In Other Words

by Anna Porter

  Key’s art director and all-around guru was Ken Rodmell. He had trained under Toronto’s legendary graphic designer Allan Fleming, perhaps best known then for creating the CN logo and designing Canada: Year of the Land, the bestselling Centennial book.V Ken had been art director at The Canadian when Harry BruceVI—one of the best writers in Canada—was editor. Balding and sturdy, Ken walked about eight kilometres to work every day from Moore Park, wearing his trademark running shoes, blue jeans, and all-weather-and-occasions jacket. He, too, played in a jazz band and on the “boys’ baseball” team. Ken was viewed as preternaturally wise. Sometimes you had to wait for him to tell you what he thought of a particular idea, but it was worth the wait. He was generally right.

  Michael Rea was the accountant or CFO—Key was not much on titles. Already an environmentalist (later he became COO of the Nature Conservancy), Rea tended to be conservative about new ways to spend money, and he too was usually right.

  Annabel Slaight ran Greey de Pencier Books, Architecture Canada, and a few other small magazines, but she was looking for something she could really get excited about. That turned out to be children’s magazines. She and Mary Anne Brinckman, an old friend of Michael’s, took over the Young Naturalist, a children’s magazine owned by the Young Naturalist Foundation, and turned it into OWL, a colourful, fun magazine for kids aged eight to twelve.

  Mary Anne, who was beautiful in a languid, French sort of way, and Annabel, who was intense and very persuasive, headed across the country to raise money and build circulation. The trip worked beyond our expectations. I know, because for many years I was on their board. Circulation grew, grandparents subscribed, and OWL spun off Chickadee for the younger kids, books, videos, French language and Italian editions, and a television series on TVO. I have a few stills from an early show with my daughter Catherine investigating giant bubbles with Dr. Zed.

  Annabel, Mary Anne, and I spent long evenings that stretched into early mornings, sitting on the floor of the Brinckmans’ Rosedale home, drinking wine and dreaming up new ways of presenting information to kids and of attracting investors to a Canadian nature magazine. In 1985 Phyllis Yaffe, a former executive director of the Association of Canadian Publishers, took over as the operating boss of what had become OWL Communications.VII

  There were so many bright young people in those shabby, interconnected offices, so much talk about opportunities, a general sense that something exciting might be just around the corner, why not meet it halfway. Michael, supposedly at the hub of all that activity, had a small office in what seemed like a passageway to the lavatories.

  He had the strange notion that if you invite bright people to inhabit your space, they will eventually produce bright ideas, a few of which may even be good for business.

  It was obvious that Key had the creative energy, the imagination, and the potential to launch a terrific book company.

  * * *

  FOR THE FIRST few months at Key, I shared an office with Peter Gzowski. Neither of us was paid. There was a shoulder-high divider between his area and mine and Peter delighted in pretending it was a French pissoir, with himself peering over the top with the faraway look of a man taking a leak. He was generally good-humoured, with occasional lapses into general gloom and flagrant self-pity.

  Peter was a three-pack-a-day smoker with brown-framed, drooping glasses, short beard, floppy hair, and a pock-marked, sallow complexion. He was an atrociously bad dresser. He wore sweaters with holes and shirts that popped out of his belts. There was not a word of exaggeration in the very funny story he wrote about his clothes habits for Canadian Living.

  He regretted his decision to host 90 Minutes Live. He thought he should have known that, unlike Barbara Frum and Adrienne Clarkson, he was not cut out for television. He had seemed exactly how he had felt on camera: ill at ease and almost embarrassed. It was the only complete failure on an ever-steeper upward climb: the youngest managing editor of Maclean’s, editor of the Star Weekly, a competitive jock, a quick, perceptive writer with a flare for minute observation, a CBC star.

  When M&S commissioned Peter to write the story of two young people who survived a plane crash only to face horrifying pain, hunger, and the prospect of cannibalism, I was surprised he accepted. It was not the kind of story I imagined he would like to write, but I was wrong about that. He was, as he saw it, “between gigs” and seemed to enjoy writing as a reporter, without expressing opinions of his own. The Sacrament was published in 1980.

  Most of the time our shared office resembled a day in the London fog, which I didn’t mind though I began to develop watery eyes and occasionally had to go outside for a breath of air. I had been a one-pack-a-day person since I left the convent but cut the habit after Julia was born, and now did not seem like a good time to start again.

  Peter desperately wanted to be back at the CBC and I kept reassuring him that they would call, but each day that they did not he lost more confidence. Meanwhile he kept writing for Canadian Living. He won a National Magazine Award for his 1981 profile of Wayne Gretzky and started to write The Game of Our Lives, about his own love of hockey and about Wayne Gretzky and the Edmonton Oilers.

  A couple of times Peter took me to Woodbine. He loved the races and knew something about a few of the horses and trainers. He won and lost a few times, but betting wasn’t why he went. It was at Woodbine where he first met Gillian Howard, the woman he finally settled down with for the rest of his life. She was warm, affectionate, funny, and thoughtful, a perfect partner for Peter.

  Now and then we would go down to one of the restaurants or bars along The Esplanade or on lower Church Street and he would test book ideas on me, such as a biography of his great-great-grandfather Sir Casimir Gzowski, a rather romantic figure who was born into Polish nobility and emigrated to Canada after the Russian invasion of Poland. An engineer, soldier, businessman, and statesman, he had overseen the building of our roads, bridges, and railway lines during the nineteenth century. Peter was proud of the Gzowski name. He explained that for a few years during his childhood he had lost it when his mother had married a man called Brown who had insisted that Peter should take his name. Fortunately, he changed his name back to Gzowski before he graduated from university.

  Peter was as take-no-prisoners competitive on the golf course as he had been when angling for jobs he wanted. His home course was at The Briars on Jackson Point, Ontario, but he played many of the courses in Canada and a few elsewhere. The PGI, or Peter Gzowski Annual Invitational Golf Tournament has now raised, I am told, about fourteen million dollars for literacy.

  Of course the CBC did finally call and Peter did go back to radio in 1982, to host Morningside. Though 1982 was the year we launched Key Porter Books, I didn’t offer a book contract to Peter (much as I would have liked to publish his memoir and a book about his grandfather), because Jack and I had agreed that I would not poach M&S authors. Peter Gzowski was an M&S author.

  By 1987 Morningside had more than a million listeners. Peter’s gravelly voice, his enthusiasms, his delight when discussing someone’s prize pumpkin or a new novel with Mordecai Richler have become legendary. Then there were the political pundit segments, the lively letters to the show (such as for the “duke and the fork” question, when hundreds of people chimed inVIII), the memorable meals, the light verse, the “torrent” (Peter called it) of short stories, and of course the personal reports from across the country.

  For the next fifteen years, an interview on Morningside meant a noticeable jump in book sales. I remember driving our first authors to the CBC for their chance to talk with Peter on the air. His producer invited me on his show when my second novel, Mortal Sins (yes, I would become a writer as well), was published. He was confident and charming, shifting with surprising ease from topic to topic in a broad-ranging interview, but he made sure that the title of my novel was mentioned every few minutes.

  He produced several Morningside Papers spinoffs, won a ton of awards and appointments, and had he lived long enoug
h, he might even have won the competition he thought he had with Bob Fulford for the most honorary degrees. We miss him.

  * * *

  I. André Kertész: A Lifetime of Perception was produced in 1982 to coincide with the opening of an exhibition of his photographs. André, who was another Hungarian expat and a famous artist, would phone me frequently to complain about his life, his dealers, and his sense that time was passing him by, that his kind of photography was no longer valued.

  II. In 1988 John Macfarlane partnered with Jan Walter and Gary Ross to form the publisher Macfarlane, Walter & Ross (Stevie Cameron’s On the Take was a notable release). He continued to have a storied career in magazines and journalism, including a second stint at Toronto Life from 1992 to 2007, and as editor and co-publisher of The Walrus 2008–2014.

  III. Roy had been a Liberal member of Parliament and spent twelve years in the Canadian foreign service with postings in Saigon, Prague, and at the United Nations. In 1978 he published Canadians on the Nile, 1882–1898.

  IV. Sandy—like Pierre Berton, Peter Worthington, Earle Birney, Helen Hutchinson, John Turner, Joe Schlesinger, and Allan Fotheringham—had worked for the University of British Columbia’s The Ubyssey. Joe Schlesinger would go on to a long career in television and journalism. John Turner was finance minister in Pierre Trudeau’s cabinet and, briefly, prime minister of Canada. Helen Hutchinson became anchor of W5 and Canada AM. Publishing may not be a profitable business, but where else can you spend time with such extraordinary people?

  V. Fleming was a genius at typography, advertising, and magazine design (he had been art director at Maclean’s), and creative director at the University of Toronto Press. He designed stamps and logos (for the Ontario Science Centre, for example) and posters. It would have been difficult to walk down a major street in Toronto in the late sixties without seeing some of his handiwork.

  VI. Harry’s Down Home: Notes of a Maritime Son is one of Key Porter’s best books, and the book Jonathan Webb is proudest to have edited for us.

  VII. Later she moved on to Alliance Communications, where we met again while I was on the Alliance board. She led the team to win the television licences for Showcase and History Television. When Atlantis bought control of Alliance, she was appointed CEO of Alliance Atlantis and oversaw the company’s worldwide operations. As I write this, Phyllis has assumed the role of Canada’s consul general in New York.

  VIII. Who said, “Keep your fork, Duke, there’s pie,” and where was it said?

  Farewell to the Seventies

  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.

  * * *

  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 books
tores. 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.