The Downfall of the Ryerson Press
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THE DOWNFALL OF THE RYERSON PRESS Ruth Bradley-St-Cyr Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctorate in Philosophy degree in English, Specialization in Canadian Studies Department of English Faculty of Arts University of Ottawa © Ruth Bradley-St-Cyr, Ottawa, Canada, 2014 ABSTRACT For 141 years, The Ryerson Press was both a cultural engine for and a reflection of Canadian society. Founded in 1829 as the Methodist Book Room, it was Canada’s first English-language book publisher and became the largest textbook publisher in Canada. Its contributions to Canadian literature, particularly under long-time editor Lorne Pierce, were considerable. In 1970, however, the press was sold to American branch plant McGraw-Hill, causing a cultural and nationalist crisis in the publishing community. The purpose of this thesis is to explanation many of the factors causing the United Church to sell the House. The purchase of an expensive and outdated printing press in 1962 has been blamed for the sale, as has the general state of Canadian publishing at the time. However, the whole story is much more complex and includes publication choices, personnel shifts, management failures, financial ruin, organizational politics, inflation, and the massive cultural shift of the late 1960s. Specifically, the thesis looks at the succession crisis that followed Lorne Pierce’s retirement, the Woods, Gordon Management Report, the New Curriculum, The United Church Observer, the practice of hiring ministers as managers, the formation of the Division of Communication, the proposed merger of the United Church of Canada with the Anglican Church of Canada, and falling church membership. ii This PhD dissertation is dedicated to the memory of Peter Gordon White, Editor-in-Chief of the United Church of Canada’s massive New Curriculum project, who set me on this trail in the first place. He died the year I finished this dissertation. Peter was a dear colleague, mentor, and friend, and will always be remembered and missed. “...[E]ducators, scholars, and heads of cultural institutions rarely emerge into public view, either during their lives or afterwards. No doubt they welcome this anonymity, especially during their active careers. But the result is a gap in the record, a national amnesia in cultural history, so that, ignorant of the past, Canadians live in a perpetual daze of newness.” Claude Bissell1 1 Introduction to Albert W. Trueman’s A Second View of Things: A Memoir (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1982), 7. iii CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS................................................................................................ V ABBREVIATIONS USED ............................................................................................... IX INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER 1 Editorial Vision: Lorne Pierce, 1957–1961 ...................................... 23 CHAPTER 2 After Pierce: John Webster Grant and John Robert Colombo, 1959–1963 .................................................... 45 CHAPTER 3 The Last Book Steward: C. H. Dickinson, 1937–1966 .................... 69 CHAPTER 4 The New Curriculum: Peter Gordon White, 1953–1965 ................. 96 CHAPTER 5 The United Church Observer: Al Forrest, 1955–1978 .................. 128 CHAPTER 6 Textbooks: Campbell B. Hughes, 1947–1969 ................................. 148 CHAPTER 7 Organizational Change, Church Union, and Divestment: Frank Brisbin, 1968–1984 ......................................... 172 EPILOGUE The Sale: McGraw-Hill Ryerson (MHR), 1970 ............................... 195 CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................... 214 BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................... 221 APPENDIXES 1. United Church Family Tree ................................................................... 237 2. United Church Membership, 1925–2011 ............................................... 238 3. Book Stewards and Editors, 1829–1963 ................................................ 240 4. Woods, Gordon’s 5-year Forecast, 1963–1967........................................ 241 5. Board of Publication Organization Chart, March 1965 ........................ 243 6. Brief History of the New Curriculum by Olive D. Sparling .................. 244 7. Projected Financial Figures, 18 May 1967 ............................................ 252 8. Circulation Figures for The United Church Observer .......................... 253 9. Interview: Jim Taylor on the Sale of The Ryerson Press, the founding of Wood Lake Books, and working with Al Forrest at The United Church Observer ........................................ 254 iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This research could not have been carried out, unfortunately, without the sacrifices of family, both financial and in terms of my time spent with them. I owe a great debt to my husband, Baudouin St-Cyr, and my children Nicole, Emily, and Daniel. My children’s teenage years were marked by the ups and downs of grad school far more than any teenager would wish, and yet our eldest is still brave enough to pursue a Master’s degree herself. I also owe a special debt to my mother, Doris Bradley, who supported my research at the United Church Archives in Toronto with food, tokens, theatre and opera tickets, and a place to stay. I also owe her the great debt of raising me, not just on Sundays, at Fairlawn United Church in Toronto. It would be more difficult, I think, to understand the internal workings of the United Church of Canada without having studied them from the inside since birth. Thanks are also due to my supervisor, David Carlson, and my thesis examiners Janice Fiamengo, Jennifer Blair, Lorna McLean, and Sandra Campbell. * * * When Peter Gordon White, editor-in-chief of the United Church of Canada’s massive, bold New Curriculum project, retired from the head office of the church in 1985, he compared himself to Prospero in The v Tempest, saying, “it’s time to divest of power, influence and responsibility and stop running things.”2 Even after retirement, though, White could still be lured back to his first love: book publishing. When Catherine Wilson became Director of the United Church Publishing House (UCPH) in 1990, White had already been convinced to return as editor-in-chief on a part-time basis by Randy Naylor, who followed Frank Brisbin as Secretary of the United Church’s Division of Communication. In the 1990s, UCPH was producing about twelve books a year for a church audience with titles like Faith in My Neighbour: World Religions in Canada (1994), A Million for Peace (1995), Hope is the Struggle (1996), Joy is our Banquet (1996), and The Man in the Scarlet Robe (1996). White’s years of experience, and his wisdom, kindness, patience, and collegiality made him the darling of Wilson and her new managing editor, Ruth Bradley-St-Cyr. At the age of 94 Peter Gordon White was still with us, though not exactly going strong. When I visited him in February 2013, he had just been hospitalized for heart problems. However, he still had a few anecdotes to share about his days running the New Curriculum project, like Wally, the production manager, who had schedules for each of the publications all over the walls of his office so that he would know whom to cajole about what and when. White also insisted that C. H. Dickinson did not deserve nearly as much blame as he got for the financial problems 2 Observer, July 1985. vi of The Ryerson Press since some of the people running the finances under him were “not as good as he thought they were.” He may have been referring, though he was too polite to say so, to Ernest W. Scott, who was not quite as good at business as he made himself out to be since he presided over an era when sales went up but profits went down. Peter Gordon White set me down the path of this dissertation in 1994 when he told me that it was not just the purchase of the “large and unsatisfactory” printing press — blamed for the financial problems by his friend John Webster Grant in his Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature article about The Ryerson Press — that was responsible for the downfall. White also blamed his own curriculum, which he said was field-tested and hated, leading to massive revisions and the loss of two years of work. However, there is no evidence that the New Curriculum was ever that far behind schedule. It seems more likely that this scrupulously conscientious man took a portion of the blame upon himself so that his friends and colleagues would not have to endure it alone. Greater love hath no man than this. The downfall of The Ryerson Press was a heavy blow to White, and he felt responsible for it, though the archival record of the 1960s shows that his department was run as efficiently as the German railway system while The Ryerson Press itself was more like a carnival sideshow running itself into the ground. In fact, no one in the church had planned properly vii for the massive expense that the twelve years of New Curriculum development would actually cost, nor was it White’s job to do so. Many on the Boards of Publication and Christian Education believed that the costs could simply be absorbed year by year, but this was mere wishful thinking. Three weeks after I visited him for the last time, on 12 March 2013, Peter Gordon White passed away peacefully