Early Years of Esprit De Corps
Scott Taylor's Canadian military magazine, Esprit de Corps, was first conceived of as an in-flight magazine for the Canadian Air Force, after Scott Taylor and his with Katherine Taylor discovered that Canadian Air Force planes lacked any on-board entertainment system or reading material. Their original concept was to utilize the military passengers who normally used the airlines to attract advertisers who wished to promote their products to Canadian Forces personnel.
After struggling to have his proposal accepted by the Canadian Forces, Scott Taylor was able to secure national advertisers for the publication; corporations who had large budgets and could afford to advertise in their magazine. Esprit de Corps was first published as an illustration oriented magazine, with small articles and more entertainment oriented content.
Due to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Canadian government’s subsequent downsizing of its military expenditures, the Canadian Forces were experiencing cutbacks and changing the way in which its personnel would be transported. This affected Esprit de Corps drastically, as Canadian Forces personnel would now be transported via flights chartered by Air Canada. Because of the loss of its Canadian Air Force distribution and the cost-cutting atmosphere of the military community, Scott Taylor and his wife decided to convert their magazine to a newsstand monthly.
The new magazine would feature mainly current military news and Canadian military history. The magazine continued to retain its seat-back distribution with Air Canada military charters and Scott Taylor began to hire staff in order to help fill their new eighty-four page format.
In 1991, Esprit de Corps ran a controversial article, in which they interviewed the recently resigned vice-Admiral Chuck Thomas, recognizing and supporting Thomas, who had claimed that the Canadian Forces were not properly prepared for the future. As a result, the Department of National Defence ordered Air Canada to cease distribution of Esprit de Corps aboard their military charter flights. The DND’s decision was later reversed when Scott Taylor threatened to issue a press release detailing corruption involving the DND official magazine Canadian Defence Quarterly.
Read more about this topic: Scott Taylor (journalist)
Famous quotes containing the words esprit de corps, early years, early, years, esprit and/or corps:
“If the heart has its reasons, perhaps the body
Has its own lumbering sort of carnal spirit,
Felt in the tingling bruises of collision,
And known to captains as esprit de corps.”
—Anthony Hecht (b. 1923)
“If there is a price to pay for the privilege of spending the early years of child rearing in the driver’s seat, it is our reluctance, our inability, to tolerate being demoted to the backseat. Spurred by our success in programming our children during the preschool years, we may find it difficult to forgo in later states the level of control that once afforded us so much satisfaction.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)
“They circumcised women, little girls, in Jesus’s time. Did he know? Did the subject anger or embarrass him? Did the early church erase the record? Jesus himself was circumcised; perhaps he thought only the cutting done to him was done to women, and therefore, since he survived, it was all right.”
—Alice Walker (b. 1944)
“When Prince William [later King William IV] was at Cork in 1787, an old officer ... dined with him, and happened to say he had been forty years in the service. The Prince with a sneer asked what he had learnt in those forty years. The old gentleman justly offended, said, “Sir, I have learnt, when I am no longer fit to fight, to make as good a retreat as I can” —and walked out of the room.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“If the heart has its reasons, perhaps the body
Has its own lumbering sort of carnal spirit,
Felt in the tingling bruises of collision,
And known to captains as esprit de corps.”
—Anthony Hecht (b. 1923)
“Ce corps qui s’appelait et qui s’appelle encore le saint empire romain n’était en aucune manière ni saint, ni romain, ni empire. This agglomeration which called itself and still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire was in no way holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.”
—Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694–1778)