Three former contributors demystify Vice Media's legendary origin story

28:18The epic highs and lows of Vice Media

For a brief period of time, Vice was worth billions. Now, it's facing bankruptcy.

To look back on the legacy of the vanguard media company, Commotion has gathered three former Vice associates — Jonathan Cummins, Damian Abraham and Amil Niazi — to talk about the company's unlikely transformation from a scrappy Montreal punk zine to a dominant global empire, and how it found itself in its current financial predicament.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow the Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud podcast, on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: Amil, let's talk about the story from this week. What did you first think when you heard that Vice, this giant media company, could be going bankrupt?

Amil: Well, I wasn't surprised. I feel like this is something that's been a long time in the making, very tragically. I feel sad for my former colleagues and my fellow journalists trying to make it in this hard, crazy world because this is not ever fun to hear. I think about young people trying to come up in this industry who need places to form themselves and to try out their voices, and to become a person — and this was one of those places you could do that. So I wasn't surprised, but I am sad about it.

Elamin: I think the idea of becoming a person is actually a really valuable frame because Vice let you do a lot of things that other places wouldn't let you do — and in the process, a lot of people ended up finding their own voice that way…. I do want to rewind the tape a little bit and talk about how we got here. Maybe the place to start is with the mythic origin point.

The origin story has become something of a legend. 1994, Suroosh Alvi starts working for this local startup publication, and it's called Voice of Montreal. That was a part of the Welfare-to-Work program. And then he brings his friend Gavin McInnes on board as editor, and they take over the whole operation. Gavin ends up bringing his childhood friend Shane Smith to sell advertising, and then they change the name to Vice magazine.

We always used to joke like, 'We were going to take over the world.' We were on welfare in Montreal and eating beans and rice for years, but we were still like, 'We're going to take over the world.' It was kind of us-versus-them global domination, but it was hard to define what it was going to look like. ​​​​​​- Suroosh Alvi

Elamin: The story is a rags-to-riches thing.

Jonathan: I should say, it sounds good. If it was a first-date situation, I think Suroosh would have been very enchanting.

Elamin: Is that not the case? Is that not the story?

Jonathan: No, not really. I'm saying this in the event that some of my friends from that era of Montreal are listening, so I'm not going to tow that line. But yeah, people need to remember this rags-to-riches thing is something that we see in the Vice saga all the time, and it gives us all hope: that they were chimney sweeps, and of the grunge era—

Elamin: It is a bit Dickensian, absolutely.

Jonathan: And that they were listening to Smells Like Teen Spirit … but the reality of the situation is, that it was Montreal of that time — and everybody was broke, and everybody was stoked.You could literally go through your couch and come up with change to pay your rent. It wasn't that difficult. So it gave all of us who are musicians and artists … time on our hands to develop.

But the reality of the situation is that Suroosh was darting around town in a Saab with a Hüsker Dü bumper sticker on it. I'm like, "You own a car?" Anybody in Montreal in that era was like, "A car? My God." That was pretty hoity-toity. And not to mention a Saab, which his parents gave to him. We were in shock, and he was always like, "What do you guys mean? It's a car." But in Montreal, we were still all of us in awe like, "Wow, you drive to the store? You don't have to carry your groceries?"

Elamin: So it wasn't quite the rags-to-riches story that is kind of being sold?

Jonathan: Well, if somebody is eating beans and rice, and has a personal trainer. I'm not making this up, it's not hyperbole; I still don't know anybody who has a personal trainer…. So, it is what it is. The actual Vice office in Montreal … was a palatial suite in Old Montreal. It was far and beyond the biggest apartment out of everybody.

Elamin: So that's the reality of Vice at the time. Damian, you were an avid reader of Vice in the '90s. What do you think set it apart from other cultural magazines that were happening at the time?

Damian: I think it kind of came out of punk, you know? I think this is, as Jonathan says, it's not really a rags-to-riches story so much as a punk-to-riches story. Shane and Gavin were both from Ottawa's Arlington Five, which was their punk house where members of Arcade Fire and Godspeed You! Black Emperor would all go to shows. And Suroosh, both of his parents were university professors. He was in Minnesota, and he was a punk kid; he lived next door to Dave Pirner from Soul Asylum. It was sort of like these guys were very much informed by punk culture, and as a young punk kid that kind of bled through a little bit.

Elamin: Right. And in those early days, it sounds like it seemed highly unlikely that Vice would then grow into this massive, overarching empire. But it did.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Stuart Berman.