Saturday Night magazine used to be one of the best sources of Canadian short stories (after The New Yorker, which seems to have first rights to Alice Munro and Mavis Gallant). But now that the venerable monthly has transformed into a weekly insert in The National Post, Saturday Night's literary output has sadly declined. (But credit due: great photo essays.)

This summer Toronto Life magazine has picked up some of the slack, with an August issue devoted to 'Summer Fiction.' A very cool newsprint insert features six stories by the literary likes of David Macfarlane, M.G. Vassanji, Sheila Heti and Leon Rooke. The highlight of the package is a wacky, delightful tale by Rooke about a tragic demise of a poodle groomer. It seems a thinly-veiled piece of satire with one of its characters based on a well-known Canadian trophy wife who has a celebrity pet show... guess who?

While this one's clever, the rest of the stories seem too clever by half. A great push towards dramatic opening paragraphs, too many characters and plot twists to be contained in stories just a few pages long. But some very fancy writing, accompanied by enigmatic photos that don't quite add to the stories, but at least they break up the pages.

As an alternative to this glossy summer issue, you might want to pick up Storyteller magazine, Summer 2000. It's a simple magazine, with winners from the fifth annual Canadian Short Story Contest. There are no big names, clip art instead of fancy photos, however these simple pages contain some darn fine, good old-fashioned storytelling.

The opening story is a real winner. Random Winds, by Margaret Deefholts, is the story of a young Sikh man's dealings with his family and his heritage as his father lies dying in a coma. "No possiblility of a reconcilation between us. Probably not even if he were conscious." Never say never. There's a significant shift over the course of the next five pages.

Another of my favourites was Weapons, by Katharine O'Flynn, about a woman who's been laid off from her job, who for some strange reason spends her savings on a statue of a fat laughing Buddha. These, unlike Toronto Life's polished gems, are more in keeping with the tradition of Munro and Gallant, the kind of stories one person tells another, their cleverness buried between the lines.