If you were reading Maclean’s through the 1930s, mostly what you were seeing week by week on the covers of Canada’s National Magazine were portraits of happy women, most of them young, all of them white and serene-looking, confident, and free from cares. Sometimes they were packing suitcases (June, 1932) or clutching Christmas presents (December, 1933); they played a bit of ping-pong, too, (November, 1932) and also went after garden pests with malevolence and insecticide (May, 1936). They were aviatrixes, in at least four cases (including August, 1931 and May of ’32). A lot of the time, they sported bathing costumes (Julys and Augusts of 1932 + 1933; Augusts, 1935 + 1936; June, 1938; August, 1938).

That’s not to say that Maclean’s only covered young women in ’30s, but about 35 per cent of the time they did. Babies were also abundant (nine of them across 224 issues), along with young boys (usually up to no good) and golfing men (five). Not a lot of diversity there, either, which is to say, none whatever. In October of 1930, unfortunately, a group of happy kids dressed up for Halloween did include a boy in black face.

Hockey players? They were as abundant through the ’30s as Santa Claus, which is to say they fronted Maclean’s just four times that decade. Whether that’s a big distinction or kind of pitiful, well, I don’t know, guess it depends on your outlook. Hockey players did outnumber kings (just two of them made Maclean’s in the ’30s ) and football players and people playing tennis, so that’s … encouraging?

The hockey covers: first up was artist Joseph Farrelly’s impression, in 1933, of a handsome generic skater poised for action in what looks like Ottawa Senators garb, which is thoughtful, given that the original Senators would be folding within the year.

W.V. Chambers painted hockey’s next coverboy, in February of 1935. That’s it here, above: Toronto Maple Leafs’ defenceman Red Horner in a comical funk, cartoonishly fed-up at having been exiled, once again, to the penalty bench.

Hockey didn’t yet have goons in those years, what it had was bad men, among whom Horner was one of the baddest. For three years running he’d led the league in penalties, and the following year he’d do it again, amassing 167 minutes, which set a new single-season record that stood for 20 years, until Lou Fontinato barged his way to 202 in 1955-56.

A colourful character, then, Horner. There were others, of course, playing in the NHL through the 1930s. If we’re only talking about players who were skating with Canadian teams, what about Charlie Conacher, King Clancy, Hooley Smith, Syl Apps, Lionel Conacher, Nels Stewart, Aurèle Joliat? Howie Morenz! If the life he led on the ice wasn’t worth Maclean’s coverage, then wouldn’t his sudden death in March of 1937 have been news, mourned by so many thousands across the hockey map? No, not even then. The week of Morenz’s death, Maclean’s went with a humorous illustration of a hotel lobby boy on its cover, with nary a mention within of the hockey star’s death. True, it was a different kind of a magazine in those years, heavy on fiction and issue-oriented features. Still, I don’t know how you explain what happened in the very next issue, dated April 1, 1937 (poultry on the cover): in a perky article on NHL players deserving of all-star honours, author Jim Hendy somehow neglected in a passing mention of Morenz to note that the poor man was no more.

It was good to be a Leaf if you hoping to see yourself on the cover of the (Toronto-based) magazine in the ’30s. Goaltender Turk Broda was next up after Horner, photographed for a February, 1938 issue. A year later, separated by covers featuring turkeys, lumberjacks, and no fewer than three swimsuited women, the Leafs’ Gordie Drillon got his turn.

While neither Broda nor Drillon rated articles within the editions they fronted, the same can’t be said for Red Horner in 1935.

Along some flippant racism in the editor’s notebook, the contents for that week features a helpful column suggesting that the stout man — i.e. overweight — stands a better chance of resisting disease than the thinner one. There’s a column, too, about the “coloured races” in France. Amid all the fiction (including a hockey story, “The Not-So-Yellow Kid” and a timeless tale of the theatre called “Gentlemen Don’t Spank”), Horner penetrates the inside pages of the magazine in a serious way, featuring not only in a feature editorial profile but also, alongside his wife, Isabel, in a full-page advertisement touting stoves.

I gather that the new Moffats Electric Ranges were not only beautiful (“soft gleaming finish”) but “staunch and rugged.” Mrs. Horner loved hers, with its Therm-O-Matic Oven Control and Cook-Quik Element; it made her proud.

The Mr. Horner profile, is by Lou Marsh, Toronto Daily Star sports editor, former NHL referee, and all-round Toronto sporting personality. It is, let me say with respect, mostly puffery. A poem, supposing you were determined to extract one from Marsh’s paragraphs describing his subject, might look like this:

the large pleasant looking, red-headed young man
this fighting fireball
this curly-head wolf of the blue lines
a fellow who is just a bit headlong, a trifle strenuous
a heavy man
an excellent team player
a genuinely modest athlete.