Poplar Magazine Winter 2024

When I set out to create this magazine, I put a lot of thought into the name. Poplar, as I’ve shared in previous letters, is a tree that I’ve been connected to since my childhood; many a summer morning I was woken at the cottage to that specific hustle bustle sound their leaves fill the airwaves with. Poplars are incredible trees that can stand as tall as one hundred sixty feet, although they generally settle somewhere between fifty to eighty. They are dominant and always exuded a certain power to me; when I was small, we had what must have been an eighty-footer that stood next to the dock by the shoreline. That soldier of a tree provided our family with plenty of shade and song on countless summer days. Eventually it took ill and became a danger to all those sitting under it and was felled in the off season before the winter ice broke. I remember being very sad that it had to come down but alas, this is life.

Often forgotten when we see trees, is what’s happening below the surface. Poplars have an expansive root system that can spread as much as two to three times their height! Think about that when you imagine one of these beasts if you were to see one over one hundred fifty feet tall! That is a footprint. Like the life cycle of an actual Poplar, our magazines’ root system is beginning to expose its own expanse. I am very excited for all things Poplar Magazine right now. Our footprint is rooted in a quality digital landscape and people are starting to really take notice. We have our very own future in front of us now and if I thought I was excited at our launch, I believe that excitement has found a new level. I suppose that makes sense when you consider the metaphor of our name.

Trees are incredible and we see them growing in the most absurd places: from war zones to the sides of mountains where you wonder how it is nourished with water. In the aftermath of the Jasper fires, new growth will arrive sooner than we can imagine and like these marvels, Poplar Magazine is growing towards its future in an endless digital landscape of independent positivity.

Soon after we launched, I really began to realize this just might be a whole lot more than I imagined. In saying that, I confess that it stopped me in my tracks a little. The vulnerable truth is, I think it scared me! At a time when those born more recently see a newspaper on their step and think it’s litter that missed the recycling bin and not a document of community information, I can imagine anyone in the print business is very likely in a valley of introspective reconsideration of the lost stranglehold they once occupied in this media business.

I see modern media, specifically independent media as a gargantuan opportunity. One that I fully intend to explore. For me, we’ve destroyed honest media in Canada, not just Alberta. Government grants and censorship appear to be far more harmful than one may have first considered. Especially when you weigh what we have available to us today over what we were all privileged to experience in the media past. Gone are the days of objective journalism and true freedom of speech appears to be the first thing pulverized by those disconnected from the sacrifices of all our forefathers who gave us this country and the freedoms within.

The goal of Poplar is to restore community opportunity. There was a time when television was locally centric and driven by local advertisements. Today, we all have a huge opportunity to control our own advertising destiny with the available tools at our disposal. However, this begs the question: is social media enough? Furthermore, lost community programming has been resurrected in the overall Poplar plan with PoplarViews, a conversational video podcast show that celebrates its guests as we learn about their businesses and other important Alberta focused topics.

Together, in Poplar Magazine we can go towards our shared audience in this unique cyber vessel. So, think about your message and think about what it looks like in the cyber waves of Poplar Magazine, a modern, yet traditional approach to connecting people and communities in Alberta.

Thank you for your endless support and welcome to the twelfth issue of Poplar Magazine!

Gratefully yours,

Tim Lowing