The Biblio File hosted by Nigel Beale

Classical Pursuits is a cultural and educational travel company based in Toronto, Canada, specializing in small group literary travel and learning vacations. It provides adventures for the mind and travel for the soul - to places like Hemingway's Paris, Joyce's Dublin, Dante Alighieri's Italy, and Flannery O'Connor's Savannah and the Andalusia family farm in Georgia. It offers both scheduled small group tours and private educational group travel planning for existing groups.

Ann Kirkland is the president and founder of the company. I caught up with her at Toronto Pursuits, an annual gathering where over 100 people from across Canada and the U.S. get together on the garden campus of the University of Toronto's Victoria College to discuss great books.

Steven Heller wears many hats and has written and/or published many books (190+ to date). For 33 years he was an art director at the New York Times, originally on the OpEd Page and for almost 30 of those years with the New York Times Book Review. Currently, he is co-chair of the MFA Designer as Author Department, Special Consultant to the President of SVA for New Programs, and writes the Visuals column for the New York Times Book Review.

We met at his office in New York to talk about Jackets Required: An Illustrated History of the American Book Jacket 1920-1950, a book he co-wrote with Seymour Chwast in the 1990s. We start off discussing this eloquent description "At once seductive, informative, and ephemeral, a book jacket is designed to evoke - and promote - the contents of a book"; and then move on to Art Deco, futurism, Bauhaus, de Stijl, constructivism, typography, lettering and book collecting. Designers covered include Paul Rand, Alvin Lustig, E. Mcknight-Kauffer, W.A. Dwiggins and George Salter.

Charlotte Gray is one of Canada's best-known writers, and author of ten acclaimed books of literary non-fiction. Born in Sheffield, England, and educated at Oxford University and the London School of Economics, she began her writing career in England as a magazine editor and newspaper columnist. After coming to Canada in 1979, she worked as a political commentator, book reviewer and magazine columnist before she turned to biography and popular history.

She's been a judge for several of Canada's most prestigious literary awards, including the Giller and Cundall Prizes; has five honorary doctorates and how won numerous awards, including the Pierre Berton Award for distinguished achievement in popularizing Canadian history.

We met at her home near the Governor General's grounds in Ottawa to riff off renowned LBJ biographer Robert Caro's latest book, Working. We talk about, among other things, Caro's practice, Pierre Berton, Charlotte's latest book Murdered Midas; A Millionaire, His Goldmine and a Strange Death on an Island Paradise, a biography of the Canadian mine owner Sir Harry Oakes, research methods, academics, adding voices to the mix, academics, the teaching of history, the removal of Sir John A. MacDonald's statue, local historians, and the current dearth of Canadian historical novels.

Marc Côté is the publisher of Cormorant Books, "a literary house noted for the discovery and development of Canadian writing talent and the publishing of Québécois fiction translated into English." He has won Canada's Libris Award for Editor of the Year twice and Cormorant has won the Libris Award for Small Presses three times. At Cormorant, Marc has acquired and edited many award-nominated books.

Prior to taking over at Cormorant in 2001, Marc cut a wide swath through the halls of Canada's book publishing industry, holding positions, many of them short lived, at, among other places, the Canadian Book Information Centre (marketing arm of the Association for Canadian Publishers), Books in Canada, the World's Biggest Bookstore, the Ontario Arts Council, the Literary Press Group of Canada (a sales and distribution co-op for small presses), the Canada Council, Dundurn Press, and Stoddart Publishing.

We talk about all of these organizations. In so doing Marc provides a fascinating, provocative survey of Canadian book publishing, past and present.

Serge Loubier is President and CEO of Marquis Book Printing, "Canada's number one monochrome book printer," founded in 1937. As Serge puts it: "Along with my love of book printing and manufacturing and all the technology that goes into it is a passion for the end result. Literature as an art form is about contributing to culture, challenging assumptions and fueling our desire to learn. I appreciate the value of every book that we produce and take great pride in upholding the very highest standards of excellence for our customers."

We met at his Montreal offices to talk about the book printing business, acquisitions and the growth of Marquis, the nature of the Quebec and Canadian markets, North American competition, the importance of good equipment and happy employees, working with publishers, and much more.

Sheila Fischman is a renowned Canadian translator who specializes in translating works of contemporary Quebec literature into English.

Born in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan she was brought up in Ontario, and holds an M.A. from the University of Toronto. She is a former editor of the Montreal Star's book section, as well as a columnist for The Globe and Mail and the Montreal Gazette and a broadcaster for CBC Radio. She's also a founding member of the Literary Translators' Association of Canada and has translated more than 200 Quebec works into English, including novels by such noted authors as Michel Tremblay, Hubert Aquin, Anne Hébert, Marie-Claire Blais, Roch Carrier, Yves Beauchemin, and Kim Thúy. She has won many awards including the Governor General's Award for Translation, and the Molson Prize for the Arts.

We met at her home in Montreal to talk, among other things, about Quebec, her career and role as a translator, Mordecai Richler, the Plateau in Montreal, North Hatley, house parties, booze and poets, the language question, La Guerre, Yes Sir, the church and large families, separatism, names on front covers, obsessiveness, humility, Leonard Cohen, musicality, swear words and the vessels of the alter, capturing 'voice", pure laine and much more.

A specialist in Canadian publishing history, Janet B. Friskney, is the author of New Canadian Library: The Ross-McClelland Years, 1952-1978 (published by the University of Toronto Press). Her publication credits include articles on the Methodist Book and Publishing House of Toronto, nineteenth-century Bible and tract society activity in Canada, and the history of publishing for the blind in Canada. She served as Associate Editor to Volume 3 of the History of the Book in Canada, and edited and introduced Thirty Years of Storytelling: Selected Short Fiction by Ethelwyn Wetherald.

We met at Carleton University to discuss the history and evolution of McClelland & Stewart's New Canadian Library (NCL) reprint series. Topics covered include the relationship between Jack McClelland and Malcolm Ross, selection criteria, the commerce of publishing a reprint series, teaching Canadian novels in Canadian universities, the ambivalent nature of introductions used to accompany some NCL titles, book designer Frank Newfeld, Canada's literary heritage, and the current status of the NCL.

Chester Gryski holds a B. A. (Hons) in Political Science and Economics from the University of Toronto and a J. D. from Osgoode Hall Law School of York University. He was called to the Ontario bar in 1976. He has acted for MPAC and its predecessor assessing authorities since 1976. In those 40 years, he has dealt with all types of properties and all issues with a particular emphasis on industrial properties and contaminated lands.

Outside of his legal practice he is an ex officio Director of the Alcuin Society of Canada and a renowned collector of Canadian fine press printing which is why he is on the Biblio File podcast. We met at his home just outside of Kingston, Ontario to talk, among other things, about how to evaluate fine press printing, Canadian book designer and typographer Glenn Goluska, Ryerson College printing and design teacher Denis Milton, the English private press tradition, the Grimsby Wayzgoose, Will Reuter, the Barbarian Press, the Heavenly Monkey Press, Jason Dewinetz, Margaret Lock, Robert Reid, Jim Rimmer, bibliographies, why we collect, and much more.

Daniel Woolf is a British/Canadian historian. He served as the 20th Principal and Vice-Chancellor of Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario from September, 2009 to June, 2019, when he returned to teaching and research. He was previously Professor, Department of History and Classics at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, where he also served as Dean of the Faculty of Arts.

He studied history at Queen's and Oxford Universities, and is the author of many books, including The Oxford History of Historical Writing, (general editor), 5 vols, (Oxford University Press, 2011–12) and most recently, A Concise History of History, (Cambridge University press, 2019).

Most important to our purposes, he's also a book collector, specializing in 15th-18th century histories. We met at his home near Kingston, Ontario, to talk about, among other things, the evolution of his collection, the poet Ben Johnson, wedding anniversaries, antiquarian books, tythes and local histories, book historian Jonathan Rose, 'things not kings', maps, abebooks and biblio.com, historiography and the history of history, Chronicles, Attic Books, the Schulich-Woolf Rare Book Collection, going cold turkey, and the domestic police.

John Ivison is a Scottish Canadian journalist who is Ottawa Bureau Chief for the National Post.

Raised in Dumfries, Scotland, he worked as a reporter for The Scotsman newspaper in Edinburgh and as deputy business editor of Scotland on Sunday. He was educated at the University of Glasgow, McMaster University and the University of Western Ontario, where he earned a masters degree in Journalism.

He moved to Canada in 1998 as part of the team that launched the National Post, and has covered provincial politics in Ontario and federal politics in Ottawa since 2003.

He appears as a panelist on various Canadian TV public affairs programs and is the author of Trudeau: The Education of a Prime Minister (2019), a biography of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that focuses on his government's promise-filled first mandate. Ivison is married to Canadian diplomat Dana Cryderman, and has three children. Together they have taught him 'how to be content.'

I want to be content, so my initial questions deal with this topic. We then discuss John's moves back and forth between Scotland and Canada, shuffle on to the story of the book itself, and then on to Trudeau and the lessons he may or may not have learned during his tenure in office. I raise the topic of the Post's right wing board of directors, and throw in some of John's humour and political wisdom, and we close with an examination of truth, and whether or not Canadians can trust Justin Trudeau.