Jean-Daniel Petit and Guillaume Leblanc are childhood friends from Abitibi-Témiscamingue, a remote region in northern Quebec where forests outnumber people by a ratio that makes the rest of Canada look crowded. Together with Eliane Cadieux, who had worked alongside Petit for over a decade in Montreal’s advertising and design industry, they shared an existential frustration: after twelve years in their respective fields, all three were questioning the meaning of their daily work. They wanted to create something at the intersection of nature and culture — a media brand that could make the environmental conversation as compelling as the best lifestyle publishing. In 2016, they enlisted journalist Nicolas Langelier (editor of Atelier and Nouveau Projet) and Catherine Métayer as editor-in-chief, and launched the first issue of BESIDE at a party in Montreal’s Mile-End. Three hundred people showed up to buy their copy.
Published biannually from Montreal, BESIDE is an independent magazine at the crossroads of nature and culture. Each issue takes four and a half hours to read — by design. Around thirty journalists and collaborators work on every edition, exploring a single theme across nature, culture, lifestyle, technology, and environment. Issue one asked what lies at the heart of our connection to the natural world, featuring an interview with Yvon Chouinard and photographs by Alex Strohl. Issue two, on conservation, included surf photographer Chris Burkard and bison rancher Dan O’Brien. Later issues explored nordicity (from Montreal to Iqaluit to Stockholm), community, risk, tradition, and the future. The magazine now sells 10,000 copies per issue across Canada, the United States, and Europe, and has grown from a dozen people to a team of over forty.
The most improbable chapter came when Petit half-joked in an interview that if BESIDE ever made a physical product, it would be a cabin in the woods. Then they actually did it. BESIDE Habitat is a nature hospitality project on 1,254 acres of forest in Lanaudière, one hour from Montreal: architectural chalets designed by Appareil Architecture, funded through an innovative founding-member model, with plans for 75 cabins, 25 autonomous pods, and a goal of protecting 500 million square feet of natural land by 2030. The cabins, the magazine, the digital platform, the events, the web series — together they form something that no other publication has attempted: a media brand that doesn’t just write about reconnecting with nature but physically builds the places where that reconnection can happen.
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