Maclean’s Magazine May 1954

It’s becoming more and more unusual these days to stumble across anything Mid-Century at garage sale prices, but it still can happen. Case in point is this May 1954 edition of Maclean’s magazine which I came across at the bottom of a pile of magazines and got for only a few dollars. The great thing about it is that this was the month that the Trend House program was launched across Canada, so this edition of the magazine has a lot of promotional material in it which I thought I’d share here.

Maclean’s is a Canadian news magazine that was founded in 1905, reporting on Canadian issues such as politics, pop culture, and current events. Its founder, publisher J. B. Maclean, established the magazine to provide a uniquely Canadian perspective on current affairs and to “entertain but also inspire its readers”. *[source and further reading…]

A quick glance through the magazine gives a really interesting snapshot in time, and insight into life in Canada in the mid 1950s. While some of the ads are in colour, there are still a large amount that are in black & white or two colour, and all of the articles are completely black & white. The introductory editorial references the current activities of senator Joe McCarthy, and some of the articles in this issue include “Let’s Stop Monopoly Television”,  “How to start a city from scratch” and “The Men who Can’t Stand Marriage”. Fascinating stuff.

But the reason this issue is special to me is that it’s the one which includes promotions of  the Trend House program, as well as a number of promotional advertising from partners in the program such as GE Canada, Sherwin-Williams and many others. Seeing their ads with the “Featured in Trend Houses” logo is pretty cool. Below is a gallery of all of the pages that had some promotional tie-in to the Trend House Program, starting with a double page spread showing the entire program.

And I’ve also included another gallery with some images from the rest of the magazine which I thought were interesting – either unique graphics, layout or just some ads which gave a better sense of what life was like in Canada in 1954.