by Elaine Dewar
Dan and his associate, the very able editor John Metcalf—a Member of the Order of Canada for his long service to Canadian literature—worked this book over from end to end. John does not use a computer, and so he does not use email. One communicates with him on the telephone or on paper, which is sent through snail mail in an envelope with an actual stamp, a technology stretching far back into the most distant haze of time. He writes his notes on a physical copy of the manuscript by hand. John argued with me that this book should be treated seriously, that I was too flip, that the personal stories went on far too long. He labelled them char for character and drew lines through them indicating that they belonged in the trash. I love telling stories, human stories, my own stories, so I was inclined at first to throw John in the trash, but gradually his point of view acquired merit. So I strove to find a better balance between char and straight reportage. While some char has been retained (because this is a story and stories need characters, and this story, being a business story, needed a lot of character to get readers past legal jargon and the numbers), his comments turned out to be really helpful.
Dan Wells is young, but is nevertheless an old-school publisher who actually reads and rereads and rereads again the entire manuscript he has decided to bring out and keeps coming back at his writers on all points that he is concerned about, that he believes could be improved. He invariably pointed to real weaknesses in my argument or in my storytelling and often had ideas about how to strengthen the argument with more end notes or how to tighten the stories and pace them better. Dan provided the kind of editorial experience that I so prized when working with Marq de Villiers as he edited Toronto Life or with Dawn Macdonald when she ran City Woman. He took extraordinary care, as they did, to bring to readers the very best work he could induce a writer to produce.
Working with Dan and John was heartening: I was relieved to find that careful attention is still brought to bear in Canadian publishing. Artists who use words need editors and publishers who will help wring the very best from them. Do you hear that Canada Council and Department of Canadian Heritage? It’s important to fund the artists, but don’t forget to send Canadian publishers more money!
This story presented a number of difficulties in the telling. Stuart Robertson, for many years a leading lawyer advising writers and publishers on the laws relating to publishing, is an expert on how to look those difficulties in the eye and to find a way to appropriately frame a story (fingers crossed!) so it can be told fairly. He is subtle, careful, can imagine how words may be misconstrued, and always draws a bead on confused or ill-considered prose. He improved this book in every way. Thank you, Stuart for your care and kindness.
All the people who helped produce and market this book—thank you. Natalie Hamilton and Casey Plett took charge of publicity. Chris Andrechek designed and with Ellie Hastings managed the production. Copy-editing and Indexing were done by Allana Amlin. And the cover design is by Michel Vrana.
All those who permitted me to interview them but insisted that their names be withheld, thank you for your time and your information, and I hope that you can live with the result. I am in debt to all those who allowed me to interview them and permitted their names to stand. Jack Stoddart and Marc Côté were especially helpful and gave me a lot of their time. Robert Prichard pointed me in the right direction: this book would not have been possible without his suggestions. Avie Bennett was good enough to give me an interview, for which I am most grateful. Doug Gibson gave me two, and suffered many questions which were discomfiting, so thank you Doug. John Honderich was open, helpful, and focused on what really matters, as always: thank you, John. The University of Toronto’s office of Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy was extremely helpful, and in the end, University of Toronto was as open and transparent as it could be. A special thanks to Elaine Waisglas and Michael Hirsh for getting me into that in-person event in Toronto when the Department of Canadian Heritage was trying to keep me out.
All errors that remain after fact checking and Googling and endless arguments about what things might mean with clever husband, are of course my own.
End Notes
Attributed to Getulio Vargas, both an elected President of Brazil, and later, its dictator.
“Giving Away the Store,” Brian Bethune, Maclean’s, July 10, 2000.
See: Jason McBride, “It’s Alive: Canadian book publishing stirs” Canadianbusiness.com, August 20, 2013.
Figures for Ontario, where about 80 percent of English language publishing takes place, are provided by the Ontario Media Development Corporation. In 2010, Ontario-based book publishers had operating revenue of $1.286 billion reduced to $1.23 billion in 2012, a 6% decline. Operating profits also decreased from $144,771 million to $115,036 million. See: “Industry Profiles, Book Publishing” at omdc.on.ca/collaboration/research and industry information. Federal figures are available from Statistics Canada in the Daily under the title Book Publishers. The report of May 6, 2016, describes book publishing in Canada for the year 2014. Total operating revenue for all Canadian publishing was only $1.7 billion on total sales, of $1.4 billion of which 81% were domestic, 18% foreign. Trade books accounted for $331 million of those sales, whereas educational publishing took in revenues of $366 million. Due to the bankruptcy or shutdown of several Canadian independents and the government- permitted sale of Canadian companies to foreign owners, such as Penguin Random House Canada, $472 million of foreign-owned companies’ titles were sold in Canada that year, versus $335.4 million that were originated by Canadian-owned companies. Foreign authors sold $683 million worth of books in Canada, whereas Canadian authors sold fewer—$681 million. Ebook sales amounted to only 13% of total sales. Total number of new published titles (all forms including educational and trade) were 14,218, of which 10,433 were Canadian. See: Book Publishing Industry 2014, at statscan.gc.ca.
Newspaper publishing has declined radically. In 2015, total Canadian newspaper revenues fell to $1.4 billion, down 12.6% from 2014. National advertising income fell 24.2%, half of what it had been in 2012. See: “Canada newspaper ad revenue slumped in 2015: industry group” by Alistair Sharp, Reuters.com, May 13, 2016.
See: “North Star,” by Guy Lawson, New York Times Magazine,” December 13, 2015.
See: “Language of Nazism revived in Germany: long-taboo terms defended under guise of free speech as nationalist feelings surge,” by Anthony Faiola and Stephanie Kirchner, The Washington Post, as published in Toronto Star, December 11, 2016.
See: StatsCan Publication 2012, 87F004X—Publishers and also The Perilous Trade, Roy MacSkimming, page 4.
See: “Indigo Reports Q1 Results: Strong revenue growth continues same store sales growth 7.7%,” August 9, 2016, attributes double digit growth to general merchandise category.
See: Book Publishing in Canada: Market Research Report, January 2016, at Ibisworld.ca/industry/book_publishing.html. See also: “It’s Alive: Canadian book publishing stirs,” by Jason McBride, Canadianbusiness.com, August 20, 2013.
See: 2013 Salary Survey, Quill & Quire, at: quillandquire.com/wp-content/uploads/QQ-salary-survey-2013.pdf.
See: Book Publishing in Canada: Market Research Report, January 2016, by Ibisworld. Book industry revenues and unit sales have been declining steadily since 2009, and this trend is expected to continue through 2020. Book publishing’s contribution to Canada’s GDP has been declining at about 1.8% per year and that trend too is expected to continue though 2020 while Canadian GDP grows at the rate of about 2.1% per year over the same period. See:
Ibisworld.ca/industry/book_publishing.html.
The leaders and main decision makers of Penguin Random House Canada are Kristin Cochrane, President, and Brad Martin, CEO.
See: “Book Publishing in Canada: Market Research Report,” January 2016, Ibisworld, at ibisworld.ca/industry/book publishing.html.
The joke goes like this: the man’s family looked for h
im here, there, and everywhere for years and years. They hired private detectives, they scoured the obituaries of faraway newspapers, but he’d vanished without a trace. Finally, one of the man’s brothers heard he was working in a travelling circus, a circus coming soon to their town. When it arrived, the whole family went to see the show under the Big Top hoping to catch sight of him. No luck. Disappointed, downcast, they had just about given up when they finally spotted him, dressed in a clown suit, sweeping up the piles of fresh poop left in the sand by the elephants and the big cats. They ran to him, grabbed him, hugged him.All is forgiven, they said, please, please leave this sordid life you’re living and come home with us.
What? he replied with total disdain. And give up show business?
Ibid, Daily, Book Industry, Statistics Canada, May, 2016.
StatsCan survey of Canadian publishing 2012, 87F004X-Book Publishers
See: “Devaluing Creators: Endangering Creativity” 2015, the report of an income survey by The Writers Union of Canada along with Quill & Quire at www.writersunionon.ca/sites/all/files.
The Perilous Trade: Book Publishing in Canada 1946–2000, by Roy MacSkimming, McClelland & Stewart, trade paperback edition 2007.
See: Petroleum Industries, The Canadian Encyclopedia, www.canadianencylopedia.ca
Who Has Seen the Wind, W.O. Mitchell, Macmillan, 1947; People of the Deer, Farley Mowat, Little Brown, 1952; The Golden Trail, Pierre Berton, Macmillan, 1952.
“Rhetoric and the Trajectory of Multicultural Policy in Canada and the United Kingdom,” by Anna Dewar, unpublished MRes Thesis in Public Policy and Management, School of Politics and Sociology, Birkbeck College, University of London, 2007.
See: The Perilous Trade by Roy MacSkimming, McClelland & Stewart, 2007, p. 30.
Ibid, MacSkimming, p. 31
Ibid, MacSkimming, p. 24.
Ibid, MacSkimming, p. 23.
Ibid, MacSkimming, p.154.
Ibid, MacSkimming, p. 141-147
Ibid, MacSkimming, p. 147-148.
http://http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/committee-for-an-
independent-canada.
Ibid, MacSkimming, pp. 147–149.
For all this material on the Waffle within the NDP I am indebted to Cameron Smith’s remarkable history of the Lewis family. Unfinished Journey: The Lewis Family, Summerhill Press, 1989. See page 451.
Ibid, Cameron Smith, p. 438.
Ibid, Cameron Smith, pp. 440–450.
See: “Nationalism Versus Continentalism: Ideology in the Mirror of the MacDonald Royal Commission,” Ph.D. thesis of Gregory Inwood, 1997, University of Toronto.
See: “Canadian Culture/Trade Quandary and the Magazine Case” by Dennis Browne, Canadian Parliamentary Review, February 20, 1998.
See: Office of the Historian at https//history.state.gov/milestones/1969-1976.
See: “The Cold Facts” by John Aitken, Maclean’s, February 1, 1974.
We presumed and we were right: see Chile and the United States: Declassified Documents Relating to the Military Coup, September 11, 1973, Peter Kornbluh, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 8.
See: “Inside the Watergate Hearings,” by John S. Leopold, Maclean’s ,December 1, 1973.
See: Cloak of Green, by Elaine Dewar, chapter 16, endnote 2 on the role of MA Hanna and John J. McCloy in the 1964 coup.
Ibid, MacSkimming, p. 214.
See: “Canadian Foreign Investment Review Act Revisited” by Barry J. O’Sullivan, Fordham International Law Journal, Article 8, Vol. 4, Issue 1, 1980. See also how Bantam was taken over by M&S, and Simon & Schuster was forced to partner with General Publishing, as described by MacSkimming in The Perilous Trade, p. 328.
See: “Canada. Hanging Out the Welcome Sign,” by Jamie Murphy, Time Magazine, Dec. 24, 1984.
See: “Mister Right” by Michael Posner, The Walrus, September 12, 2012. See also bio of Charles McMillan, Shulich School, York University.
See: The Investment Canada Act: Thresholds for Review, at www.ic.gc.ca/iec/site/ica-lc.nf/eng/h.
Ibid, Investment Canada Act, Section 14.
See: a careful explanation of the origin of the policy in Yankee Doodle Dandy: Brian Mulroney , by Marci McDonald, p. 162–163.
The popular vote was 5,667,543 for the Progressive Conservative; 4,205,072 for the Liberals; 2,685,263 for the NDP. The PCs and Liberals won almost the same number of seats in Ontario: the Conservatives won the election due to the number of seats won in Quebec and Alberta.
See: The Daily, Book Publishing 2014, Statistics Canada, May 2016.
According to Statistics Canada, only 22.6% of households had a computer in 1999.
The first blogging software was made available in 1999, but came into its own after September 11, 2001, when major news media could not keep up with events. See Blogging: How Our Private Thoughts Went Public, by Kristin Roeschenthaler Wolfe, p. 9.
YouTube was founded by three PayPal employees in 2005, and bought by Google in 2006.
See: Evidence, Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, testimony of Michael Wernick, May 9, 2000.
See: Copps’ Letter of Opinion June 23, 2000, copy in possession of the author.
See: “Giving Away the Store: Avie Bennett’s unprecedented donation of industry icon McClelland & Stewart brings praise—and a storm of criticism,” by Brian Bethune, Maclean’s, July 10, 2000.
See: “Has the Canadian Government Turned the Page on Its Book Policy? An Opportunity for Foreign Investors to Consider Investments in the Canadian Book Industry,” by Shawn C.D. Neylan, Michael Kilby, John Leopold, Michael Gelinas of Stikeman Elliott LLP, June, 2014.
My entanglements with both the foreign-owned and the Canadian-owned side of Canadian publishing, and with several other entities involved in this story, include the following:James Lorimer, a Canadian publisher and diehard evangelist for a nationalist Canadian publishing policy, saved the second book I wrote, Cloak of Green, from oblivion. It had been sold originally to the Canadian “controlled” subsidiary of a foreign entity (meaning the Canadian company was owned 51% by Canadians who theoretically controlled it, and 49% by the foreign entity that actually did). The Canadian owners were my former agents. They had bought my book at the proposal stage from my new agent, who had bought their agency from them when they became publishers. When they were pushed out of the publishing company by the higher ups in New York (how’s that for “control”?), the next group of Canadian owners rejected my book (as well as many others bought by their predecessors) at first draft stage. I had researched it over the course of six years. Their consultant sent me a one page kiss-off note suggesting I go back to English 101. James Lorimer took over the project, published it, promoted it, and it is still in print both in English and in Portuguese translation. (And unfortunately for Lorimer it is also available on the Internet for anyone who wants to read it for free.) Needless to say, years of work would have been wasted, but for a Canadian-owned and publicly supported publisher willing to take a big risk.
Penguin Canada was supposed to publish my most recent book, SMARTS, in Canada. Penguin backed out after it merged with Random House of Canada to become Penguin Random House due to the worldwide merger of the parent companies. The union of the Canadian subsidiaries was permitted by the Minister of Canadian Heritage, James Moore. With the help of friends with bookmaking skills, I published SMARTS myself through the createspace/Amazon system. The book is available in English everywhere except Canada. Chinese and Thai publishers bought translation rights. Was I annoyed at Penguin? Yes and no. I would never have been able to do the research to write the book without Penguin’s advance. It was hard work to get the book produced and available for sale on the Amazon system, annoying work. But for the first time, I published without having to please anyone but myself, and that was exhilarating.
I
have a history with Torys LLP dating back to that first book I wrote, which was not published, the one that stirred great controversy and cost Random House a pile of money. Under its former name, Tory, Tory, DesLauriers and Binnington, it acted for the developers who sued me and Toronto Life Magazine over our story about them. Torys LLP was also involved in one of two class-action lawsuits that I helped bring against various publishers concerning electronic rights to freelancers’ articles. Torys represented the opposite side in one of those cases.
Ibid. Stikeman Elliott.
See: “Everything’s on the table” by Daniel Leblanc, Globe and Mail, April 25, 2016.
See: “Has the Canadian Government Turned the Page on Its Book Policy? An Opportunity for Foreign Investors to Consider Investment in the Canadian Book Industry,” by Shawn Neylan, John Leopold, Michael Gelinas, Stikeman Elliott, 2014.
See: Section 36(1) Investment Canada Act.
See: Simon & Schuster Canada website, Kevin Hanson appointment as publisher in 2013 + Stikeman Elliott blog re: publishing and foreign ownership, 2014.
See: A Great Game, by Stephen Harper, Simon & Schuster Canada, 2013.
“HarperCollins Canada gets out of distribution, CEO David Kent to leave.” Deborah Dundas, Toronto Star, November 4, 2014. See also Mark Medley, Globe and Mail, same day
See: “Jared Bland named M&S publisher” Quill & Quire, July 18, 2016.
Chapters had 65% of the market according to evidence given by Competition Bureau officials to MP Inky Mark in a hearing of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage. See: Evidence of March 20, 2000.
See: admission of Chris Busutil to MP Mauril Belanger re: Chapters’ share of the market in evidence, March 30, 2000. See Firefly complaint as cited by MP Mauril Belanger in Evidence of same day.