by Anna Porter
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).
Taking a Leap in the Dark
I RESIGNED FROM the M&S Board in July 1982. With his customary aplomb, Jack wished me luck: “There is little left to add except to say that I love you dearly but that is hardly news.” We agreed that when I started a publishing company, I would not take any M&S authors unless they had already left his firm and that I would stay out of fiction publishing, at least for a few years. He had decided to appoint his long-time colleague Linda McKnight president and to devote his own time to solving M&S’s financial problems.
Key Porter Books, a partnership between Michael de Pencier and me, was launched in the fall of that year with what became a number one bestseller: Malice in Blunderland: or How the Grits Stole Christmas, by veteran columnist Allan Fotheringham. Allan was already a friend. We had met shortly after I wrote him a note suggesting that, as with most good journalists, there was “a book in him.” He was so surprised by that suggestion that he came to Toronto and allowed me to buy him lunch at the Inn on the Park’s Café de l’Auberge, more stately than the Bistro, where I usually ate with M&S authors, but I wanted to make the occasion formal enough to impress. This was in 1977, when I was on my way out of M&S. Allan, who had expected a stern woman of what they used to call a “certain age,” as befits an august publishing firm’s editor-in-chief, wondered whether I was an assistant sent along to excuse a busy boss lady.
Because he had such a huge presence in the media, I had expected a much larger man. I assumed he would be cut from the Pierre Berton cloth. Several publications featured his photos above his columns, but they were mere mug shots: a round, pugnacious face, brownish hair, no neck, eyes staring defiantly at the observer. He was the “emperor” of the back page of Maclean’s and national columnist for the Southam chain of newspapers, known for his irreverent wit, his disregard for conventional wisdom, hatred of hypocrisy, and caustic views on politicians of all parties. He was one of the Parliamentary Press Gallery boys (the “boys” included one gal, the courageous westerner Marjorie Nichols, who was, at age twenty-three, the first woman in the Ottawa Press Gallery).
He talked about his birthplace, Hearn, Saskatchewan (one of his usual lines: “People from Hearn are called Hernias”; and another: “It’s a village so small we all had to take turns being the village idiot”), and about The Ubyssey, the UBC student paper that produced so many professional writers. He said he lived mostly in Vancouver, had an intense dislike of Toronto, and abhorred Ottawa, where he also had an apartment: “the city that fun forgot” or “ennui on the Rideau” as he billed our capital city.
Peter Newman, he claimed, had “invented” him when he hired Allan to write a national column for Maclean’s from Vancouver. It was a shock for the rest of Maclean’s staffers to learn that he was going to cover national politics from BC. It was even more of a shock that Fotheringham became the most-read columnist in the magazine.
Allan’s initial surprise at my youth was followed by his shock at discovering that I was very pregnant and needed a bit of help from the waiters to extricate myself from the armchair.
Because he was busy covering news stories and flying around on the “People’s Republic Airline” (Air Canada), he didn’t get around to writing a book until early 1982, when Key Porter began. Allan claimed afterward that he barely glanced at the contract and had no idea what Key Porter was, though he did know that I was his publisher because I locked him up in Jack Batten’s house for the four weeks (my deadline) it took him to write the book. Jack had gone on vacation while he and Marjorie Harris were sorting out their short-lived marital differences, so the house was available to rent. It was a great way to isolate Allan from the temptations of Toronto. By the time Jack and Marjorie patched things up, the manuscript was finished.
Most days I took him nourishment and copies of his past columns I thought he’d find inspiring. Some of the columns, slightly altered, found their way into the book, but none of his readers minded. Allan was a master of the short, perfect description, the witty put-down, an inventor of words and phrases that became part of the language used by other journalists and fans. Such as “The thread that unites the country is the distaste for the Natural Governing Party, alias the Liberals.” Or this description of Premier Brian Peckford: “shirty, prickly, with eyes that dart like dark cherries plugged into an electric guitar.” Or “René Lévesque himself, the world’s greatest advertisement for lung cancer, a tiny man in a grubby raincoat with a paster-downer hairstyle” Or: “Montreal is the only Canadian city with 4 a.m. traffic jams.” Or his affectionate description of British Columbia as “Lotusland,” even while he maintained a home there and people stopped him in the street to greet their hometown hero.I Walking into the Hotel Vancouver, he was hailed by the doorman with “Good afternoon, Dr. Foth” and some witty bit from one of his columns.
We had our first sales conference at home in our dining room. Tom Best, who was a sales rep with book distributors Stanton MacDougall at the time, remembered our two dachshunds barking through much of the presentation.
Malice in Blunderland began with “Someone, God knows, has to save the country” and ended with the judgment that Pierre Trudeau was, after all, “a dilettante.”
It was an instant bestseller. Allan toured from coast to coast, signing books, haranguing interviewers, making his fans laugh and ask for more. It was hardly surprising that there were six more books and that every one of them followed the first book to the bestseller lists. He was feared and loved in about equal measure. I remember eating lunch with him in Ottawa’s Chateau Laurier and watching in amazement as senior politicians, even those he had maligned in his columns, marched up to his table to engage him in discussion about the day’s events in the House of Commons. Since he was fond of elucidating puzzling political situations for his readers, Allan too began to refer to himself as “Dr. Foth.” Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, famously, would call him “Mr. Fuckingham.”
Meanwhile he replaced panellist Gordon Sinclair on Front Page Challenge, adding one more occupation to his list of financially rewarding pursuits. He was, then and for many years to come, Canada’s highest-earning columnist. He insisted on mentioning this fact at every opportunity where journalists gathered, thus ensuring their everlasting envy. But even among them, he had his admirers.
* * *
IT WAS IN the Hotel Vancouver’s bar that Allan introduced me to Jack Webster, “the Oatmeal Savage,” a tough-talking, Glasgow-bred radio and television talk-show host such as the country had never seen. He had been a major in the British army and would talk to anyone, no matter how “high and mighty.” He didn’t care about etiquette, which had stood him in good stead in 1963 when he negotiated with the RCMP and guards on behalf of prisoners in the notorious New Westminster federal pen. He had managed to procure the release of the hostages and gain promises of more humane treatment for the inmates.
Webster didn’t engage in pleasantries, even with Shirley MacLaine (though she claimed he was cuddly), or Prime Ministers Jean Chrétien and Pierre Trudeau. But as I got to know him, I realized he did have an emotional side. He was devastated by a decision he had made years ago when he had allowed doctors to perform what he thought was a minor brain surgery on his depressed wife. Instead of becoming cheerful, she became an invalid for the rest of her life. Her depression, he now realized, was the result of the loss of their first child, conceived before they married and given up for adoption, as had been the custom in 1940s Britain. Now Webster was obsessed with wanting to find that daughter.
When we went to his hideaway on Saltspring Island, he played bullfrog to my kids’ butterflies in the swimming pool (you had to be there!) and later serenaded them with a wild assortment of songs. He accompanied himself on his small self-playing piano programmed with his songs. The one I still remember is his broad rendition of “Oh but it’s hard to be humble when you’re perfect in every way . . .”
In the end, he did find his “love child” and they managed to build a relationship before Webster died.
* * *
ONCE CATHERINE AND I drove to Chilliwack, where Foth had attended secondary school, for the annual harvest party, and Allan taught my daughter how to milk a cow, something neither of us imagined he had ever done. We met his mother, who painted lovely flower pictures, and his stepfather, who was a dedicated gardener. Like Webster, Foth had his soft side.
* * *
MALICE IN BLUNDERLAND put Key Porter on the publishing map. It was irreverent, perceptive, politically astute, and prepared the way for a whole slew of books on Canadian politics and politicians, most of which shot straight up the bestseller lists. They attracted national publicity and several letters from major law firms.
Allan Fotheringham was followed by journalist and troublemaker Claire Hoy; Val Sears, who gave us Hello Sweetheart, Get Me Rewrite; Red Tory and political insider Eddie Goodman with Life of the Party; political pundit Charlie Lynch; Maude Barlow on how our politicians had given away the country; and Donald Ripley on the down-and-dirty game of politics Down East.II
In Vines, a dark wine bar on Wellington Street, we persuaded journalist Stevie Cameron to write Ottawa Inside Out, the backrooms-and-bedrooms story of what really went on in political Ottawa under the Mulroneys. There was, indeed, a large, curious audience for books about politics in Canada. That ever-elusive book buyer “the general public” was interested in its country and the issues and events that influenced its daily life.
In 1982 the media saw us as the scrappy new kids on the block, and that was the year our scrappy lawyer, Julian, made the Eaton Centre remove the festive red ribbons from Michael Snow’s Canada Geese, an art installation in the centre’s great hall, on the grounds that Snow’s rights had been infringed. Julian had also been retained by businessman Norris Walker to sue CTV for libel over an eighteen-minute item on W5 accusing Walker Brothers of being dangerous polluters. Julian relishes jury trials. I attended his forty-five-minute address to the jury, a spectacular performance, Julian pleading, shouting, ending with “Won’t you . . .” his voice quivering, “Won’t you,” descending into tears, “Won’t you let Norris Walker die with his name cleared of this infamy?”
The jury awarded Norris Walker the largest damages in Canadian legal history at the time. Jack Batten wrote about the case eloquently in his bestseller Judges.III
We had a lot to celebrate at our annual New Year’s dinner with the Frums. Catherine had just turned ten and she was starting to make new friends at school. (She had been bullied the previous year, an experience she later wrote about as columnist in the Toronto Star.) Julia had entered kindergarten without anxiety, insisting that I let her walk to Deer Park School with her friends. The Journal, the CBC’s new evening news program, was launched in 1982, eight years after Barbara’s leukemia diagnosis, and she was as brilliant on television as she had been on radio. After the first season, she became the program’s sole host. She loved the work. The stress and late nights didn’t bother her. Co-workers thought of her as a sort of den mother with time for everyone who needed time, small, thoughtful gifts for special occasions, sandwiches if the day went too long. Her dog, Diva, who accompanied her to work, became everyone’s pet, even those who otherwise loathed dogs.
When their daughter Linda was graduating from McGill, Barbara and Murray took us to dinner at Johnny Arena’s upscale eatery, Winston’s, to discuss ideas for her career prospects. Linda, Barbara was convinced, would be a writer. She had been editor and writer at the McGill News Magazine. Barbara knew her daughter had the talent, the tenacity, the opinions, the aptitude for research required (though I doubt she imagined Linda would be a senator one day). I suggested a book about Canadian universities from the students’ point of view. Barbara loved it but insisted I not tell Linda how the idea came about. She didn’t want her to know that her mother was concerned about her future.
When Linda graduated, I commissioned her to research and write what became Linda Frum’s Guide to Canadian Universities, another of Key Porter’s early successes.
* * *
I. In its 2011 congratulations to the City of Vancouver on its 125th birthday, The Globe and Mail listed the ten most influential people in its life. The list included both entrepreneur Jimmy Pattison and Allan Fotheringham.
II. Bagman was published in 1993 after arduous and very lengthy discussions with Julian about libel.
III. The decision was appealed and a new trial was ordered because the Court of Appeal determined the damages were too large.
Inviting the World to Love Canada
UNLIKE JACK, I enjoyed going to Frankfurt’s giant annual book market for publishers. It is the size of several football fields laid side by side and layered one over another in several halls. It’s noisy, smells of spicy sausage, sauerkraut, wet socks (it usually rains during the fair), sweat, anxiety, and fear. Each year there are the “big books” that everyone talks about and the quiet future bestsellers that no one mentions. Back in the eighties and nineties, and even in the mid-seventies, every publishing house worth mentioning and every literary agent worthy of the designation would be at the fair, displaying wares and ready to make deals.I We all arrived hopeful and some of us scurried home carrying the burden of failure. Able to speak five languages reasonably well, I enjoyed the company of publishers from other countries, many of whom became lifelong friends.
Key Porter’s first employee, Lorraine Durham, came with me to help sell our book ideas. She had great instincts for what would make saleable books, she had the necessary editorial skills, was well organized—I had always lacked a talent for tidiness—and, as Julian used to say, “she could charm the birds out of the trees.” I had found Lorraine at Key. She was about twenty-five years old, six feet tall, with blond hair, the figure of a fashion model, and a smile that could melt the hearts of even the toughest German and Japanese book buyers. The Australians nicknamed her “Petal” for her instant blush when confronted by Aussie humour.
* * *
ONE OF MY Frankfurt friends, Jürgen Braunschweiger of the regrettably named Reich Verlag, invited me to join a loosely knit organization called Motovun, named after a small medieval town on top of a conical hill on Yugoslavia’s Istrian Peninsula. At least, the last time I saw it, there was still a Yugoslavia for it to belong to.
We were all encouraged to bring our plans for illustrated books, our husbands, wives, and children. Catherine and Julia came a couple of times, and Julian once. Bato Tomašević, the elegant Motovun president during the years I attended, was born in Montenegro but viewed himself as resolutely Yugoslav and tried to bring together publishers from both sides of the Iron Curtain at a time when the Cold War was still frigid and the two sides rarely met.II Bato was president of Revija, a Belgrade publishing house.
There were also publishers from Denmark, China, Bulgaria, West Germany, Italy, Yugoslavia of course, Finland, France, Norway, Sweden, Poland, th
e UK, the United States, and one Canadian, me. Some of the original members, including Jürgen, had bought and renovated houses in the village. One of the annual meetings was held on a ship sailing from Dubrovnik to Venice. Both Catherine and my mother—she was complimented by all on her startling green eyes—came that time.
Today Motovun is in Croatia and the house where we used to meet has been confiscated by the government. Bato, who had dreamt of a peaceful country undivided by racial strife and long memories of past battles won and lost, had the distinction of being condemned to death by both Croatia and Serbia. The sentence had less to do with his publishing and more with his having been head of Yugoslav television before the country descended into violence and ethnic cleansing.III
An exceptionally pretty Canada book was suggested by Jürgen and endorsed by the Italian Automobile Club for its book club. I consulted Ken Lefolii, freshly arrived at Key after Michael bought a small “what’s on” magazine called Toronto Calendar, which Ken had been running. Now he became one of the group of bright people around those offices, a guy with a lot of ideas and not much to do.
Ken Lefolii had been the hero of the legendary 1964 Maclean’s magazine mass walkout that saw most of the great names in Canadian journalism—Peter Gzowski, Harry Bruce, Bob Fulford, and Ken himself—resign en masse in the wake of his firing. It had been a point of principle: no editorial interference by management. Ken talked Jack Batten, who was a copy editor at the time, out of joining the others. Instead, he persuaded the new editor, his replacement, to promote Jack to writer—a job in which he has thrived ever since. “I thank Ken practically every time I see him,” Jack says.
