Search: 1918-1980

Penning a tribute to publisher Jack McClelland, Leonard Cohen wrote: “You were the real Prime Minister of Canada.” His words were not merely poetic: he knew, as did hundreds of other Canadian writers, that McClelland had nurtured, cajoled, soothed, and at times infuriated them, in order to bring their books to readers across the country and around the world, at times taking great financial risks to do so. In a career that spanned over forty years, McClelland’s author roster crossed boundaries of fiction, poetry, non-fiction, political writing, and textbooks, and included Cohen, Margaret Atwood, Pierre Berton, Austin Clarke, Matt Cohen, Marian Engel, Basil Johnston, Irving Layton, Margaret Laurence, Farley Mowat, Peter Newman, Mordecai Richler, and Gabrielle Roy. As biographer James King noted. “He is our Prospero, the man who shared his love of books with his fellow countrymen.”