REM editor Jim Adair says goodbye | REM

Back in the 1970s, when I left a career at the Mississauga Occasions to do the job for the Toronto True Estate Board, I was tasked with writing a farewell column to visitors. A veteran reporter at our level of competition had just prepared a very similar column, in which he thanked dozens of notable area and nationwide politicians and celebs. But I had only been performing at the Periods for four months and didn’t have an remarkable listing of contacts to thank.

So I wrote that I couldn’t thank anyone I worked with at the Moments, not for the reason that I didn’t have the house but due to the fact I hadn’t however learned all their names. To make pleasurable of the other columnist’s title-dropping, I thanked Mick Jagger and Margaret Trudeau, simply because “as far as I know, they have by no means claimed a lousy detail about me.”

Perfectly, now it’s time to say goodbye to REM’s visitors and the shoe is on the other foot. The listing of individuals I’d like to thank is too very long to include things like absolutely everyone who aided me condition the editorial information of REM for the final 33 yrs. But in this article are some who manufactured a considerable impact.

It commences with the dozens of freelance journalists REM hired in excess of the years. Susan Doran experienced a tale in the very initial challenge of REM and has created hundreds of content for us considering that then, not often missing a thirty day period. Kathy Bevan was REM’s ace reporter for various years, chasing down stories even when the topics didn’t want to be interviewed. A single yr through the Western Relationship conference, she cornered a real estate board EO in an elevator when he tried to escape her queries.

Quite a few thanks also to Toby Welch, creator of much more than 100 REM options, and other very long-time freelancers Diane Slawych, Mario Toneguzzi, Danny Kucharsky, Yvonne Dick, Don Procter, Sohini Bhattacharya, Dennis McCloskey, Connie Adair, Steve Maxwell, Myles Shane, Tony Palermo and the late Lloyd Manning.

REM wouldn’t have attained the credibility it has in the authentic estate industry devoid of the contributions of numerous recent and former Realtors, who crammed our web pages with tips and observations, and did not shy absent from controversy.

Marty Douglas wrote a lot more than 250 columns, at first named Western Views and then Metes & Bounds.

Barry Lebow, who aided REM rating a deal to generate a journal for a home finance loan broker’s association, wrote dozens of columns and extra a short while ago started manufacturing movies that he shared with REM viewers.

Dan St. Yves, a former genuine estate agent in Kelowna, has been crafting a every month humour column for REM because 2000, by no means lacking a month.

Carolyne has offered as a lot of Recipes for Realtors columns as we could use. She is also the most prolific commenter on all REM tales, featuring her get on the industry’s hottest information. (And thanks also to our other most repeated commenters, Brian Martindale and PED.)

I also owe a debt of gratitude to Ross Wilson, Debbie Hanlon, Stan Albert, Ted Greenhough, Mark Brodsky, Chris Seepe, Aiman Attar, Peggy Blair, Aaron at TRES Labs and the late Albert Teichner. They all delivered a wealth of information and facts for Realtors – click on on the Columnists and Suggestions for Brokers tabs on this site and check out out their stories, and people of lots of other visitor columnists.

The most-examine stories on REM have been constantly individuals dealing with legal difficulties, and we were blessed with several great legal writers. They include Natalka Falcomer, Don Lapowich, Mark Weisleder, Martin Rumack, Bob Aaron, Shaneka Shaw Taylor, James Prepare dinner and a single of REM’s greatest supporters, Avi Rosen. A lot of thanks to you all.

Our print magazine experienced a resident photographer – Marko Shark, who then turned the undertaking around to his son Elijah. Thanks for all the excellent visuals men. And thanks to Craig Hodge and Darla Furlani, who provided REM protect photographs from the West Coast.

Thanks to all those who offered REM with their movie content material: David Greenspan, Richard Robbins, Toni Sing and Jenny Wun, Shawn Bell, Nicole Attias and lots of others.

To anyone who sent me a tale about a new business office retain the services of or charitable endeavour in their group, thank you. Thanks to all the boards and associations who sent us editorial contributions and distributed the print edition of REM to their associates. Thanks to the personnel at CREA, who supported us all over the many years, even nevertheless they generally didn’t care for what we wrote and had been aggravated that we refused to place Real estate agent in capital letters.

And finally (sure, I know the music is actively playing and they want me to wind this up), a term about the individuals at REM. Artwork director Liz Mackin had wonderful tolerance in placing collectively most of the print concerns above the yrs. Thanks also to graphic designers Shawn Kelly, Yee Truong and Eilidh Harding.

It was great functioning with “Uncle Barry” Holmes, and later product sales director Dennis Rock. When Dennis retired, his daughter Amanda arrived on board and immediately grew to become the most well known REM staffer at trade displays.

Thanks also to tricky-working output and distribution manager Mila Purcell (who acquired me hooked on Brother Jack McDuff) and generation co-ordinator Judy Cupsky.

I wrote about Heino Molls and the start of REM when he retired. We missing Heino in 2019 and I have imagined about him every single day due to the fact.

William Molls took about as REM’s publisher and CEO and has designed a valiant work to retain it likely all through the pandemic, hardly ever straying from our philosophy of supplying top quality editorial content material and not offering out, when it would have been uncomplicated to do so. Many thanks for all your support, Will. Your dad would be proud.

All right, that’s enough, other than for a private plug: whilst I will be “mostly retired”,  I’ll carry on producing about Canadian actual estate in my column at Realty Instances. And I glimpse ahead to seeing what a new group will do with REM.