THE 1920s was the decade of flight and speed: it saw the golden age of the ocean liner, the early development of passenger aviation, and the expansion of tourism by rail. It was also the decade in which the word ‘middlebrow’ came into use, naming the new cultural formations which emerged from the social, material, and intellectual aspirations of the middle classes. And it was the decade when commercial Canadian magazines began to flourish, in the context of a rapid expansion of periodical publishing on both sides of the Atlantic. This book argues that these three developments are connected. We suggest that magazines, by circulating fantasies of travel, were instrumental in forging a link between geographical mobility and upward mobility. They constructed travel as an opportunity to acquire knowledge and prestige as well as to experience pleasure and luxury. And in their repeating patterns and seasonal cycles, the periodicals themselves replicate the experience of travel: the familiar movements and set itineraries, as well as the new discoveries and visual pleasures. As the high society Toronto magazine Mayfair put it in 1928:

The frothy Mayfair had been established only the year before, yet its owner, Maclean Publishing, was already on the point of announcing another new magazine. Chatelaine, launched in May 1928, took a more serious tone, committing itself to national advancement and to serving the needs of Canadian women. The new titles joined four other mainstream Canadian magazines, Maclean's, La Revue Moderne, the Canadian Home Journal, and La Revue Populaire, which had started publishing in the first two decades of the century and were beginning to transform themselves and expand their circulation.

These six magazines were the most widely read in Canada in an era when print was the dominant form of mass media.