1 The team of people who bring you SCL/ÉLC twice a year has seen a number of changes since our last issue. With this note we welcome ten new people onto our masthead and bid a fond farewell to one who has recently left it.

2 Our advisory board, the front-line team that does almost all the blind vetting of articles submitted to the journal and whose recommendations guide our editorial decisions, has grown significantly with the addition of eight first-rate scholars. The board has always been composed of scholars affiliated with Canadian universities who study Canadian literature in english and French; given the high profile of Canadian writing and Canadian Studies around the world, and the many fine scholars of "Can Lit" working at universities abroad, we thought it was time to add an international presence to our board. We are thrilled that Guy Beauregard, Justin Edwards, Danielle Fuller, Helen Gilbert, Faye Hammill, and Gerry Turcotte accepted our invitation to perform this important peer-review work. At the same time we decided to augment our expertise in francophone Canadian literature, and we warmly welcome Monika Boehringer and Catherine Khordoc in that capacity.

3 Elsewhere on the masthead, we say au revoir to Sabine Campbell, who retired as managing editor for both SCL/ÉLC and The Fiddlehead in September 2006 after serving for over twenty years and overseeing the publication of more than 120 issues. Sabine worked tirelessly and creatively on the many unheralded tasks that go into the publication of a scholarly journal — from grant applications to subscription management, and from bookkeeping to page design. She also brought a personal touch to a job that, beyond the editors, largely involved communicating electronically with faraway authors and advisors. When she retired, many board members spoke affectionately of Sabine’s pleasant and good-humoured interactions with them and the sense of teamwork she helped foster among their disparate company. The following note was typical of many we received: "I knew Sabine only as an e-mail voice — but what a voice: always warm and cheerful, understanding, prompt, sensible, reassuring, helpful. She was wonderful to work with, always adding a personal touch to the business of essay assessments. I’m sorry that the journal is losing her, and wish her all the best." We held a lively retirement party for Sabine and since then have been glad to see her thriving (and seemingly no less busy). Thank you, Sabine, for your outstanding contributions to SCL /ÉLC, and to Canadian literature and scholarship more generally.

4 Filling Sabine’s shoes at both journals is Kathryn Taglia, who joined us in September with a wealth of experience as a scholar and post-secondary instructor, administrator, writer, and editor. She has excellent computer, financial, grant-writing, editing, and organizational skills, and on top of all that she is a voracious reader with an encyclopedic knowledge of literature and history — all assets that have benefited us immeasurably already. Kathryn is joined in the SCL /Fiddlehead office by Rodney Johnstone, who has coordinated our transition to new page-design software and whose eagle eye for visual and textual fine points is helping us greatly in our quest for editorial excellence.

5 And now, as usual, we’ll put you in the capable hands of those without whom all those advisors and editors would have nothing to work on — our contributors. We hope you enjoy this latest general issue and, as always, welcome your comments.