Author Archives: Douglas Gibson

Uxbridge (Or, More Formally) Tuxbridge

by Douglas Gibson

Uxbridge (or, as Terry Fallis amended it, since it was a formal dinner, “Tuxbridge”) staged a fine “Book Lover’s Ball” on April 14 in aid of the local Library.

The setting was the local “Wooden Sticks Golf Club,”  a name that spoke to the ancient tradition of golf clubs with hickory handles. I was able to mention that in my ancient Scottish village, I actually grew up playing golf with “wooden stick” clubs, which at the time seemed normal to me. But then, true to my “make things last” Scottish roots, that evening I was wearing the tux that my parents gave me as a 21st birthday present. Dinner jackets don’t change much over 47  years, and nor does my lean shape — nor my respect for my parents’ admonition that if I looked after the tux properly I “should get many years of wear out of it.”

The excellent Terry spoke about his three books (The Best Laid Plans, The High Road, and this fall’s Up and Down, which will prove that he can make readers laugh, and also make them cry) and delighted the audience after the salad course. I did my stuff after the (very fine) chicken course, talking about a few of the authors featured in my book, and telling stories about them.

But the best speaker of the evening  — and by far the best storyteller — was Michael, a local dentist. He spoke about his family’s experience  escaping from Vietnam as “boat people” who were sponsored by kind people in Uxbridge. The local librarian made a special point of always asking him what he was reading, and, like dental patients flossing before an appointment (an interesting professional analogy), he read voraciously, to be always able to answer her question.

When the family was moved away from Uxbridge to downtown Toronto, although his parents both worked two jobs, things were hard for the young family in a tough area. In time their Uxbridge friends contacted them with an offer that would bring them back to Uxbridge, with a down payment on a house supplied by an anonymous benefactor. The family accepted gladly, on one condition: that they learn the name of the benefactor, in order to pay him or her back.

It was the librarian.

Now here was Michael (like his brothers and sisters a successful professional) giving back to the Uxbridge community by providing major sponsorship for this fundraiser for the Uxbridge Library.

Stories really matter, don’t they?

Peterborough and the Mafia

by Douglas Gibson

One interesting side of a publisher’s life is how the families of your authors regard you. In my book I write about how in mid-summer Alistair MacLeod was hard at work finishing No Great Mischief, and I was guilty of putting unremitting pressure on him.

As the book says, “In the course of these frantic weeks I had occasion to call Alistair in Cape Breton. The phone was answered by a MacLeod son to whom I introduced myself as the man who was ruining his father’s summer, ha ha. “Oh yes,” he said, heavily, and passed the phone to Alistair.”

In the Peterborough event, held at Traill College downtown, Lewis MacLeod (who teaches in the English Department), was my host and the MC of the performance I gave there. He spoke of growing up aware of the name “Doug Gibson” as someone who distributed good things “like a second-rate Tooth Fairy” but who over time developed a more threatening side, “like a Mafioso.”

What an interesting take on the two sides of the Publisher/Editor, part Tooth Fairy and part Mafia enforcer!

In the audience were two others with family links to one of my authors, Orm Mitchell and his wife, Barb, the biographers of W.O. You can imagine my delight when Barb told me that in my acting out a phone conversation on stage, I “sounded just like W.O.!”

It’s wonderful that my friendship with W.O. and Merna has descended down to the next generation, where Jane and I are able to stay (not for the first time) with our friends Orm and Barb.

Recommended Reading

by Douglas Gibson

Now, a new book, where I played no role in the publication.

But my admiration for Robert Levine’s Free Ride (with its gentle and understated subtitle How Digital Parasites Are Destroying the Culture Business, and How the Culture Business Can Fight Back) led me to jump at the invite from my friend Duncan McKie to attend the recent music industry convention on March 23 at The Royal York, where Levine was the keynote Breakfast Speaker.

The key message of his Fall 2011 book, published by Doubleday, is that every single part of “the culture business” – newspapers, magazines, television, movies, books and music – is under siege from the “information wants to be free” online economy. And the preference for consumers to get online stuff free . . . and to regard copyright as an outdated concept that interferes with true freedom . . .  is driving every single one of these industries, and the creators they represent, over the cliff. Meanwhile technology companies build billion-dollar businesses on content that belongs to others . . . like authors, to give one example.

Common wisdom tells us that the music industry’s problems with pirates like Napster were solved by iTunes, and that it provides a useful model to solve this problem in other industries. Right?

Wrong.

Clearly iTunes is good for Apple, and for consumers who feel good about paying something for their music. But it’s bankrupting the music industry. The people working there know it.  The artists who are getting less studio time, as quality suffers, know it, too. And that’s why Robert Levine (with whom I chatted before his speech) was invited to confirm the crisis to a deeply worried Canadian audience.

Robert Levine deserves great credit for demonstrating that “we can’t go on this way” . . .  this means you, writers and publishers. Sadly his book is weaker in the area of providing solutions. But reading it makes us aware of just how big a problem creators now face, as the big Internet players fund advocacy groups that  frame the debate about “freedom” as opposed to fair return for copyright holders.

Serious stuff.

A Remarkable Book Launch for a Remarkable Book

by Douglas Gibson

On March 18, I went to an event at Ryerson University to celebrate the launch of an important book just published by University of Toronto Press. The book is The Literary Legacy of the Macmillan Company of Canada: Making Books and Mapping Culture, and the author is Ruth Panofsky, who is a Professor in the Department of English at Ryerson.

Canadian book publishing has not been a subject well covered in our books. The striking exception is The Perilous Trade, by Roy MacSkimming (which I would praise, even if I had not published it at M&S). Now this fascinating new book by Ruth Panofsky turns a spotlight on this now-disappeared company that for 90 years, from its creation in 1905, was one of Canada’s most important publishers, arguably M&S’s main rival in the great work of creating Canadian Literature.

A warning and a disclaimer: I am hopelessly prejudiced in this matter, because I was Editorial Director and then Publisher at Macmillan from 1974 until I left to set up my own imprint at M&S in 1986. So I am delighted to see attention paid to this vitally important company, and in such a thorough and wide-ranging way as Ruth Panofsky has achieved.

A further disclaimer: Ruth, who interviewed me at length, has chosen to tell the sweeping story in six sections, each attached to a leading figure. The last such figure is me, in a section entitled “Editorial Coda 1974-1986: Douglas Maitland Gibson.” And the portrait painted of me is very, very kind. If I were to quote many of the last 30 pages you might accuse me of being conceited, instead of the true situation, where I am humbled. Here are the last two sentences in the book.

“Moreover, Gibson brought Macmillan’s publishing ethos to McClelland and Stewart where it touched his own imprint, Douglas Gibson Books. In the end, notwithstanding the company’s gradual demise and the eventual disappearance of its imprint, Macmillan’s legacy endured in Gibson’s lasting relationships with writers and the landmark books he edited – many by authors with former ties to the venerable Macmillan Company of Canada.”

What can I say?

Except thank you to Ruth Panofsky to devoting her attention to this now-vanished company, and to U of T Press for bringing it out so expertly, and for staging a launch party where the author and Quill & Quire’s Steven Beattie staged a discussion that was so lively that even retiring members of the audience (that would be me!) felt obliged to get involved. An interesting event, about an interesting book.

Aurora Public Library

by Douglas Gibson

This March event was my first appearance at a library (apart from the Wolf Hall Theatre, in the London library), with the enterprising Blue Heron Books on hand to sell copies. I hope that there will be many other library events around the province and the country.

The talk was held in the Magna Room in the library, which reminded me of just how extensive the impact of Magna is on the community (and have you ever driven around the massive Magna main campus, modelled on Versailles, just east of town?) I did not get around to mentioning Wayne Lilley’s balanced but properly critical book Magna Cum Laude: How Frank Stronach Became Canada’s Best-Paid Man, which I was proud to publish half a dozen years ago. It criticized Frank for excessive interest in his money-losing racetracks, and for corporate governance that neglected share-holders, two themes that were to become headline news in the years after the book was published, when the Magna Chairman, a former politician named Mike Harris, was ridiculed for the rich pay-out granted to his friend Frank.

Ah, well, the Magna Room was a fine space, and I had an enjoyable evening.

There was one uneasy moment, when, in answer to a question, I spoke about Brian Mulroney sympathetically. This provoked the cynical question “Did you pay him in cash?,” which I pretended not to understand.

Edmonton

by Douglas Gibson

My time as the invited Corus Lecturer at Grant MacEwan University allowed me to spend an entire day on campus, visiting and chatting with classes. Very interesting, especially the sociology of facing a Media Studies classroom where the 30 students are all hidden behind vertical fixed computer screens, on which they are typing . . . who knows what? I had some success in attracting their attention, since some of them followed me to the John L. Haas theatre that evening, where the audience of about 300 seemed to enjoy the evening. The description (attached elsewhere in this website) by the West Edmonton Local uses nice words like “captivated.”

Roaming around downtown Edmonton next day I came on a fascinating Ukrainian-language bookstore, which I was informed is “the biggest in North America.” Who knew?

Close by, I came on a stretch of Jasper Avenue East made up of interesting old buildings erected around 1912-13. One of them, in the “flatiron” style, was named “The Gibson Block.” I regretted not having a camera with me, because I would have enjoyed posing beside it. Ho, ho.

Not so fast. When I investigated the historic plaque, I learned that the building was erected by one William Gibson (good) who came west from Ontario (good, and no doubt earlier from Scotland, very good) and erected this building, where the street level featured a well-known eating place called “The Gibson Café.” All very good, until I reached the line “with its now-notorious sign outside ‘White Help Only.”

Very, very bad.

I guess if we’re going to take pride in our names, we have to take the rough with the smooth.

— Douglas Gibson

Green Door Cabaret

by Douglas Gibson

The Lower Ossington Theatre is in the trendiest part of Toronto, near the junction of trendy Queen Street, and up-and-coming Ossington, where hip new restaurants sit alongside auto repair shops and cigar factories.

The Green Door Cabaret is a new venture by my friend (and theatre agent) Bob Missen, and I put on a Sunday afternoon cabaret there. Forget about striding around a stage. I perched on a bar stool and talked about my authors, while I flashed power point caricatures on the screen that Jane and I had rented. We’re becoming pros, able to rent mikes and speakers, or projectors and screens, as necessary.

Forty-five brave souls made up the (paying) audience, and it went well, give or take the odd technical glitch with the music that accompanies the slides. And I got to see a lot of old friends, including the amazing bookseller, Janet Inksetter. She earns the adjective this time by revealing that she read my entire book at one sitting! Surely an award of some sort is in order. And a job as a speed-reading book reviewer.

— Douglas Gibson

Supporting Striking Library Workers

by Douglas Gibson

On Sunday, March 25, the Writers’ Union of Canada joined the ongoing demonstration by striking library workers outside the Metro Reference Library. As an honorary member of the union, I was glad to be able to lend my support to this event, which was organized by Susan Swan and headed by TWUC President Greg Hollingshead.

After Greg and Susan, a number of other authors spoke briefly but vigorously in favour of libraries and their workers.  These speakers included Ken McGoogan, (the head of the Public Lending Right committee, which ensures that authors are recompensed for the use of their books in libraries), Erika Ritter, and me.

Photo: TPLWU Local 4948

I spoke (entirely unofficially) on behalf of publishers, none of whom were present (ahem), noting that publishers knew and appreciated the role of librarians. Then I spoke as an author, and as a member of the union who was glad to participate  in the event. I explained that I was a writer who had benefited from the libraries, pointing to the adjoining Reference Library and announcing that I had researched my own book “right there.”

Then I commented on the famous proudly ignorant statement by Doug Ford that he would not recognize the (library-supporting) Margaret Atwood if she passed him “in the street.” I was able to tell the crowd that in June I was in Kirkwall, a small town in the Orkney Islands, off the north coast of Scotland. There an excited Scot stopped me in the street, saying, “My wife’s just seen Margaret Atwood!” Since Margaret and I were both staff members of the visiting Adventure Canada cruise I was able to confirm the sighting, and he went off, thrilled. Clearly, people around the world do recognize Toronto’s famous author in the street. Doug Ford – who embarrasses Dougs everywhere – should himself be embarrassed.

I did not go on to comment that Rob and Doug Ford do not strike me (and this may be an unfair assumption) as people whose worldview has been shaped by much time spent in libraries. Nor did I go on to suggest that the library workers are in the front lines of a battle that concerns us all; battle between Tea Party-inspired politicians who believe that all taxes are bad, and must always be cut, and never, ever raised. This has led to an extraordinary event in Silicon Valley (as I learned on a brief recent trip to California) where there is extreme, billion-dollar private affluence alongside public squalor, with closed libraries, crowded schools and bad roads. The situation is so bad that major players at the head of some  Silicon Valley companies are organizing to raise private funds in support of public services. One company spokesman noted that people don’t like living in communities with these public flaws, hence the new fundraising movement.

It all reminds me of the American judge (was it Oliver Wendell Holmes?) who said flatly, “I enjoy paying taxes. With them I buy civilization.” I’m sorry now that I didn’t lead the crowd in a chant: “What Do We Want? . . . Civilization! When Do We Want It? Now!”

But, clad in my bright yellow, orange and red Buchanan tartan shirt, I learned a useful tip about making outdoor speeches against the roar of passing traffic. Speak loudly, and wear a loud shirt.

— Douglas Gibson

Shows for Seniors

by Douglas Gibson

With all the Scottish celebrations I gave only one show in January. This was at Christie Gardens, the fine Seniors’ Home in Toronto graced by my 90-year-old mother-in-law, Louise Brenneman. To my delight 70 residents showed up after dinner to see my show, and all seemed to go well. Jane and I even sold 18 copies of the book.

February, however, is a busy month for the show, and March is taking me as far afield as Edmonton. And as for the summer . . .

— Douglas Gibson

Letters to the Editor

by Douglas Gibson

One week in January I wrote fierce Letters to the Editor of two very different newspapers. My targets were on both ends of the political spectrum: Conrad Black and Rick Salutin. Surely this establishes some kind of record.

In the National Post on Saturday, January 21, Conrad Black assailed a book that I recently published under my imprint: Trudeau Transformed, by Max and Monique Nemni. He made the mistake of mentioning that he had not actually read the second volume of the series he dismissed as “hagiographies” and was relying on the excerpts that he had read.

My letter, which the National Post featured prominently, pointed out that he had broken “the basic law for book reviewers, that it is impossible to review fairly and honestly a book that you have not read.” The letter went on with equal vigour.

In his next column, on Saturday, January 28, Conrad Black began, “I regret offending my cordial acquaintance Douglas Gibson. And I salute him for coming to the defence of his authors, Max and Monique Nemni, biographers of Pierre Trudeau. I think I can set his mind at ease on some points.”

What follows strikes me as coming as close to an apology as Mr. Black can manage. Watch this space to see if he goes on to read and review the disputed book.

By way of contrast, in his Friday, January 21, column in the Toronto Star, Rick Salutin took aim at the respect shown for storytelling skills. His provocative headline “Enough with the Storytelling” was enough to rouse me, the author of a book entitled Stories About Storytellers, to protest in print. In my response, I praised the central role of storytelling, not only in our fiction, but in our non-fiction writers, too, including our politicians. I suggested that history shows that success – in elections, in courtrooms, in contract bids, and in book sales – goes to the person who tells the best story.

I would even go so far as to say that storytelling, like the opposable thumb, is a basic human characteristic. And stories, which allow us to get inside the heads and hearts of other people, are perhaps the original “social media.”

— Douglas Gibson