The new year is ushering in a fresh chapter in Sarah Fulford’s career. Fulford, whose appointment as editor of Toronto Life was announced last September, officially succeeded her predecessor and mentor, John Macfarlane, on Jan. 1.
“I’m thrilled,” said Fulford, who at 33 is one of Canada’s youngest major magazine editors. “It’s a huge challenge, but I’ve been training for it for a long time.”
The daughter of one of Toronto’s most prominent media couples, Robert Fulford and Geraldine Sherman, she joined Toronto Life in 1999.
“I truly believe I’m walking into a situation where all the conditions are right,” said Fulford in an interview in a Little Italy café. “The staff is fantastic. The publishers are enthusiastic and committed to improving the magazine. The city is more vibrant than ever and interested in Toronto Life’s success. I feel lucky due to all these conditions.”
With a paid circulation of 92,000 and a readership of 765,000, it is fat and profitable. Under Macfarlane’s 15-year tutelage, it won 53 National Magazine Awards.
“Sometimes, you take a new job to fix a catastrophe,” said Fulford, who is its first female and Jewish editor. “But Toronto Life is healthy. I won’t have to spend all my time solving problems. It’s not a magazine that needs a radical overhaul.”
Yet she plans to revitalize it by hiring new staffers and a new art director, who, she feels, will change its flavour.
In addition, Fulford intends to upgrade its website so that it will appeal to a wider audience, preferably younger readers who were not necessarily born in Toronto, as well as new immigrants.
And she will be flexible in reacting to events. “Things might evolve in unexpected ways,” she said, declining to elaborate. But she added that changes will be introduced incrementally.
Fulford was offered the job last summer after a fairly intensive search process. But she and Macfarlane had been discussing her future for several years.
Macfarlane said that Fulford was chosen because she understands the city and is exceedingly able.
“Toronto is a big, complex and diverse city, and she grasps its complexity completely. She also has a grasp of Toronto Life’s role in the city. She’s a visionary, ambitious in the best sense of the word and very talented editorially. So that made her the best candidate.”
Toronto Life, published by St. Joseph Media, has been a presence in Fulford’s life since her childhood.
Her parents were avid readers, and one of their favourite publications was Toronto Life, which Fulford considered fun, fearless and stimulating.
Along with her brother and sisters, she was raised in what she describes as “a secular and pluralistic post-Enlightenment environment” where ideas and cultural and intellectual pursuits were valued and encouraged.
Her father, the former editor of Saturday Night, a columnist at the National Post, a contributor to Toronto Life and an Officer of the Order of Canada, never tried to steer her toward journalism.
But he was so engaged by journalism that his dedication rubbed off on her.
“If he had been miserable as a journalist, I might have become a doctor,” mused Fulford.
Her mother, a writer and a former radio producer at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, was also influential.
When Fulford was a child, she would critique tapes her mother edited for a popular program. Fulford’s comments were so telling and true that her mom would congratulate her on her natural editing abilities.
But as Fulford tells it, she did not seriously consider journalism as a calling until she went to Israel for a year in the summer of 1996 and began writing book reviews for the Jerusalem Report. Since then, she has also written reviews for the National Post and features for the Globe and Mail.
A graduate of King’s College in Halifax, with a BA degree in classics and contemporary studies, Fulford spent an academic year studying classical Jewish texts at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, an independent modern Orthodox institution in Jerusalem that welcomes male and female students of all Jewish backgrounds and beliefs.
“I wanted to explore my Jewish identity and learn the tradition,” explained Fulford, whose family celebrates major Jewish holidays and enjoys Friday night Sabbath dinners.
She also studied at a Hebrew University ulpan, where she learned the rudiments of Hebrew.
“Like every Jew, I felt at home in Israel, though I had never been there before.”
The occasional suicide bombing did not faze her. “I was young and felt invincible, and there was a spirit of hope in Israel during that period.”
She pondered aliyah, but decided against it because of her attachment to Canada’s pluralistic society. Yet after returning to Toronto, she took Hebrew classes at the Jewish Community Centre.
Fulford believes very strongly in Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. “But my peers don’t always agree with me,” she noted.
In a reference to the prospect of peace in the Middle East, she said, “Israel has a right to make its own arrangements with the Palestinians and shouldn’t be pressured.”
After Israel, Fulford worked for Elm Street, a now-defunct magazine where she honed her talents as an editor. Hired by Toronto Life as an assistant editor, she was promoted to the position of senior editor six years later.
Her duties ranged from editing stories to “packaging” special features. She was always pleased when one of her cover story concepts struck a chord with readers, but was happiest when she took risks on inexperienced writers and discovered that they exceeded expectations.
From time to time, she contributed stories to the magazine. A serious cello player in her leisure hours, she wrote pieces on her high school music teacher, who was exposed as a pedophile, and on car theft in Toronto.
Fulford is married to Stephen Marche, a novelist and academic from Edmonton with whom she has an infant son, Elijah.
Marche’s first novel, Raymond and Hannah, turns on sexual desire. Hannah, one of the main characters, runs off to Israel to become more Jewish. Hannah sounds a lot like Fulford, but Fulford laughed off the similarity as purely coincidental.