MY CHANCE TO be a bright young person at Key came initially with a trip to Texas to see whether the owners of the Where magazine chain might be interested in a merger or, better still, a buyout. We already had a few Key to magazines in Canada, so why not expand? The Texans were interested, or at least happily surprised, but it took them a very long time to come to terms. That first meeting—they were stunned to meet a woman representing a potential business partner—was followed by another when Michael de Pencier and I went to Dallas together. This time they took us more seriously. By then Key had bought their fifteen-magazine chain and Michael was exploring a new venture of television in hotel rooms with them. Michael was the perfect acquisitor: patient, friendly, laid-back, willing to negotiate, making deals on a handshake. Key became the chief purveyor of content for Wheres in most major cities in North America, a thick, flashy Where in London, one in Paris, and one in New York.
Another time, Michael asked me to meet with a potential investor in Where Budapest, a fellow Hungarian who lived in a very posh part of London. Although I took his aged dachshund for a geriatric pee stroll, he was not yet willing to invest in a Budapest franchise. Eventually, though, he did. A few years later, Michael would be running a forty-two-city (six were franchised) magazine chain.
But long before then, we had set up Quintus Press to produce a limited-edition book on the work of artist Christopher Pratt. The project had been suggested by Christopher’s dealer, Mira Godard. We approached art expert David Silcox to write an appreciation of Pratt’s work.I Ken Rodmell designed a magnificent book with soft and inviting paper, lovingly reproduced paintings, a trimmed canvas slipcase, and a handmade, signed, and numbered Pratt silkscreen print in each copy. Three hundred copies, priced at $2,100 each, sold out so quickly that Michael wondered why anyone would be discouraged by the book business.
Marjorie Harris and I produced a few door-stoppers for other publishers, the best of which is a book we dreamt up in Georgian Bay, Farewell to the 70s: A Canadian Salute to a Confusing Decade. It’s an enjoyable romp in the company of some of that era’s memorably entertaining characters and writers. Sandra Gwyn, Ottawa insider, wrote about Pierre Elliott Trudeau: “Our Style Was the Man Himself.” Peter C. Newman wrote that our new history began in the seventies. Bob Fulford contributed “Seventies-Speak” (“impact” as a verb, “the bottom line,” “getting it on,” and other gems I hope will vanish in time). Environmentalist, bike-riding Toronto mayor John Sewell wrote about the city. Filmmaker Fil Fraser, who was then married to my friend Ruth (now Bertelsen), wrote about the “best years” of Western Canada. Actor-director Donald Shebib and Bob Fulford’s movie critic pseudonym, Marshall Delaney, wrote about Canadian feature films. The Toronto Sun’s Joan Sutton wrote about love; comedian, actor, director Don Harron about preoccupations; and psychiatrist Dr. Ned Shorter about sex in the seventies. John Eaton (yes, Eaton’s was still alive then) wrote about retail. Parliamentarian Judy LaMarsh wrote about women in the news, and Doris Anderson wrote about women in society.
As befits a door-stopper, the book was full of photos and cartoons of the era. We featured Paul Henderson’s winning goal from the 1972 Canada-Russia series, Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed at the Calgary Stampede, Bob Stanfield dropping the ball, Joe Clark celebrating his 1979 victory, René Lévesque chain-smoking, Pierre Trudeau at the height of Trudeaumania and at his storybook wedding to Margaret.
On the back flap there are glamorous photos of Marjorie with curls and me wearing Gloria Steinem glasses. Farewell was published in 1979, and it’s still fun to read—even if you didn’t live through the seventies. Canadians were a lot more hopeful and effervescent then, or perhaps that was just how Marjorie and I saw them and ourselves.
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BY THE END of my first decade in Canada, I felt I belonged here. I no longer saw myself as an immigrant, and my frequent visits to Bantam had cured me of any notion that it would be fun to work in New York. It had been a heady time to be in Canadian publishing. Our writers and our poets had become well-known; some were even celebrities. And there were great new voices. Michael Ondaatje, for example, had published six poetry collections before the end of the decade, and Alistair MacLeod’s first book of poetic, inspired stories, The Lost Salt Gift of Blood, was published by M&S in 1976. Lorna Crozier’s first three poetry collections appeared before the end of the decade, as did six of Pier Giorgio Di Cicco’s. Many of Al Purdy’s young poets had come into their own.
The International Festival of Authors opened its doors in 1974. It quickly became the place to hear and meet writers. Robertson Davies, Margaret Laurence, Hugh MacLennan, Al Purdy, and Farley Mowat all read there during the festival’s first years. Greg Gatenby, the amiable M&S slush-pile king, became its first, usually charming but sometimes cantankerous, artistic director, a commanding figure who could bring in authors from anywhere in the world.
Publishing houses sprang up like weeds across the country. Stan Bevington’s Coach House Press, started in Toronto in 1965, was printing beautiful books. Douglas & McIntyre in Vancouver published its first title in 1971. Thistledown Press was born in Saskatchewan in 1975. The prestigious Porcupine’s Quill published its first title in 1975. Breakwater Books opened its doors in St. John’s, Newfoundland, in 1973. The House of Anansi, that brave experiment by two editors, and New Press, once almost a protest movement, were becoming the establishment.II Canadian books had grown to occupy more than a quarter of retail space in bookstores. At the Frankfurt Book Fair, publishers from all over the world were coming to us to ask what new Canadian writers had been discovered. They were eager to buy “options,” to purchase without even reading the manuscripts. Ten years earlier, we had never heard of options.
Literary agents too were no longer a rarity. In the early seventies, agenting in Canada was a genteel kind of business, usually practiced by soft-spoken, highly intelligent women. New Yorker Nancy Colbert, later joined by her husband and fellow New Yorker, television producer Stan Colbert, set up her agency in 1976. By the end of the decade, there were a few more agents. Beverley Slopen, an M&S graduate, almost drifted into agenting (she was helping Morley Torgov with his manuscript) while still writing for Time magazine and working for the Book of the Month Club. By 2017 she represented more than a hundred writers. Lucinda Vardey and Denise Bukowski started in the early 1980s. Jan Whitford, whose authors included Booker Prize–winner Yann Martel and Giller winners Bonnie Burnard and M. G. Vassanji, joined Vardey at the end of the eighties. Dean Cooke, a Seal survivor, followed in 1992. Bruce Westwood, who by 2017 ruled over a bevy of other agents representing more than four hundred writers, started in 1995. Anne McDermid founded the McDermid agency in 1996.
The seventies were a great time for the theatre too. There were new plays by Judith Thomson, Erika Ritter (Key Porter would later publish her The Hidden Life of Humans), Michel Tremblay, and David Fennario (his Balconville debuted at the Centaur in 1979). John MacLachlan Gray and Eric Peterson’s Billy Bishop Goes to War filled theatres across the country, as did Linda Griffiths’s Maggie and Pierre. Bill Glassco opened the Tarragon Theatre in 1971 to feature Canadian plays. I was thrilled to be invited to join the board.
On one of my many forays to the American Booksellers’ Association’s annual fair, Marc Jaffe took me over to the Random House booth and presented me to its owner, Si Newhouse. We shook hands and stood around, neither of us quite sure what we were supposed to be talking about, until Marc mentioned that I was a fine publisher in Canada but would do even better in New York. Newhouse seemed unimpressed, but a few days later I had a phone call asking me what my conditions would be for moving to New York.
I could not think of any.
By the end of the seventies I was not only a Canadian nationalist but the married mother of two and stepmother of another two children.
I was here to stay.
I. Silcox, the leading authority on Harold Town’s work and on the life and work of David Milne, is the author of Painting Place: The Life and Work of David B. Milne and the sumptuous art book David Milne: An Introduction to His Life and Art. For twelve years he was president of Sotheby’s Canada.
II. For a more complete list see Roy MacSkimming’s The Perilous Trade: Publishing Canada’s Writers (McClelland & Stewart, 2003).