Canadian Notes & Queries

"Canadian Notes & Queries" was first published in 1968 by William Morley as a four page supplement to the "Abacus", the newsletter of the Antiquarian Bookseller's Association of Canada. Modelled on the British "Notes & Queries", it was a journal, as Morley wrote, "of little discoveries encountered, often by serendipity, in the course of scholarly investigation," and queries which often arise in the course of research which are beyond one's "present resources to solve." Morley passed on the magazine to Douglas (now George) Fetherling 22 years later, and Fetherling, sensing that the internet would soon take over the magazine's function as an academic bulletin, reinvented it until it took on something more closely resembling its present format: a journal of literary, cultural and artistic history and criticism. Fetherling continued publishing the magazine with either "charming" or "calculated" irregularity -- until 1997, when he passed it on to Tim and Elke Inkster of the Porcupine's Quill. The Inksters published 18 more issues over the next nine years, before selling it to Biblioasis in 2006.