An Editor’s Delicate Art

“It was Stephen Leacock who brought me to Canada.” What a fine way to start your memoirs—even should the thought continue “Not literally, of course.” Leacock died three months after Douglas Gibson was born (December 1943), but the call from Mariposa was strong enough to lure Gibson across the Atlantic from his small Scottish village of Dunlop. Remember: this was 1967. Indigenous publishing was still fledgling; cultural grants and the continuous labour of optimists were busy constructing an arts framework. In that centennial year all things seemed possible. Young Gibson found work in the registrar’s office of McMaster University, but a want ad in The Globe and Mail (“Trainee Editor”) moved him to Toronto and Doubleday Canada. Just like that. His first project? David Legate’s biography of Stephen Leacock.

Much water has flowed under many bridges since that auspicious...