1 | Canadian Publishing and CanLit: The Legacy of the Massey Report

Sarah Potts, School of Information Studies

The Massey Commission, better known as the Massey Report legislated Canadian Publishing and Canadian Literature into being. Feeding off of a desire to protect Canadian culture, the Canadian government under the leadership of Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent and Vincent Massey decided in 1949 to produce a Royal Commission determined to promote what it meant to be Canadian and provide a sense of unity around these ideas. The Massey Commission was decided what it fundamentally intended to be Canadian and fiercely protect the ideas and concepts that were defined to be “Canadian.” The Massey Commission reflected upon the definition of Canadian Publishing and CanLit, providing a renewed raison d'être for Canadian publishers.

Keywords: Canadian Publishing, CanLit, The Massey Commission, Publishing History, Cultural Legislation, CanCulture

Introduction

We will write ourselves into existence. Nick Mount (2017).

After the Second World War, Canadian literary and art critics saw a bubbling crisis where Canadian culture was under threat from the United States and England. In comparison to the still austere post-war England, one critic declared the post-war literary era and its endurance as bleak as a Winnipeg winter (Woodcock, 1977), insinuating that the cultural forces were worse off than ever before. Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent in 1949 decided, in response to statements such as these but also a growing presence of American cultural products entering the Canadian market to set up a Royal Commission to address these concerns. What resulted was the Massey

Copyright © 2018 Potts. The Legacy of the Massey Report 2

Commission, a report on the climate of the Canadian Arts and what could be done to enhance the Canadian cultural environment, and promote a greater sense of "Canadian-ness" among citizens. The most significant concern among publishers and authors at the time of the Massey Commission, otherwise known as the Massey Report, was it is almost miraculous that Canadian print culture existed at all (Woodcock, 1967).

This paper aims to explain how CanLit and the Canadian publishing revolution of the mid- twentieth century were written and in this particular case, legislated into existence. Publishing, and as an extension, CanLit experienced a rebirth after the release of the Massey Report however as a country, we are still, and forever it seems, trying to get by (Gadpaille, 2014). The issue at hand is understanding what the important impact of the Massey Report is and how this impact is still felt today through cultural institutions such as the Association for Canadian Publishers and the Canadian Council for the Arts.

The Meaning Behind the Massey Report

Mount (2017) found that the Massey Commission was at the core, a response to what was missing from Canadian print culture:

By the 1950s, Canadian art had a "distinct canon of images": the single pine…no such set of literary images existed in the national psyche until after the 60s-no double hooks, no stone angels… that's partly the problem addressed by the Massey Report (p.4).

The Massey Commission, formally titled the “Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences”, came to be in 1951. To the public, it is often known as the “Massey Report”. Importantly, the Commission wanted to instil a sense of nationalism from Canadian publications (Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences, 1951). The Commission wanted to communicate that for the distinct nature of Canadian publication to survive (Royal Commission, 1951) and a means of explaining what Canada stands for and what makes this country different from all other developed nations.

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What the Report wanted to do for publishing was to ensure the future of the traditional Canadian identity and create a space for these institutions, and to explain what needed to come from the Canadian government to ensure they stayed in Canadian hands and not be handed over to global conglomerates. There was a subtle belief that if Canada began to fund its publishing industry, then the country could come into its own culturally. By injecting funding into Canadian publishing Canadian companies and information receivers could have reliable access to Canadian content, and Canadian produced texts. The Commission argued that the value Canadian publishers are immeasurable, something that needs protecting as these institutions are a means of promoting quality, Canadian materials to readers. On the same adage, the Commission suggested that for Canadian publishing to be a feasible industry, they must find a way to compete with outside publishers and publications via lowering the prices for a Canadian consumer to access Canadian content. In the end, publishers and the Massey Commission agreed: ask for government assistance through grants and tax breaks for companies that were Canadian owned and produced Canadian material (Royal Commission, 1951). A compelling implication of the Massey Commission was an acknowledgement from the government and stakeholders is Canadian publishing is valuable but vulnerable to outside influence. The Massey Commission provided a useful alternative model to guaranteeing Canadian arts survival; instead of complaining about American cultural influence the findings forced the Canadian government to take action and begin to realise what had to be done to ensure Canadiana would not fade into memory. 1951 was the beginning of arts legislated into being, through the creation of the Canada Council for the Arts (Vincent Massey’s legacy), and the creation of the National Library, where texts deemed important to Canadian history were to be stored (Stewart & Kallmann, 2006).

Canadian Publishing: An Act of Survival

Canadian publishing companies at their core were an alternative to traditional, external publishers based in the United Kingdom and the United States. When founded in 1927, Random house proclaimed they were to publish a few books, at Random while other, smaller publishers were considered to have an ideology focused on providing higher exposure for regional artists. Unlike larger institutions such as Random House or McClelland and Stewart (M&S) which

Moving through the Grey: Publishing in Action The Publishing Business: Transformations and Opportunities (ISI6314 – Winter 2018) The Legacy of the Massey Report 4 focused on a more global scale (Parker, 2012). Never once before the 1960s was Canada considered to be a primary and valuable place for Canadian authors to promote their content. Before this period, and into today publishing Canadian content is deemed to be a risk in the globalised world, but somehow houses such as Penguin and McClelland and Stewart kept doing so. They became known by some authors as the "midwives of Canadian culture” (Solecki, 1998) due to their tendency to publish and then ironically, forget what they had contributed to the growth of Canadian culture in the post-Massey era. The publisher is a curious part of Canadian culture and institutions because they exist as a result of CanLit – but CanLit, on the same adage cannot exist without publishing. I would like to suggest that after the Massey Commission, a new era of Canadian content and publishing standards released. Stated by Woodcock (1967)

The next necessary revolution in Canadian publishing is surely the production of separate Canadian editions of all books by writers working in this country, no matter what their subjects. When a Canadian publisher finds it commercially feasible to underwrite a separate edition of a book by a Canadian one will feel that Canadian publishing and the Canadian reading public have at last come of age (p. 98).

Publishing, after the Massey Commission became openly funded by the government and Canada's best-known publisher, McClelland & Stewart had just released a new set of library edition books that summarised what they believed to be representative of Canadian literature (Scherf, 2000). Canadian publishing exploded after that, and a new form of “literary consciousness” emerged, one that was interested in new wave, Canadian literature that represented what it meant to be Canadian. What was curious after Massey was how major publishers became loyal to their authors: McClelland and Stewart still publish for Margaret Atwood and Margaret Lawrence today, speaking to the unique nature of Canadian publishing. If there is a success, and due to the volatility of Canadian publishing, then the publisher will remain blindly loyal to the author, bordering on legendary in the case of Jack McClelland of McClelland and Stewart (Solecki, 1998). The fifties and sixties, notably were the happiest time to be a publisher (ibid); piggybacking off of the centennial of Canada and production of funding for culture produced some of the best CanLit and other works. Canadian publishing in this era was

Moving through the Grey: Publishing in Action The Publishing Business: Transformations and Opportunities (ISI6314 – Winter 2018) The Legacy of the Massey Report 5 able to define itself and provide a cultural currency that was then successfully thrust upon the world thanks to the Massey Report, through the Canada Council for the Arts. Through the likes of Alice Munro, Hugh McLennan, and Leonard Cohen there was finally a “clear-eyed” view into the world, and none of that was by accident (MacSkimming, 2012). The issue with Canadian publishing is that there is a lot of pride surrounding how it came to be, not how the industry survives. Within these statements, MacSkimming suggests there is not much has been written about the industry itself, only on the policy's that contribute to its survival (2012).

The problem with Canadian publishing having been legislated into being is not that it does not have a means to sustain itself but instead, a desire to survive and continue just to be. In that sense, Canadian publishing is especially fragile: the legislation that produced CanLit and publishing was inherently nationalist, and gradually reduced to nothing by the 1980s (Dewar, 2017). In the small segment of time (between the 50s and 70s) when policies such as the Massey Commission, and the Canada Book Fund there was a sense of social mysticism that suggested Canada could become a world leader in the dissemination of culture through policy subconsciously throughout literature. One of the most significant challenges within the Massey Report has been its lack of acknowledgement of culture in Canada, blaming geography for preventing CanCulture from spreading successfully. Although, there have been successful attempts of publishers and authors to cancel out this challenge, Canadian publishing cannot exist without CanLit but genuinely Canadian publishing is endangered, and as such, there must be a solution found to save the integrity of Canadian publishing.

CanLit Boom: The Golden Years

Some authors, Noah Richler, included, see that CanLit and Canadian content is something of a fiction, a result of continual telling and retelling of the same stories through generations (Richler 2007). The most substantial issue tabled by the Massey Commission was a lack of “Canadian- ness” in Canadian literature and content (Massey, 1951) and that is still a major concern for some in cultural studies today. One of the suggestions tabled to rectify the supposed lack of “Canadian-ness” in CanLit was to extend grants to authors who wrote in either official language and successfully demonstrated what Canadian culture was while promoting a sense of national

Moving through the Grey: Publishing in Action The Publishing Business: Transformations and Opportunities (ISI6314 – Winter 2018) The Legacy of the Massey Report 6 unity through their stories (ibid). Adding to this, Massey suggested that it is best that Canadians recognise the beauty of the content being created by authors in this country via prizes or fellowship with major universities modelled after existing fellowship programs in place in the United States. For this to happen, however, there must be a recognition that CanLit did indeed live, which is what occurred in the 1960s.

Within a fourteen-year time frame, from 1960-1974, CanLit exploded, providing a new literary identity for Canada, resulting in the identity synonymous in the post-Massey era (Mount, 2017). After this period, Richler ran out of things to write, funding started to become scarce, and Coupland began to suggest that the only way to keep CanLit on the track it was, was to find a way to force the government to fund the idea that CanLit could survive (Coupland, 1967). During this time, a significant struggle faced by CanLit in the 1960s, however, was that a majority of the publishers that were willing to publish Canadian content were Anglophone, leaving Francophone literature at risk of being forgotten. Despite these struggles, there was a beauty in the boom; bookstores that dealt exclusively with Canadian content, because they could, and the number of books published in 1969 by McClelland and Stewart extended beyond 70 per annum (Dewar, 2017). The fascinating part of the CanLit boom? How intertwined publishing and CanLit were; these two industries engaged with each other and as suggested by the Massey Commission, involved in such a way that they were able to support and create a possible trade. The form that CanLit took during the period is remarkable because a literary atlas became a reality; Mordecai Richler painted a stunning picture of Montreal while George Bowering attempted to recreate the arrival of George Vancouver in fiction. The cultural explosion did not come from anywhere, but was brewing; the talent that CanLit had was to survive, continue forward. Suggested by Margaret Atwood in her literary atlas, Survival, the only goal in CanLit and publishing was to survive and somehow continue to produce Canadian content, not thrive (Atwood, 2012). The form taken in the CanLit boom was a response to new funding and idealism; the idea that after Massey, CanLit could become its being, separate from the influence of Americana and British Literature. There was an admiration of CanLit and the thematic of survival, but something was left to be desired. In the golden years of the CanLit boom, there was success in doing more than just surviving, CanLit arrived because there was interest in understanding what it meant to be Canadian. The reality now is this boom will never happen

Moving through the Grey: Publishing in Action The Publishing Business: Transformations and Opportunities (ISI6314 – Winter 2018) The Legacy of the Massey Report 7 again. Canada experienced its cultural revolution its current form is embracing a newer kind of literature and writing, there is an ongoing trend called twitterature, a sort of alternative publishing in CanLit where authors and professionals alike come together, in less than 140 characters to discuss CanLit history, structure and the cultural phenomena that exist.

Seeing Red: The Future of CanLit and Publishing

When McClelland and Stewart split into two factions in 2001, it was almost like a death notice signed in the world of Canadian publishing. 75% of the company went to the University of Toronto Press, and the other 25% was sold off to outside subsidiaries like Random House. The sale was a lapse in reaction emerging from the publishing house crisis in 1971, when McClelland turned to government funding to ensure the houses’ survival, regardless of the time lapse, the loss was devastating (Dewar, 2017). Today, Canadian Publishing is dominated by the “Big Five” and outside conglomerates. Canadian publishing is slowly losing touch with its origins of small publishing houses that were supporting local stories, and instead of trying to survive a corporate world that diminishes the value of Canadian stories. Despite all of this, facets of the Massey Report’s initial suggestions remain Canadian Publishing and Literary grants handled by the Department of Heritage. Still, these grants make up a large part of the budget, 39.1 million dollars in 2016 and the Canada Council for the Arts provides a 250 000-dollar prize annually to support small publishers (Nawotka, 2017). The ideal, as the House of Anansi Press, suggests is to publish books without thinking of the bottom line, and thinking more about the cultural value that text will have on the literary atlas of Canada (ibid). The most hopeful image out in CanPublishing and CanLit is that print book sales are up, by 1.9% from the year previous, hinting at a revival of Canadian print culture potentially as a result of Canada 150, and other projects such as Canada Reads (ibid).

The future of Canadian publishing lies in the hands of the public and the government (Medley, 2017). The public can ultimately influence publishers to change their ways and go from traditional brick and mortar publishing to support smaller authors and other “non-traditional” methods of publishing while remaining true to the mission provided back in the 1960s by Massey to promote Canadian content. The Twitterature trend could be a solution to promote

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CanLit and publishing, as social media use tends to be the norm, and avoid the continual proclaimed “dumpster fire” that CanCulture can become if there is a lack of consensus of what can be done to ensure its survival (Lederman, 2018). This form of new CanLit could retell the classics, while creating a new platform to engage with authors and readers who are social media savvy, therefore causing a potential cultural revolution and interest in Canadian content once more. The government should inevitably continue to find intuitive ways to support literary arts and publishers, especially those who are considered small. How did the Massey Report impact publishing then you ask? It forced Canadians to face the reality that for Canadian culture to survive; they must support businesses and authors of their own. It put in place the constant state of reinvention that Canadian Publishing experiences every few decades. Perhaps, a new term should be coined, encompass what this industry is: CanPublishing. Like the term CanLit, it speaks to Canada's enjoyment of euphemism, and an implication that for one to understand what Canadian Publishing is, one must take a deep dive into Canadian Culture to know, to know how this industry came to be. Today, Canadian Publishing is controlled by the “Big Five” and outside conglomerates.

To save Canadian Publishing and CanLit Canadian cultural critics must not think about going back, but adjusting to a globalised context, despite the desire to return to protectionism as a means of preventing the foreign destruction of what some consider quintessentially Canadian, our literature. Adding to this, the inherently hierarchal structure of Canadian publishing and culture must change; the culture of the Massey era was “highbrow” and interested in the pursuits of the upper-class, and this is no longer feasible as a result of the diverse nature of cultures and ways of knowing that exist in modern Canada. We can take this and thus, apply to Canadian content and not go back but go forward and be in competition with others, presenting the forward-thinking image while allowing CanPublishing and CanLit to take on this image and re- establish itself as a dominant, compelling narrative. Maybe the best solution, in a world where our own Prime Minister admitted that there is no dominant Canadian culture, is to establish a Massey Commission 2.0 to examine and restructure existing legislation and cultural institutions to allow for CanPublishing and CanLit to experience rebirth and recognition.

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References

Atwood, M. (2012). Survival: A thematic guide to Canadian literature. House of Anansi. Canada. (2002) Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences 1948-1951. Coupland, D. (2006). What is CanLit?. New York Times, 22. Department of Canadian Heritage. (2007) The Book Retail Sector in Canada. Retrieved from Gadpaille, M. (2014). Thematics and its Aftermath: A Meditation on Atwood's Survival. Primerjalna Knjizevnost, 37(3), 165. Government of Canada Publications. (2007). The Book Retail Sector in Canada. Dewar, E. (2017). The Handover: How Bigwigs and Bureaucrats Transferred Canada's Best Publisher and the Best Part of Our Literary Heritage to a Foreign Multinational. Biblioasis. Dobson, K., & Kamboureli, S. (2013). Producing Canadian literature: authors speak on the literary marketplace. Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press. Kallmann, H., & Stewart, J. (2006, July 02). Massey Commission. Retrieved February. Retrieved from The Canadian Encyclopedia.ca. Lederman, M. (2018, February 2). Twitterature: Wading into the choppy waters of CanLit. The Globe and Mail. Kallmann, H., & Stewart, J. (2006). Massey Commission. Retrieved from The Canadian Encyclopedia.ca. MacSkimming, R. (2012). The Perilous Trade:" Book Publishing in Canada, 1946-2006". McClelland & Stewart. Medley, M. (2017, June 9). What happened when a beloved book publisher changed hands. The Globe and Mail. Retrieved from https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and- media/what-happened-when-a-beloved-book-publisher-changed-hands/article35268245/ Mount, N. (2017). Arrival: The Story of CanLit. House of Anansi. Nawotka, E. (2017, October 8). Canadian Publishing 2017: Celebrating the Story of Canada. Publishersweekly.com. Richler, N. (2007). This is my country, what's yours? A literary atlas of Canada. McClelland & Stewart Limited.

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Scherf, K. (2000). A legacy of Canadian cultural tradition and the small press: the case of Talonbooks. Studies in Canadian Literature, 25(1), 131. Serebrin, J. (2017, February 13). A new wave of Canadian book companies taps into the popularity of self-publishing. The Globe and Mail. Smith, R. (2015, April 3). Russell Smith: How to publish a book in Canada. Globe and Mail. Solecki, S. (Ed.). (1998). Imagining Canadian Literature: The Selected Letters of Jack McClelland. Toronto: Key Porter Books. Woodcock, G. (1967). Preface to a Symposium. Canadian Literature, 33, 3-15. Woodcock, G. (1977). Massey's Harvest. Canadian Literature,73, 2-7.

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