Canadian Grocer named Magazine of the Year

Canadian Grocer has been named the best trade magazine in Canada.

The magazine won the award at the Kenneth R. Wilson Awards this week in Toronto. The juried awards show, now in its 61st year, recognizes excellence in business magazine publishing.

Canadian Grocer was named Trade Magazine of the Year while University Affairs magazine won the title of Professional Magazine of the Year.

The KRW award judges, made up of magazine editors, writers and art directors, praised Canadian Grocer for its writing, story mix and the respect it shows to its readers.

“This magazine knows that its readers are not only grocers, but also people,” the jury wrote in presenting the award.

Canadian Grocer also received an honourable mention for Best Cover (“Can Food Fix Taget?”, November 2014 issue).

Last year, Canadian Grocer was nominated for four KRW awards, and won in all four categories it was nominated in, receiving two Gold and two Silver awards for writing and art direction.

The KRW awards are named in honour of Kenneth R Wilson, a legendary Canadian business journalist who died in a plane crash in 1952.

Canadian Grocer, one of Canada’s oldest magazines, will celebrate its 130 anniversary next year.

John Bayne Maclean, a reporter with the Daily Mail in Toronto, founded the magazine in 1886 after coming to the conclusion that Canada’s emerging grocery retailers did not have enough information about their industry.

Maclean would use Canadian Grocer as a springboard to found his publishing empire, Maclean-Hunter. He later launched other legendary Canadian magazines, including Maclean’s and Chatelaine.

In 2008, Canadian Grocer was named one of the 20 most influential magazines of all time by Masthead, a trade journal for the periodical industry.