Christian·Wehrli
Portrait No. 000 — The Editor

At Home,
on the Second Attempt

A Swiss-Canadian storyteller, three countries late, and exactly on time.

Some lives run in straight lines. Others take a detour through three countries, four careers, and roughly thirty years in the music business before they finally find their way home. Mine was the second kind.

I grew up in Switzerland — that small, careful country where the trains arrive on time and the opinions don't. Then came records, magazines, marketing. A long apprenticeship in noticing what other people overlook. The kind of noticing that turns into stories, eventually, if you're patient enough to wait for them.

Canada wasn't a plan. It was an instinct, the way home usually is. I became a citizen in 2024 — late by some measures, exactly on time by others. The Swiss in me still organizes the bookshelf. The Canadian in me has stopped apologizing for the weather.

These days I write. About emerging artists, for a magazine called CANARTA. About a fairy trail in Newmarket, Ontario, built by neighbours for a girl named Esther — because grief sometimes needs a path through the woods. And once in a while, in two languages and from both sides of the Atlantic, about what it actually feels like to belong to a place.

I call myself a seeker and collector of stories. Other people call me a publisher, a journalist, an older hippie who found his place at the second attempt. The Swiss in me insists there is a difference between all of those. The Canadian in me isn't so sure it matters.

Departments

The stories,
still being told.