Until recently, McClelland and Stewart had been known as "The Canadian
Publisher," the country's longest-lived and best independent press. Its
dynamic leader Jack McClelland worked with successive provincial and
federal governments to help draft policies in the 1960s and 70s which
ensured that Canadian stories would, for the first time in the nation's
history, be told and published by Canadians. M&S introduced Canadians to
themselves while championing the nation's literature, bringing to the
world Margaret Atwood, Leonard Cohen, Mavis Gallant, Farley Mowat,
Rohinton Mistry, Alice Munro, Mordecai Richler, and many others. When
75% of M&S was gifted amidst great fanfare to the University of Toronto
on Canada Day 2000--"To achieve the survival of one great Canadian
institution," M&S owner Avie Bennett declared at the time, "I have given
it into the care of another great Canadian institution"--one could've
assumed that it would remain in Canadian hands and under Canadian
control in perpetuity.
But one would have been wrong.
In her controversial new book, Elaine Dewar reveals for the first time
how M&S was sold salami-style to Random House, a division of German
media giant Bertelsmann; how smart businessmen and even smarter lawyers
danced through the raindrops of the laws put into place to protect
Canadian cultural institutions from foreign ownership while cultural
bureaucrats looked the other way; and why we should care. It is the
story not just of the demise of the country's best independent
publisher, it is about the threats, internal and otherwise, facing
Canadian culture. The Handover is more than just a CanLit How-Done-It:
it is essential reading for anyone interested in the telling of Canadian
stories.
