Jonathan Kay

Early life and education

Jonathan Kay was born and raised in Montreal, Quebec, to an anglophone Jewish family. His mother is the socially conservative newspaper columnist Barbara Kay. His father worked in finance and was the breadwinner of the family. He attended Selwyn House School, and Marianopolis College before obtaining a BEng and an MEng in metallurgical engineering from McGill University and a Juris Doctor degree from Yale Law School. He is a member of the New York bar. After practicing as a tax lawyer in New York City, Kay moved to Toronto, where, in 1998, he became a founding member of the National Post editorial board. Kay describes himself as an avid tennis and board game enthusiast, and sometimes has incorporated his passion for both pursuits into his journalism.

Career

Kay joined the National Post at its inception, in 1998, as a member of its editorial board, subsequently becoming the newspaper's Comment editor as well as a columnist. He left the newspaper's staff in 2014 but continues appearing in its pages as a freelance columnist.

Apart from his editorial work, Kay has also written two non-fiction books. In 2007, Kay co-authored The Volunteer, a biography of Mossad officer Michael Ross. In May 2011, HarperCollins published Kay's second book, Among the Truthers: A Journey Through America's Growing Conspiracist Underground. The book reflects Kay's interest in the psychology of conspiracy theorists.

Kay was a freelance editorial assistant on Liberal Party of Canada leader Justin Trudeau's memoir Common Ground published by HarperCollins with duties that included conducting some of the interviews with Trudeau that were used for the book. After the resignation of Trudeau's principal secretary Gerald Butts due to his role in the SNC-Lavalin affair, Kay revealed that Butts worked with him for the book. His participation in the project was criticized by conservatives in social media as well as by Sun News Network personality Ezra Levant, on whose 2009 book Shakedown Kay also worked as an editorial assistant.

His freelance articles have been published in a variety of US publications including Newsweek, The New Yorker, Salon.com, The New Republic, Harper's Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, The Weekly Standard, the Literary Review of Canada, The National Interest and The New York Times.

Since May 2018, Kay also hosted Quillettes Wrongspeak podcast, along with Debra W. Soh until she quit at the end of first series of episodes (2018). From February 2019, Jonathan continued to present the podcast throughout the year. Wrongspeak has been announced as "on hiatus" ever since December 30, 2019 as the last podcast featured Jonathan Kay's mother, Barbara Kay.

In 2021, Kay attracted media attention after he revealed that he had accidentally been using dog shampoo on himself for several months.

''The Walrus''

Kay was named editor-in-chief of The Walrus, a Canadian general interest magazine, on October 29, 2014. Kay left the Post on November 21, 2014, but continued to contribute opinion pieces on a freelance basis.

He resigned as editor-in-chief of The Walrus on May 13, 2017, following a controversy around cultural appropriation in which Kay argued that concerns by Indigenous writers about the practice should be balanced against the right to free artistic representation. Kay said the reason he left was because of conflicts between his role as a manager at a respected media brand and as a columnist and media panelist in which he would state controversial opinions and that he had felt the need to self-censor his byline pieces and commentary outside of The Walrus. "In recent months especially, I have been censoring myself more and more, and my colleagues have sometimes been rightly upset by disruptions caused by my media appearances. Something had to give, and I decided to make the first move. I took no severance," he said in an email written to The Globe and Mail. Kay added that there had been no conflict between himself and the publisher of The Walrus and that he had been given a free hand to edit the magazine and its website and that the pressure he had felt to self-censor was in relation to his non-Walrus work.

Published books

• The Volunteer: A Canadian's Secret Life in the Mossad, with Michael Ross, McClelland & Stewart, 2007
• Among the Truthers, HarperCollins, 2011
• Legacy: How French Canadians shaped North America, edited with André Pratte, 2016, repr. 2019
  • (in French) Batisseurs d'Amerique. Des Canadiens français qui ont fait l'histoire. La Presse, Montréal 2016 The Gazette, 2016
• Your Move: What Board Games Teach Us About Life, with Joan Moriarity, Sutherland House, 2019

Awards and recognition

In 2002, he was awarded Canada's National Newspaper Award for Critical Writing. In 2004, he was awarded a National Newspaper Award for Editorial Writing. He is currently a visiting fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

References

References

1. (November 2, 2019). "Those People We Tried to Cancel? They're All Hanging Out Together". The New York Times.
2. Kay, Jonathan. (June 2003). "The Scandal of 'Diversity': At Yale Law School, as everywhere else in higher education, racial preferences exact their insidious and damaging price". [[Commentary Magazine]].
3. (2016-12-15). "Guilty Memories from an Anglo Montreal Childhood". The Walrus.
4. [https://archive.org/details/selwynhouseschoo1985selw/page/13/mode/1up Selwyn House School Yearbook 1985]
5. (August 20, 1996). "eScholarship@McGill – Results – Full".
6. [https://nationalpost.com/life/Jonathan+depression+kept+good+down/4246668/story.html]{{dead link. (October 2025)
7. "Among the Truthers". Among the Truthers.
8. (February 19, 2019). "Everybody Loves Butts!".
9. (October 21, 2014). "Jonathan Kay: An editor's note regarding my work for HarperCollins on 'Common Ground'". National Post.
10. Staff. (February 8, 2010). "Tea Party Movement Is Full of Conspiracy Theories". Newsweek.
11. (November 18, 2015). "Dec. 8: Jonathan Kay to deliver F.R. Scott Lecture".
12. Kay, Jonathan. (June 30, 2001). "Gay 'Trek'".
13. Kay, Jonathan. (April 11, 2010). "Hot Shots".
14. Kay, Jonathan. (September 2001). "The republic of Texas".
15. Kay, Jonathan. (January 30, 2002). "Watching Her Go From a Doll to a Rock to a Bomb". [[The Los Angeles Times]].
16. (March 14, 2005). "The Weekly Standard".
17. Linda McQuaig and Neil Brooks. (December 1, 2010). "The Literary Review of Canada".
18. (October 3, 2001). "The National Interest".
19. Kay, Jonathan. (January 3, 2002). "The New York Times".
20. (31 May 2018). "Wrongspeak Is a Safe Space for Dangerous Ideas". [[The Stranger (newspaper).
21. Kay, Jonathan. (December 30, 2019). "Wrongspeak #17 - The Family Business with Barbara Kay".
22. Lecklitner, Ian. (2021-02-02). "Is Dog Shampoo Right for You?".
23. McCarter, Reid. (Feb 9, 2021). "Guy who got roasted for using dog shampoo really wants to be known as "the guy who got roasted for using dog shampoo"".
24. "The Walrus names Jonathan Kay new editor-in-chief". Globe and Mail.
25. "Jonathan Kay: My life at the National Post, and why I'll miss it".
26. (May 14, 2017). "Jonathan Kay out at The Walrus".
27. Mendleson, Rachel. (May 14, 2017). "Jonathan Kay resigns as editor of The Walrus amid 'appropriation prize' backlash". [[Toronto Star]].
28. (May 15, 2017). "Walrus editor Jonathan Kay quits amid free speech uproar: 'I have been censoring myself more and more'".
29. "Jonathan Kay resigns as editor of The Walrus amid cultural appropriation controversy". [[The Globe and Mail]].
30. (July 25, 2011). "Jonathan Kay".
31. "2012 Speakers - Foundation for Defense of Democracies".