Articles

Magazine Articles

Boats, Boats, and More Boats

From 1971 to 1983, under the name Robin Roberts and Robin (Roberts) Benford, I wrote, co-authored, and edited over 100 magazine articles, many about yacht design, with others about boatbuilding, cruising and navigation. Varying from ½ to 5 pages, they appeared in magazines throughout Canada, the USA and England, as well as translations in other countries, as shown here:
  • Boating
  • Boating News
  • Canadian Yachting
  • Castoff
  • Caza Y Pesca (Brazil)
  • Cruising World
  • Die Yacht (Germany)
  • Lakeland Boating
  • Motor Boating & Sailing
  • Nor’Westing
  • Pacific SkipperPacific
  • Sail
  • Sailing
  • Sea
  • Sea Spray (New Zealand)
  • WoodenBoat
  • Yachting
  • Yachting Monthly (England)
  • Yachting World (England)
  • Magazines in France and Norway

A Small Sampling of Some of The 'Oldies-But-Goodies'

Full-Feature Boating Magazine Articles Simply Click On The Green Titles To Read Any Of My Magazine Articles Below...

The Natural Look: 2 pages, Yachting magazine, Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, New York, N.Y., USA, April 1983. This article explains how to maintain a natural finish on a wooden boat – ever so easily! The company, whose marine oil I featured in this article, asked permission to reprint thousands of copies of my article as an explanatory brochure.
The Perils and Ploys of Northwest Navigation: 4 pages, Cruising World magazine, Newport, R.I., USA, January 1981. This article now seems to me so sweetly innocent of all the high-tech aids to navigation that followed.
The “Best” Of Vancouver Island, A Cruising Philosopher’s Sampler: 5 pages, Sea magazine, CBS Publications, USA, August 1980. A time of reflection which makes me realize that my desired essence – connecting with nature – remains my dominant, driving force today.
Puffin...Toppling Some Concrete Myths: 7 pages, Boating magazine, Ziff-Davis Publications, Inc., New York, N.Y., USA, April 1973. I can't resist flipping you back to the opening page of my scrapbook and my very first, published full-feature article.

E-Zine & Web Articles

Helping Your Kids Handle Homophobia ... with Love Prevailing, 1800 words, published in Mommy Queerest e-zine, Toronto, Ontario, Summer, 2003, pages 18/19.
Interview on B.C. Queer Marriage, 8200-word dialogue written for Canada's equal marriage website about the B.C. fight for same-sex marriage in Canada. It explains how Diana and I got together in Victoria, B.C., major romantic moments, sharing and appreciating each other's skills, why we chose marriage, how we describe our relationship, how we became involved in the court case, how it felt having our case in court and in the media, how we dealt with negativity and opposition, how our families reacted, and even this surprising question: "If your partner were a tree, what kind of tree would she be?" This dialogue took place in 2002, during Canada’s successful equal-marriage case. At that point, we had been living together for 19 years, and had raised 4 children: Josh, 23, Clio, 24, Angus, 32 and Alex, 35.

Newsletter Articles

Making It Long Term: Honouring the Grey, 1800 words, OutViews, Bleeding Rose Multimedia, Victoria, B.C., June 2003. This article discusses the courage it takes to move from the rigidity of a black-and-white view of the world to the flexibility of grey, in order to succeed in a long-term relationship.
Appealing To Family, 1800 words, OutViews, Bleeding Rose Multimedia, Victoria, B.C., February 2003. This article shows how we create a ‘family’ in various arenas in our lives, and in this case, how our B.C. ‘family’ of equal-marriage litigants survived in the B.C. Court of Appeals.
Why Same-Sex Marriage? 2400 words, OutViews, Bleeding Rose Multimedia, Victoria, B.C., September 2002. This article was written in response to some in the gay community who question the desire for marriage.

Conference Presentation Articles

Love or Labels, Inclusion or Exclusion, Written for Father Antonio Orsorio’s Presentation & video given at a Meeting of Anglican Bishops and Clergy in Sorento, B.C., July 2003. The purpose of this article was to help bishops and clergy imagine what it meant to be homosexual in the then-current Anglican climate, and to contemplate the kinds of messages they truly wished to spread. Father Orsorio told me that the opinion before he gave this presentation was only 25% pro-inclusion, but after hearing him read this article, the bishops and clergy leapt to 75% pro-inclusion.
Brief to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights Regarding Marriage and Legal Recognition of Same-Sex Unions, Printed in French & English. Distributed in Vancouver, B.C., during Oral Presentation March 6, 2003. After I gave this presentation to the attending Members of Parliament, one MP made the effort to seek me out and personally thank me. He told me had, until that moment, been sitting on the fence, but my brief and my oral presentation helped him make up his mind in our favour.

Ad Writing:

Our Affair With Deks Olje, for The Flood Company, Hudson, Ohio, USA, 1976 through 1983. This ad testimonial, written at the company’s request, was used as both a hand-out brochure and a full-page ad, including back outside covers, in the following magazines: WoodenBoat, Sail, Cruising World, and Yachting. Dozens of Ads and Brochures Between 1971 and 1983, I wrote ads and brochures for the yacht design office of Jay R. Benford, several production yacht companies, and a wooden toy manufacturing company.

A Year-Long Newsletter:

During 1973, I wrote many articles in a 16-page monthly newsletter, formatted so as to produce a 192-page, indexed book at the end of the year. At first, called Benford Boating News, it underwent a name change halfway through the year, due to the instigation of more contributors who helped it evolve into Boatbuilding & Design Forum. To read a free sample of the September issue, go to Boatbuilding & Design Forum, where you'll also be directed to an especially entertaining article. Called Confessions of an Inveterate Scrounge, it describes a boatbuilder (and Fine Arts major) who cleverly succeeded in digging into a variety of garbage cans, rebuilding several tools and much material to cleverly outfit his boat.