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DOUGLAS GIBSON
Douglas Maitland Gibson was born in 1943 and raised in Scotland, where
he gained an MA at the University of St. Andrews. After acquiring a
further MA at Yale, he came to Canada in 1967 and entered the world of
publishing in March 1968, as an editor with Doubleday Canada. Through a
series of accidents he found himself running an editorial department at
the age of 25, and publishing books set from Newfoundland (Death on the
Ice, by Cassie Brown) to British Columbia (Vancouver, by Eric Nicol) and
editing authors ranging from Harry J. Boyle (The Great Canadian Novel)
to Barry Broadfoot (Ten Lost Years.)
He joined Macmillan of Canada as Editorial Director in 1974 and became
Publisher in 1979. In those years he had the privilege of editing
authors such as Morley Callaghan, Hugh MacLennan, Bruce Hutchison, and
Robertson Davies. Early in 1986 he joined McClelland & Stewart as
Editor and Publisher of a new line of books under his own imprint, a
first in Canada. Since then Douglas Gibson Books has published works by
authors such as Alice Munro, Peter Gzowski, Jack Hodgins, James Houston,
W.O. Mitchell and Mavis Gallant.
In September, 1988 the Douglas Gibson Books line was reduced to three
titles a year when he became Publisher of McClelland & Stewart,
overseeing all of its books and attracting to the house many former
associates, including Robertson Davies, Ken Dryden, Myrna Kostash,
Jeffrey Simpson, Michele Landsberg, Roy MacGregor and Guy Vanderhaeghe.
In June 2000 he became President and Publisher of McClelland & Stewart.
As an old friend of Hugh MacLennan, he was one of four eulogists at his
funeral in Montreal in 1990. A year later the anthology Hugh
MacLennan's Best, "selected and edited by Douglas Gibson," was
published, and in 1994 he contributed to the University of Ottawa Press
book Hugh MacLennan. He edited the anthology The Merry Heart;
Selections 1980-1995 by Robertson Davies one year after Professor
Davies' death, and he has since published posthumous books by his friend
W.O. Mitchell.
As a member of the publishing community he has taught courses in editing
to many groups, including the Book Publishers' Professional Association
and EAC, and contributed the title chapter to the booklet "Author and
Editor." From its creation in 1981 he was a Faculty Advisor to the
Banff Publishing Workshop, and from 1985 to 1989 was the Co-Director of
the course. He was the Chair of the Advisory Board of the Canadian
Centre for Studies in Publishing at Simon Fraser University from
1988-1993 and is now an Honorary Advisory Board Member, and an adjunct
faculty member for the Master of Publishing program at S.F.U. In 1995
he delivered the annual Hugh MacLennan Lecture at McGill University. He
is a member of the Quadrangle Society of Massey College, and the
Scottish Studies Board at the University of Guelph.
As a writer, his work has appeared in the anthology, The Bumper Book, in
a book on Alistair MacLeod and in Saturday Night, Toronto Life, Books in
Canada, the National Post and the Globe and Mail, and one of his pieces
was nominated for a National Magazine Award for Humour. From 1981 till
early in 1984 he was the weekly movie reviewer for the CBC radio
programme "Sunday Morning." In a more serious vein, he has given
speeches to groups as varied as the Canadian Oral History Association,
the CNIB, and the Canadian Institute of International Affairs, and he
made the keynote speech at the Ottawa press conference in 1987 that
launched the campaign "Don't Tax Reading." He spoke as a Canadian
representative at the International Publishers' Association Convention
in London in 1988. As a Council Member of Historica he has spoken at a
number of Canadian Clubs.
In 1991 he received the rarely-presented Canadian Booksellers'
Association President's Award "for the numerous important Canadian books
and authors he has developed over the years." Since that time his
encounters with major M&S books - from The Ice Storm to No Great
Mischief, which he extracted from Alistair MacLeod - and with authors
ranging from Andy Russell to Toller Cranston and from John Crosbie to
Pierre Trudeau, have provided him with material for many speeches across
the country.
The year 2005 proved to be a year of
awards for Doug Gibson. In April he
became the "Canadian Scot of the
Year" at a ceremony in Toronto,
and in June, at Book Expo, the annual
meeting of the book trade in Canada,
he received the award "Editor
of the Year." This was a very
pleasing recognition of his successful
return to concentrating on his editorial
role once again.
The father of two daughters, he lives in Toronto with his wife, Jane
Brenneman Gibson.
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