Sputnik Magazine - Issue 1

In 1957 the Soviets launched Sputnik — the world’s first artificial satellite. It wasn’t very big. It was only the size of a beach ball. Sputnik became a symbol of innovation and superiority.

Last year in June, our shop quietly turned seventeen. That’s a remarkable achievement considering only one in five Albertans can correctly pronounce our name (without generous libations and/or linguistic coaching). Much thanks comes behind such a milestone. We’ve had the opportunity to work with so many great people. If I wore a hat, my hand would hurt from tipping it to so many.

In our early years, we used to put out a company newsletter. It was sporadic but quite funny. We called it Hök Talk and its slogan was ‘All the Buzz at Hök Nik.’ It had a housefly in the masthead. That fly later turned up on our stationery and we used ‘Thinking on the Fly’ as a tag line for a few years. At some point the fly was analyzed and deemed creepy and it disappeared. Coincidentally, so did much of our regular company communications.

For years, I’ve been talking about putting out our own magazine. In one of those conversations, I remembered someone had miscalled us ‘Sput Nik.’ I liked that because I’ve been missing the Soviets lately. They were so cunning and communist—and such a non-ambiguous state enemy. When I was growing up, calling someone a communist was a slur. In fact, a whole movie industry was built on vilifying the Russians. Fast forward to the new millennium, and capitalism has taken its share of body shots.

Just another reminder that if you live long enough, you see everything come full circle.