Bold actions of faith are necessary to get anything really meaningful done — sometimes that means leaping from mountaintop to mountaintop in the mist. There is a reality to this you hold briefly in your hands, though as much in form as in title. That reality is this is the final issue of SEE Magazine, whose tactical form has by the time you read this been a beachfront hold sacrificed so that alternative weeklies can continue on in Edmonton. It’s a bold move, and a necessary one, regardless how it affects me and many I respect personally.

The rule of “never sign off on an article when you’re feeling deeply emotional” is impossible here, and let’s face it, I fuck that one up for a living. To deny the love and memories and aspirations abounding through the trip as its longest-serving editorial supplier would be ridiculous, especially in the sometimes role of first to call in print “bullshit” on the many diversions and lies that sadly so illustrate our helplessly corporate-dominated times — yet as easy to detect in endless war and arena debates alike as “follow the money.” The opportunity to Paul Revere has been one of my favourite parts of being alive, and I thank every editor personally for allowing my Hidden Ninja experiment in impressionistic journalism to run against their official training.

But I’m not here to eulogize myself — as if I’m going away, and the grain bins are calling. I just want to stress again how SEE’s absorption into Vue Weekly is ultimately an environmentally conscious one — and not just in the sense of there being less trees cut down. Joyously, the sometimes terrible and emotionally ravaging battle between the two papers is finally over. It’s hard to image a more personally felt raison d’etre than Ron Garth’s work over at Vue, and though he has pulled back, friends over there — now here — have told me they still consider him to be their spiritual inspiration. Those misty mountaintops I mentioned in the first sentence are Garth’s natural domain, and I salute you, sir, and thank you for allowing me at your parties, where I stubbornly tried to keep things nonpartisan. I sure can’t mention Garth without bringing up former SEE publishers Gord Nielsen and Jeff Holubitsky, my hardworking friends, who let me put my feet up on their desks in exchange for listening to their old nightmares.

Another name I have to mention is Kevin Wilson, who 150 weeks ago made the Wildlife cultural notes column a reality by his own editorial suggestion. In doing so he embedded me deep inside our arts and music culture in such a way which happily breaks all rules of objectivity, because it’s the longest continuing love story I’ve ever written; a conspiracy of finding the best things in town and shouting them out to the whole world. Thanks for reading, and especially for being, this city’s artistic soul, everyone. Yes, that means you, however you take part, even as observer.

SEE is, of course, merely a name —  and now, a set of yellowing archives. The people who have written and edited and drawn and photographed and cartooned and designed here have done so in an attempt to compel and entertain you while at the same time see their creative contribution in beloved print, which is all the more rare and valuable as we now drag fingers over monocultural Apple products in unison. I think warmly now of our videogame writer Darren Zenko, who briefly resurged here before putting all his energy into his current fight with cancer, which makes all this seem trivial. But it was Darren who first pulled me into SEE with that first comic strip, and it is indeed a cartoon with which I first cross over into Vue. For you, buddy. Forever.

Here we go again. So long, and thanks for all the … well, you know.