Canadian Publishing and Canlit: the Legacy of the Massey Report

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. Moving through the Grey: Publishing in Action The Publishing Business: Transformations and Opportunities (ISI6314 – Winter 2018) The Legacy of the Massey Report 3 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.

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