Publishing is more than just a business in which books and periodicals are brought to the marketplace and sold to the public, like so many other commodities. Publishing is a cultural force in society that depends on the energy and creative drive of individuals (publishers, editors, and other staff) to sustain and develop a company’s unique character in the production and development of salable books by a reliable stable of authors for an interested audience. “I publish authors, not books,” was
Jack McClelland’s credo. Although his company, McClelland & Stewart (M&S) sometimes teetered on the verge of bankruptcy, his panache inspired a new generation of publishers. He and many other people transformed the nature of publishing in Canada: the Neilsons of Quebec City; Lorne Pierce of the Ryerson Press; Hugh Eayrs, John Gray, and Gladys Neale of the Macmillan Company of Canada; Anna Porter of M&S and Key Porter Books; Douglas M. Gibson of Macmillan of Canada and M&S; Alan Crawley and Contemporary Verse; Stan Bevington of Coach House Press; jwcurry of Curvd H&z; and fine press publisher, Margaret Lock, of the Locks’ Press. For these people and many others in publishing, their contribution and dedication represent a life’s work.