Camilla and Peter lived a hectic life in Toronto (he records that a ten-second delay at the Maclean-Hunter elevator could throw off their schedule for the day, which explains why, when he and I were working together on a joint Macmillan-Maclean’s publishing project, the alternate meetings at each others’ office never quite worked; amused by the process, I would travel to his office, every time.)
Then Camilla followed him in retirement to the West Coast, where I visited them for dinner at their place in Cordova Bay, a visit notable for the acres of subterranean files Peter had amassed there to impress visiting publishers, and for my spotting an interesting painting that looked like a Klimt, and was.
They seemed very happy there, and Peter was able to indulge his passion for sailing. I once visited him aboard his navy blue yacht in Vancouver’s Coal Harbour and he showed me how he had set up a writing room there, complete with mahogany trim. I was jealous, and sorry to have to get back to Toronto.
But the marriage to Camilla didn’t last, and other ladies came into play, exhaustively listed in his memoirs in a way that leaves the reader admiring his memory. One of these named lovers was Barbara MacDougall, the distinguished Conservative Cabinet minister. Her brother-in-law, Michael Enright, was a former (very disillusioned) colleague of Peter’s for many years at Maclean’s. When someone suggested to the raging Michael that “Peter Newman is his own worst enemy,” he replied, grandly: “Not while I’m alive!”
To complete his romantic circle, in 1993 Peter met “the woman of [his] dreams.” Alvy Joan Bjorklund from Peace River country (where I’ve canoed down the mighty Peace) was less obviously smitten — “as we said goodbye, she devastated me with a firm handshake and an equally firm ‘Goodnight, sir.’”
But they got beyond that — she was lovely, friendly, and straightforward — and they married. He was sixty-six and she was forty-two. She has since spent many years pursuing a doctorate in Europe, so in their married life they have moved more than ten times. She was not deterred, before marrying Peter, by overhearing one disapproving matron say of him, “He’s had three wives and God knows what else.” Readers of his memoirs, which seem almost boastful as they list names, will have a good idea of “what else.”
As for his career as an author, a shrewd stock market investor would be well advised to study Peter Newman. When it comes to seeing new career opportunities in the book world the man is a genius, seemingly gifted with second sight, or the power of prophecy. He was gifted at spotting prosperous wagons where he might hitch a ride and at cutting ties with wagons (perhaps named Ignatieff) that were going off the road.
Having established himself as the best political writer in the country, he put the helm hard over and sailed into the almost uncharted waters of Canadian business at the highest level with The Canadian Establishment in 1975. It was a huge success, eventually selling 250,000 copies and spawning several other business books from him in the same style. Along the way M&S handled an injunction from Paul Desmarais of Power Corporation (there’s that word again) by undertaking to sticker a requested correction over the offending passage in the warehouse; M&S staff stuck 75,000 corrections in one weekend, and a legend was born.
The last of these spinoffs was Peter’s admiring look at Conrad Black, The Establishment Man. Yet when Conrad came to grief, falling afoul of the U.S. legal system and spending years in a Florida jail, it was Peter (travelling light, as always) who wrote some of the most savage accounts of his fall, both in magazines and in Here Be Dragons. Although, to be fair, it is possible that Conrad and his wife Barbara Amiel were more exercised about the book’s paragraph that tells the world about Barbara, between marriages in London, accepting a dinner date invitation from Algy Cluff, the chairman of the Spectator, with the warning: “There’s one thing I have to tell you. I won’t be wearing any knickers.”
This seems an appropriate point to pay tribute to Peter C. Newman the writer. His research is astonishing, he knows what will interest people (you have to admit it), and he wrote it up entertainingly, tossing conventional prose expectations on a virgin-sacrificing fire (as you see). He is a great believer in the “Hey, Mabel!” school of book writing, where you try to include lots of stories so good that readers will read them out excitedly to their spouses or companions. It’s a good model for any writer to emulate.
Having milked the business world dry with half a dozen bestsellers (which almost on their own had kept M&S afloat), Peter decided to enter the world of Canadian history writing previously owned by Pierre Berton.
A brief word about Berton who, in Peter’s words, “had enough energy to light a city.” Unlike Peter he was a fine, lively speaker, and his promotional tours were not the difficult process that Peter the refugee gamely but awkwardly undertook, leaving Canadian Club audiences glad to see him, even in a fur hat, but underwhelmed by his speech. By contrast Pierre was a big, booming force of nature, who had been used to practically dictating how his own books were to be published at M&S. I inherited him, and recall a meeting in the boardroom where Pierre, a large presence, sat with his agent/manager Elsa Franklin, to discuss his new book, Niagara.
Had I read it? Yes. And I had only one suggestion from that first reading. “It would be good, Pierre, somewhere on that first page, to remind readers just how big the Falls are, and how much water goes over every second.”
Pierre sat straight in his chair and trumpeted in that well-known voice: “I will not alter the artistic integrity of my work for mere commercial purposes.”
This was terrible. Pierre Berton was offended to the depths of his artistic soul. What should I do?
I burst out laughing and said, “Come on, Pierre, you do it all the time!”
And he, to his eternal credit, burst out laughing, too. Later he signed his copy of Niagara to me, with a flourish: “To Doug, who saw it through.”
Jack McClelland would have been delighted to see through Peter’s new historical project, a history of the Hudson’s Bay Company. (After a spell at Thunder Bay’s Sleeping Giant Literary Festival held inside the magnificently re-created Fort William, I’m sorry that the Northwest Company lost the fur trade battle, but the HBC history was still a wonderful project.) But M&S was not exactly flush with cash, and Peter’s agent (and mine), the incomparable Michael Levine, saw an astonishing prospect here. In effect he took Peter away from his old pal Jack and, in Roy MacSkimming’s words, “negotiated a half-million-dollar package deal with Peter Mayer, international CEO of Penguin who was building a hardcover program in Canada. The advance was the largest for any Canadian author to that point. Newman’s departure started a trend that would see many of the country’s top authors, and many emerging authors as well, migrate from Canadian-owned publishers to the multinationals.” That has been the main trend in Canadian publishing in the last twenty years, and the power-seeking missile, always ahead of the trend, was the author who started it.
I have skipped lightly over Peter’s years as the editor at Maclean’s from 1971 to 1982. Peter once described it as an important mission to save a vital Canadian institution (his chapter on these years is modestly entitled “Captain Canada to the Rescue”). On another occasion he wrote caustically, “My job description was to save Maclean’s, not to be the indulgent daddy of the dysfunctional family that edited it.”
“Newman stories” (and he boasts about being “the most cussed and discussed” journalist of his era) abound from those days when the magazine was wrenched from being a monthly general interest magazine into a weekly news magazine. And opinion is sharply divided. Scores of the most talented writers in the country were attracted to the Great Experiment. Some failed and some thrived. Among those who thrived was Ann Dowsett Johnston, who remembers that Peter’s habit of posting weekly public memos pointing out pieces from the last edition that he liked was “inspiring and effective.” To others it was like grade school, and a formal production system for teacher’s pets.
R
ona Maynard is one deeply critical voice. In her memoir My Mother’s Daughter (which I published, having published her mother, Fredelle Bruser Maynard, before her) she writes about her days at Maclean’s: “What I hadn’t bargained on was the toxic emotional climate — equal parts awe, suspicion and resentment — that Newman inspired in the entire office. He slunk in and out on his way to interviews with titans, a tall, hunched figure whose thick black eyebrows gave him an air of impenetrable world-weariness.” Later she calls him “a famously reluctant personnel manager” whom she was glad to leave in her past. Later, of course, Rona was able to apply the lessons she had learned when she became the popular and successful editor of Chatelaine.
Still, the stories go on about the Maclean’s hothouse in those days, and the exotic plant at the centre. There are hundreds of such stories, worth an entire book.
I was delighted when our long acquaintanceship led to a full author-editor relationship. Ironically it came about in sad circumstances, where I had played the role of the villain. As president of McClelland & Stewart I had felt obliged to cut our ties with the boutique non-fiction publishing house of (John) Macfarlane, (Jan) Walter, and (Gary) Ross. When, given the tough Canadian book market, nobody proved to be interested in buying the house, for all its merits, I closed it down. Naturally, we honoured all of their existing contracts, making sure that fine books like Roy MacSkimming’s The Perilous Trade (no comments please) were properly published.
Among the Macfarlane Walter & Ross, authors that we inherited in this way was Peter C. Newman, and he and I gravitated together, with me becoming his editor. I enjoyed working with him — although his deadlines continued to expand and he went on writing “like it was 1975!” — a time when publishing, ironically, did not require modern long lead times.
And there was one memorable moment when I met him for dinner in the main dining room at the Royal York Hotel. Now this, historians will recall, was close to the epicentre of the Great Toronto Fire of 1904. This time, Peter came in wearing his distinctive Greek fisherman’s hat (hey, maybe that’s what women like) and I was relieved when he finally took it off, and put it on the table near the festive candle that lit the table.
Some minutes later there was a terrible smell and Peter grabbed the cap, now singed and almost smoldering. What with one thing and another, it was a fairly oily item, very combustible, and the thought flashed across my mind that like Chicago and Mrs. O’Leary’s cow, downtown Toronto had almost been swallowed up in flames thanks to a fire started by Peter’s damned Greek fisherman’s cap. Flame of Power, indeed.
My first contact with a Conservative prime minister came the day I sat on Olive Diefenbaker’s hat. This was in a Royal York Hotel suite, of the type I got to know much later when I was the president of the Toronto St. Andrew’s Society, and we held the traditional St. Andrew’s Ball for 700 tartan-clad people at the hotel. The grateful hotel people granted a free hospitality suite to the lucky president, so that between bouts of whooping and whirling to the pipes of the 48th Highlanders in the ballroom below, the prez and his/her pals and official guests could relax over fortifying drinks.
There were no fortifying drinks in evidence the day that David Manuel and I were ushered into the presence of Mr. Diefenbaker and his wife. They were visiting Toronto on that 1968 day for political reasons, since the recently deposed Tory leader was still a very active member of Parliament, and a crowd-pleasing draw. But that day he had other things in mind. He was enjoying being courted for his memoirs by every Toronto-based book publisher.
At Doubleday Canada my boss David Manuel had learned of this particular visit, and had arranged a pilgrimage to his suite on very short notice. I, a beardless boy, was pressed into service (“You’ve got a tie? Good.”) to form a sort of mini-entourage, to make our desire to publish the Grand Old Man even more obvious, and (like a hired mourner) even more solemnly impressive. That was my role.
Unfortunately I was so over-awed that when the former prime minister answered the door, shook our hands, ushered us into the suite, and, in that familiar high yet rumbling voice, invited us to have a seat, I sat down on Olive’s hat. It was a little straw number, as I recall, heavily lacquered, and very fragile, resting there unnoticed on the low couch.
As I sat, at the very first crackle, a sort of miracle occurred, a hat-avoiding piece of levitation, a Canadian equivalent of the Indian rope trick. Somehow, as I started to squash the hat, my thigh muscles sprang into action, and I shot upwards again, leaving the precious hat badly crushed, but not totally destroyed.
What happened was physically impossible, and my thighs were sore for days, but it happened. (I now believe every story I read of wispy 100-pound mothers lifting two-ton trucks off their children in an emergency. This, too, was an emergency.) And Olive was very nice about it, as she rescued the hat and dusted it off, insisting that there was no real damage done.
We did not, however, succeed in persuading Mr. Diefenbaker that Doubleday Canada was the company to which he should entrust his memoirs.
That honour went to Macmillan of Canada, so when I moved there in 1974 our paths crossed again. Not that I had any direct contact with the man who was always “Mr. Diefenbaker” to us (even behind his back, although he also liked “Chief”), as we published his three sets of memoirs. Two stories from those days. First, on one of the occasions when he “lost” the proofs of the urgently needed book — as happened with all three volumes — Hugh Kane flew to Ottawa and visited him in his office, which was dominated by a huge, historic, glass-topped desk. When in Hugh’s presence the proofs were “found” again, everyone was delighted, and the Chief basked in the general congratulations. The atmosphere was so relaxed and congenial, in fact, that Hugh felt able to perch happily on the edge of the great desk.
There was a loud crack, and like the Lady of Shallot’s mirror, the glass top “cracked from side to side.”
Fortunately, by this stage in his career the former prime minister was somewhat deaf, and there were papers on the desk concealing the extent of the damage. So, although he was a man of some courage who had fought with the artillery during the war, Hugh chose to look theatrically at his watch (“My goodness, is that the time?”) and apologize for having to dash away to catch a plane back to Toronto.
Later, when Mr. Diefenbaker was promoting his just-published book, a Macmillan colleague named Shirley Knight Morris was in charge of escorting him by limousine from TV station to radio show to newspaper interview. It was so hectic that in the limo taking him to an afternoon signing session at Simpsons department store, the kind-hearted Shirley looked in alarm at her aged fellow passenger, grey-faced, hunched, and slumped in such utter exhaustion that she seriously thought of redirecting the limo to the nearest Emergency Department.
But as the car stopped outside the Yonge Street store, a crowd formed on the sidewalk, and a remarkable transformation occurred. In the back seat Mr. Diefenbaker reacted to the sight and sound of the crowd like an old warhorse scenting battle and hearing the exciting sound of bugles again. Before Shirley’s astonished eyes he seemed to inflate, his puffed-up cheeks regaining their colour, his nostrils flaring, and his spine stiffening. In ten seconds he lost about twenty years, as he bounded out of the car to shake hands and meet “his people” — and to sell hundreds of books to fans who were delighted by his vitality.
I found the same vitality, at all times, when I worked with Brian Mulroney. Unlike Mr. Diefenbaker (who relied on the hidden pen of an unfrocked academic — a man I found supremely unlikeable — named John Munro) Brian Mulroney wrote his Memoirs himself. Every word. In longhand.
That had not always been the plan, after Avie Bennett used his excellent contacts with people like Mulroney’s old pal from St. Francis Xavier, Sam Wakim, to entice Mulroney to sign up with M&S to publish his memoirs. At the outset, there had been some thought of having a writer work with him, and I had secretly approached one or two likely candidates. But i
n the end Brian — as he soon became — decided to do it himself, with the aid of a hard-working researcher based in Kingston named Arthur Milnes.
I know that Arthur — a sturdy, down-to-earth fellow who has always been fascinated by political history — now spends a fair portion of his life explaining that, no, he did not write Brian Mulroney’s Memoirs. In fact, his role was clear. He was the researcher who went on ahead of the author, producing research notebooks that reminded Brian what he had been doing, week by week in, for example, 1986. Armed with these reminders — and often with the results of specific follow-up research requests — Mulroney sat down and wrote his memoirs.
This hands-on approach is so unusual in the world of political memoirs that as the book’s editor and publisher I decided to emphasize the fact that Brian Mulroney really had written it himself. That’s why the hardcover edition has endpapers, right beside the book jacket, that show, clearly and legibly, pages from his hand-written manuscript.
The front cover of the book is predictable — a full-face, full-
colour, smiling photograph of Brian Mulroney in his prime ministerial prime. It’s instantly recognizable, it’s a good photograph of a beaming, good-looking man, with even the slightly undersized mouth (about which the cartoonist Aislin was so fundamentally rude) showing a fine set of white teeth. And the author liked it. That’s the way that ninety-nine percent of publishers around the world would have “packaged” the book.
Yet, on reflection, I think it was a mistake. A mistake, because it showed the side of Brian Mulroney that many people love to hate. The super-confident — even cocky — guy who’s got it made, the guy who loves the limelight, loves the prime minister’s role that leaves him waving to the crowds like a star on a red carpet somewhere.
Stories About Storytellers Page 28