Above all, I thank my family … Meg and Lauren and Lindsay and Alistair, and Katie and Cindy, for their support and understanding while I was touring and writing.
As for Jane, “my lovely and talented assistant,” techie, travel planner, fellow traveller, driver, dresser, gentle critic, and fond companion, words fail. But it’s all been such fun, we’ve got to keep on doing this.
Onward!
DOUGLAS GIBSON
Toronto, Christmas Eve, 2014
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
In 2007 the Globe and Mail called Douglas Gibson a “publishing icon.” Earlier the British wit Frank Muir noted that he wrote “alarmingly well for a publisher.”
In his first book, Stories About Storytellers (2011), he tells the story of his career as a Scottish immigrant who came to Canada in 1967, armed with degrees from St. Andrews and Yale, and a determination to do “something interesting.”
His career as an editor — and as a publisher who kept on editing — took him in 1968 to Doubleday Canada, then in 1974 to Macmillan of Canada, where he became the publisher in 1979. He established the first editorial imprint in Canada at McClelland & Stewart in 1986, and was the publisher at M&S (in those days “The Canadian Publisher”) from 1988 until 2004, when he moved back to concentrate on his imprint, Douglas Gibson Books. He “retired” in 2008 at 65.
He has won many awards over the years, and he is the first publisher to be made an honorary member of the Writers’ Union of Canada. He lives in Toronto with his wife, Jane, when he is not travelling the country with his one-man stage show, Stories About Storytellers. His website is douglasgibsonbooks.com.
Douglas Gibson (1943– )
ALSO BY DOUGLAS GIBSON
STORIES ABOUT STORYTELLERS “I’ll kill him!” said Mavis Gallant. Pierre Trudeau almost did, leading him (“Run!”) into a whizzing stream of traffic that almost crushed both of them. Alistair MacLeod accused him of a “home invasion” to grab the manuscript of No Great Mischief. And Paul Martin denounced him to a laughing Ottawa crowd, saying, “If Shakespeare had had Doug Gibson as an editor, there would be no Shakespeare!”
On the other hand, Alice Munro credits him with keeping her writing short stories when the world demanded novels. Robertson Davies, with a nod to Dickens, gratefully called him “My Partner Frequent.” W.O. Mitchell summoned up a loving joke about him, on his deathbed.
Stories About Storytellers shares these tales and many more, as readers follow Doug Gibson through 40 years of editing and publishing some of Canada’s sharpest minds and greatest storytellers.
Gibson is a terrific storyteller himself, and through his recollections we get an inside view of Canadian politics and publishing that rarely gets told. From Jack Hodgins’ Vancouver Island to Harold Horwood’s Labrador, from Alice Munro’s Ontario to James Houston’s Arctic, Doug Gibson takes us on an unforgettable literary tour of Canada, going behind the scenes and between the covers, and opening up his own story vault for all to read and enjoy.
TRY ANOTHER GREAT READ FROM ECW PRESS...
WHAT WAS I THINKING? Brilliant, fractious, mordantly funny, playwright/novelist/essayist Rick Salutin has been Canadian journalism’s agent provocateur for over three decades. Whether needling governments and politicians, holding public policy to account, or decrying the shortfalls of activist thought and action, he has been one of the most outspoken commentators of his generation.
In What Was I Thinking?, Salutin reveals his curiosity about both the world of the mind and the world of the here and now. His life has been graced with contact with extraordinary people from Hannah Arendt to Holocaust theologian Emil Fackenheim to goalkeeper-politician Ken Dryden, and we discover the profound influence their thought has had on his. But he has also had encounters with Conrad Black and Peter Worthington, joined his fellow coffee-drinkers in the infamous fight to save the west-end institution Dooney’s from displacement by Starbucks, and taken furious potshots at the political pandering of the nation’s media outlets.
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Copyright © Douglas Gibson, 2015
Published by ECW Press
665 Gerrard Street East
Toronto, Ontario, Canada m4m 1y2
416-694-3348 / [email protected]
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any process — electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without the prior written permission of the copyright owners and ECW Press. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
The letters of Hugh MacLennan are quoted with the permission of the MacLennan estate.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Gibson, Douglas, author
Across Canada by story : a coast-to-coast literary adventure / written by Douglas Gibson.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-77041-253-8 (pbk).
ISBN 978-1-77090-778-2 (pdf).
ISBN 978-1-77090-779-9 (epub)
1. Gibson, Douglas. 2. Authors, Canadian—Anecdotes. 3. Authors and publishers—Canada.
4. Publishers and publishing—Canada—Biography.
I. Title.
Z483.G53A3 2015 070.92 C2015-902806-X C2015-902807-8
Editor for the press: Jennifer Knoch
Cover design: David Gee
Text design: Tania Craan
Illustrations: Anthony Jenkins
The publication of Across Canada by Story has been generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country, and by the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund. Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien. L’an dernier, le Conseil a investi 153 millions de dollars pour mettre de l’art dans la vie des Canadiennes et des Canadiens de tout le pays. Ce livre est financé en partie par le gouvernement du Canada. We also acknowledge the Ontario Arts Council (OAC), an agency of the Government of Ontario, which last year funded 1,709 individual artists and 1,078 organizations in 204 communities across Ontario, for a total of $52.1 million, and the contribution of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.
Across Canada by Story Page 36