A Note from the Publisher

Harbour Publishing turns fifty this year. It seems only a few short years ago that Mary and I were putting our savings on the line to publish our first saddle-stitched book, The Dulcimer Tuning Book by Randy Christopher Raine, followed in that first year by the redoubtable Build Your Own Floor Loom by Steve and Darlene Lones. Now here we are half a century later with a bulging library of 1,000- plus titles, some of them monster productions like The Encyclopedia of British Columbia, still burning the midnight oil to meet press deadlines, still putting our savings on the line every season.

It’s been an incredible run, far beyond anything Mary and I ever dreamed of in 1974. Looking back, we think of the incredible people it brought into our lives—Peter Trower, the hard-drinking logger poet from Gibsons who wrote some of the most beautiful lyrics in our literature; Bus Griffiths the gentleman logger who wrote and drew Canada’s first graphic novel, Now You’re Logging, not consciously forging a new medium, but just turning to the only form he was comfortable with—comics—in order to tell his story of the West Coast woods. There was Jim Spilsbury, whose first years were spent in a tent on the beach of Savary Island and never got beyond elementary school but grew to be BC’s leading manufacturer of radio telephones—and a co-author of two bestselling books, Spilsbury’s Coast and The Accidental Airline. There was Edith Iglauer, the cultured New Yorker writer who came to BC to do an article on commercial fishermen and ended up marrying one and writing the classic Fishing with John—the only Harbour book to be made into a feature film. There was Clayton Mack, the legendary Nuxalk elder who teamed with Harvey Thommasen to write the classics Grizzlies and White Guys and Bella Coola Man. There was the irrepressible Anne Cameron, pioneering LGBTQ author of some thirty-five Harbour books of fiction, kids lit and erotic poetry, whose Daughters of Copper Woman is one of the bestselling books ever published in BC. There was the amazing Chuck Davis, Vancouver’s self-appointed historian, who sadly did not live to see us publish his magnum opus, The Chuck Davis History of Greater Vancouver. And Patrick Lane and Al Purdy, two of Canada’s greatest poets. And hundreds more—just see this catalogue. But it wasn’t just the writers. We found ourselves part of a community of book people. Critics like the remarkable Alan Twigg and his BC Bookworld who more than any other person has chronicled this golden age of BC literature. And booksellers who were themselves stars of the literary scene like Bill and Celia Duthie, Pauline Woodward, Jim Munro and the late, great Bev Shaw. What a rare privilege it has been to work with these fascinating and brilliant—and sometimes cantankerous—people! And not least the readers who took us into their hearts and provided the support that kept us going.

Thank you, thank you all!

 — Howard and Mary White and all the staff of Harbour Publishing

For more on Harbour's 50th, listen to Publisher and author Howard White join Margaret Gallagher on North by Northwest to talk about celebrating Harbour Publishing's 50th anniversary. Click here for more.