In 1973, Byfield returned to journalism by publishing the ''St. John's Edmonton Report'', a local paper, as part of the operations of the
Company of the Cross, a lay
Anglican religious order, also co-founded by Byfield, which included a series of traditional Anglican private boarding schools for boys, starting with the
Saint John's Cathedral Boys' School in 1957. The minister of St. John's School, Keith T. Bennett, served on the original editorial board. In the early years the school and the magazine operated under the same system where staff lived in a communal apartment block and everyone worked for a dollar a day plus room and board. Byfield also launched the ''St. John's Calgary Report
in 1977. When the two magazines were merged into the Alberta Report'', Byfield shifted the business model from that of the lay order to a more commercial enterprise to attract a higher quality of journalists. The emergence of the
Alberta Report coincided with Alberta's energy wars with the federal government. Byfield's
Report provided the voice for
Western Canada's growing sense of discontent and alienation in the 1970s and 1980s. The magazine was published for a time in three separate editions, the
Alberta Report,
BC Report, and
Western Report. These were merged in 1999 into
The Report, later known as the
Citizens Centre Report in connection with Link Byfield's successor organization, the Citizens Centre for Freedom and Democracy. The magazine often struggled financially, with the senior Byfield mortgaging his own house four times to keep it afloat. It shut down in June 2003. A number of right-wing journalists and commentators in Canada who are prominent today began their careers writing for
The Report magazines, including
Kenneth Whyte, the editor in chief of ''
Maclean's; Colby Cosh of the National Post, Kevin Michael Grace, Lorne Gunter, Ezra Levant, Brian Mulawka, and Kevin Steel. Other former staff include: freelance journalist Ric Dolphin, former National Post
writer Dunnery Best, U.S. food writer (and founding editor of Equinox
magazine) Barry Estabrook, former Profit'' editor and publisher Rick Spence, author D'Arcy Jenish, and Paul Bunner, who in 2006 became a speechwriter for Prime Minister
Stephen Harper and later for Alberta Premier
Jason Kenney. Canadian Conservative leader
Pierre Poilievre also contributed to the Alberta Report. The
Western Standard, launched in 2004, by Levant with the participation of several other
Report alumni, aimed to fill the space in the market that had been held by the
Report. The
Standard ceased publication in 2007, but returned as an online daily news publication in 2019. In 2022, Alberta Report was acquired by
Western Standard New Media Corp., returning it to publication online. ==Topics==