or a pile of sand than me, Nora Loreto, walking around in April 2023.

Freelance life for me means that December, especially as it winds down, always feels like I’m staring at the abyss. I don’t really have anything lined up for 2023 and I don’t know what’s coming my way (or what I’ll pitch and then immediately regret having pitched).

Know that your support helps keep me going, both professionally but also morally. As the kind of person who, back when I worked in a real office surrounded by real people, would run into other people’s offices with some piece of breaking news that I needed to rant about, it can be hard to work on my own, in isolation. While this is my tenth year of freelance work (!!!), it is never easy. And the while I accept the possibility that Twitter will actually die in 2023, losing my virtual water cooler will be difficult.

So regardless of what happens in 2023, please continue to be there. Stay in touch. Let me know if you think I should be paying attention to something and, if ever you see that I’m in your town, let’s find time to grab a bite.