Presented by BC Book World, Yosef Wosk, SFU Library and Alcuin Society.

A gathering of appreciation for two literary mavericks on May 22 at SFU Harbour Centre will feature speeches by Don Stewart and Howard White, reflecting on their shared
100 years in B.C. books.

Howard White has been Western Canada’s most enduring and influential book publisher during the past fifty years. He and his wife Mary have published more than one thousand books from Pender Harbour since 1973.

First, the Whites operated a local newspaper, Peninsula Voice (1970-76). Then, kickstarted by a 1972 LIP grant, White bought an old printing press, taught himself how to run it and printed the first issue of Raincoast Chronicles. His first ‘trade titles’ from his Harbour Publishing imprint were The Dulcimer Tuning Book and Build Your Own Floor Loom.

Eventually, with editor Daniel Francis, Howard White produced the Encyclopedia of British Columbia in 1999. Having saved and acquired Douglas & McIntyre in 2013, the ever-affable “Howie” has somehow managed to write and edit more than fifteen books of his own while winning the Leacock Medal for Humour. He was accorded the Order of Canada in 2007. He has also received the Order of BC, the Canadian Historical Association’s Career Award for Regional History, the Jim Douglas Publisher of the Year Award and an Honorary Doctorate of Laws Degree from the University of Victoria.

As a result of this prodigious history, White has a deep understanding of the province of British Columbia as a psychological and social and political construct. Spotlight averse, he has agreed to venture to the Big Smoke where he will be celebrated along with Don Stewart on May 22nd, at the same time and venue, in downtown Vancouver.

*

Thanks to Don Stewart, MacLeod’s Books on West Pender is irreplaceable in the literary landscape of Vancouver. He bought it in 1973 from Van Andruss after it was founded ten years earlier by its namesake Don MacLeod. Fast forward to 2011 and Maclean’s magazine celebrated it as “The Last Great Bookshop.”

After it was moved to 100-block West Hastings in the early 1980s, disaster struck in 1983 when the adjacent socialist bookstore was firebombed. Don lost most of his stock but re-opened at the current location on Pender at Richards.

MacLeod's Books is renowned nationally and internationally for its seeming chaos with books stacked everywhere. Don estimates that there are 100,000 books. A well-known panorama photo by Stan Douglas MacLeod’s (2006), often on display at the Audain Art Museum in Whistler and at major international art galleries, does a good job of capturing the feel of the store. As any customer quickly finds out, Don knows where every book is.

Amazingly, the store functions equally well for dealers looking for first and rare editions and manuscripts and budget-conscious customers looking for paperback reading copies. “It’s very important to offer books at all levels to people,” Don said in a Vancouver Sun profile by John Mackie.

Gentrification and the inexorable movement of the DTES street scene have resulted in reduced foot traffic; lease uncertainties have been near-fatal. But MacLeod’s Books endures. A bizarre anomaly for downtown developers, it miraculously continues as a Mecca for serious bibliophiles of BC.

*

B.C. book lovers are invited to celebrate Howie and Don on May 22, from 5 pm to 9 pm, a block away from MacLeod’s Books, at SFU Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings, Vancouver. Tickets available via Eventbrite.

Only 150 tickets will be sold.