The History of Brunswick Press as a Publisher of Children's Books

by Susan R. Fisher and Margot Stafford

Adapted from Beaver Books for a Dime: A Bibliographic History of the Children's Books of Brunswick Press, 1952-1984. Gaspereau Press, 2022. 

Introduction

The "Children's Books of Brunswick Press Bibliography" and its companion print volume, Beaver Books for a Dime: A Bibliographic History of the Children's Books of Brunswick Press, 1952-1984, provide a bibliographic and historical record of the children’s books published by Brunswick Press of Fredericton, New Brunswick. They also establish the press's significance to children’s book publishing in Canada. During its thirty-odd-year history, Brunswick Press made significant contributions to children’s reading and produced remarkable children’s books, but to date little is known about the press or its publications.

The early years of Brunswick Press coincide with significant developments in literacy and culture in New Brunswick and beyond. Public education in the province stabilized; public libraries emerged; and a modernist movement centred at the University of New Brunswick flourished. Brunswick Press entered a world in which affordable, accessible picture books were already being produced in Britain and the United States. Canadian book publishing generally was undergoing a shift as colonial attitudes gave way to nationalistic ones, and interest in regional folklore was growing. The need to strengthen national cultural identity was forcefully articulated in the Massey Report of 1951, at a time when cultural policy-makers were growing increasingly wary of the influence of American media.

Given its location in the Maritimes, far from the mainstream of Canadian business and culture, Brunswick Press is also important for understanding the development of regional publishing in Canada. By providing a comprehensive review of its children’s catalogue, we hope not only to shine a light on these neglected books, but to challenge the established narrative about children’s publishing in the country. We also hope to broaden the conversation on the history of cultural production in New Brunswick and the role of publishing and children’s literature in Atlantic Canada.

There is no archival fond for Brunswick Press. This research is based on correspondence between its founders, Lord Beaverbrook and Brigadier Michael Wardell; interviews with former employees; articles and advertisements from the Daily Gleaner and the Atlantic Advocate; and of course, on the books themselves. At times, our research felt serendipitous and deeply tied to the kinds of personal and professional connections that span generations in a city and province with a small population. From a cab ride to the airport where the driver knew Wardell to a chance conversation with a colleague who worked for the press in the early 1980s, it sometimes felt as if everyone in Fredericton had a story to tell about the press, its founders, or its children’s books. As difficult as it is to piece together the history of a small press, we believe this work recovers an important slice of New Brunswick cultural history. It also contributes to conversations about the history of the book in Canada and the development of Canadian children’s literature. Given that the bulk of research on those subjects has emanated from central Canada, the role of small but pivotal players like Brunswick Press has gone mostly unnoticed. This is an oversight we hope to begin to correct. We also hope that while doing so, we convey our enthusiasm for the books and paint a picture of the larger-than-life personalities who created them.

The book is divided into two main sections: Part One recounts the history of Brunswick Press as a business operating in Fredericton in the mid-20th century. It juxtaposes what we know about the origins and operations of the press with broader cultural trends in the province and nation. Part Two provides a detailed entry for each children’s title published by the press. For each book, bibliographic information useful to librarians and collectors is provided, as well as an account of the book’s publication, marketing, reception, and creators. Appendix One is a complete list of the children’s books published by the press, and Appendix Two provides a listing of archival, primary, and secondary sources for the project.

Establishment of the Press 

Brunswick Press (also known as University Press of New Brunswick) was founded in Fredericton, New Brunswick, in 1950–51, through the funding and maneuvering of Max Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook. Beaverbrook, a native of New Brunswick, became a British press magnate with considerable fortune and influence in wartime England. Nicknamed the first Baron of Fleet Street, he created his own peerage name from the words “beaver brook” to pay homage to his origins in rural New Brunswick.1 In the late 1940s and ’50s, he reframed the free press in his home province with the hope of fostering the arts, culture, and industry and thereby securing his own legacy. Through his money and minions, he helped build libraries, university and civic buildings, and what was to become a world-class art gallery; and he funded scholarships and provided professional development opportunities for teachers. Finally, in a somewhat happenstance way that was largely against his better judgment, he financed Brunswick Press and steered much of its decision making.2

The publishing arm of Beaverbrook’s business dealings in New Brunswick was the brainchild of Brigadier John Michael Stewart Wardell. Wardell was simultaneously a friend, attendant, and employee of Beaverbrook’s, first with the Evening Standard and then the Daily Express in London, whom Beaverbrook enticed to come to Canada to manage the operation of the Fredericton Daily Gleaner. The scope of the venture ended up being broader than the newspaper business Beaverbrook originally intended. According to Robert Tweedie, the civil servant charged with facilitating Beaverbrook’s interests in the province during the 1950s,

Wardell came to Fredericton, liked what he saw and almost at once acquired the Daily Gleaner, McMurray’s (a small printing establishment), and a printing business owned and operated by Harry Wilson.… The deal Wardell struck with Wilson included his employment in a managerial capacity with the new business, University Press, which was to be equipped to do all sorts of printing, and in any quantity.3

Wardell initially brought people over from England to staff his printing office, including typesetter Victor Hemming from the London Times; a team of full-colour process engravers overseen by a Mr. S. Cody; and a highly skilled lithographer, Martin Hollinger, who became head of the Offset Department.4 Perhaps most significantly, he also hired Milada Horejs and Karel Rohlicek, recent émigrés from what is now the Czech Republic, to do graphics. 

Wardell’s media empire would eventually include UniPress (a printing press company), the University Press of New Brunswick (a publisher, not in fact affiliated with the university and alternately referred to as Brunswick Press), the Daily Gleaner (Fredericton’s newspaper), and the Atlantic Advocate (a monthly magazine). With his up-to-date equipment—unlike any other in Canada at the time—Wardell aimed to build a publishing company that would create and sell books throughout Canada, the United States, and Britain, including juvenile titles for which Wardell imagined a ready market. For children’s books to find their niche within the larger enterprise, several factors had to converge: Wardell’s vision for the company, adequate financial backing, cutting-edge equipment, talented writers and artists, and a growing readership. 

Although a seemingly unlikely locale for a publishing empire, mid-century Fredericton was enjoying a renewed cultural and artistic flowering centred at the University of New Brunswick, where new projects (many funded by Beaverbrook’s money) were being initiated to foster literary and cultural production in the province.5 Despite the favourable conditions, however, Wardell’s grand ambitions were stymied by his naïveté about New Brunswick, ignorance of the province’s hampered position within Canadian industry, lack of understanding of the challenges of publishing in Canada—and, most crucial of all, a general reticence on the part of Beaverbrook and his other investors to support his vision. 

Although this bibliographic history focuses solely on children’s books, University Press of New Brunswick produced a wide range of books for all ages and audiences. The company set out to be a fine book press with a threefold mission: to republish out-of-print Canadian and British titles; to introduce leading British writers to Canadian readers; and to publish contemporary Canadian authors—New Brunswick authors in particular.6 Most of the books eventually published by the press fit this vision and are about Atlantic Canada or are written by authors from the area. Genres include novels, histories, essays, almanacs, nature writing, and photography books, by writers such as Grace Helen Mowat, George Frederick Clarke, Alden Nowlan, and even Lord Beaverbrook himself. By 1967, the press had published more than eighty books. Fredericton bookseller Margaret Hall identified it as the first publishing house in Canada to publish local authors.7 Its catalogue includes beautiful and noteworthy books about the region, as well as titles that lack strong literary merit but appear to have facilitated Wardell’s and Beaverbrook’s political and economic networking. During its years of operation, the press oscillated between periods of higher publishing output and periods when focus shifted to either the Daily Gleaner, the Atlantic Advocate, or the business’s printing arm. Wardell’s commitment to book publishing always gave way to other demands placed on the business, but it was never forgotten altogether. Even after the company was sold to the Irving family in the late 1960s, Brunswick Press continued to produce significant books about the Maritimes well into the late 1980s. It has been mostly inactive since.

From the outset, children’s books were a key component of the business. The content of these books ranges from regional to national to cosmopolitan. They include stories set in New Brunswick, non-fiction works of Canadian history, and nursery rhymes and fairy tales. Most of them are set apart from the press’s adult catalogue by the presence of illustrations that are remarkable in both design and quality.

Attention to children’s book publishing waxed and waned throughout the press’s history, but there were two periods of exceptional output. The first was during the press’s initial two years (1952–53); the second was in the mid-1960s, in preparation for Canada’s centenary. Wardell retired in 1971. After his departure, with just a few exceptions, Brunswick Press all but ceased to publish children’s literature.

Michael Wardell

Michael Wardell was as unlikely a Canadian children’s publisher as could be. Of Welsh descent, he was educated at Eton and Sandhurst before serving with the 10th Royal Hussars in the First World War. By the Second World War, he had risen through the ranks from captain to brigadier and was credited with the design of a rocket launcher known as a “land mattress,” used by Canadian forces in the final year of the war.8 He was married three times and had a son from each marriage. During the 1930s, he worked for Lord Beaverbrook at his London newspapers. A member of London’s social elite, he was a gallant figure and a womanizer, and a friend and confidant to Edward VIII in the lead-up to Edward’s abdication of the British throne. He was known for the eye patch he sported after losing an eye in a fox-hunting accident. According to John DeMont, “Beaverbrook once introduced Wardell by saying that he was the co-respondent in eleven divorces, to which Wardell replied, ‘Only eight, Lord Beaverbrook.'"9 That such a colourful figure, “whose life resembled something hatched in the imagination of Rudyard Kipling,” would relocate to Fredericton, New Brunswick, to go into publishing remains mystifying.10

It was on a fishing trip to the Miramichi with Lord Beaverbrook in 1950 that Wardell made the decision to move to New Brunswick and go into business. Exactly how he came to his decision is unclear. Wardell himself stated, “I came here by chance and took a liking to the feel of things—[the locals] think I must have some frightful reason for fleeing from Britain.”11 Anne Chisholm and Michael Davie argue in Beaverbrook: A Life that Wardell indeed was no longer a welcome presence in London. The managers at the Daily Express secretly nicknamed him “the Great Military Handicap,” and, because they could not abide him, they issued an ultimatum to Beaverbrook that “either Wardell went or they did.”12 At the time of the fishing trip, Wardell was on his way to start a business in South Africa when Beaverbrook sold him on the idea of moving to Fredericton and taking over the Daily Gleaner.13 Whether Beaverbrook’s motives were primarily to appease the managers of the Daily Express or, rather, to install his acolyte in Fredericton so that he could control the very media outlet that would secure his legacy at home, the end result was that he achieved both. With his move to Fredericton, Wardell became dependent on Beaverbrook both financially, for the many loans he received to prop up his business interests, and professionally, for any influence Beaverbrook could assert to facilitate Wardell’s return to London. What ensued were many years of meetings, trips, and correspondence, with Wardell always at Beaverbrook’s beck and call.

Wardell’s dream of creating a book publishing company was entirely his own. Their correspondence in the early 1950s makes clear that Beaverbrook wanted Wardell to take control of the Daily Gleaner only. He repeatedly disavowed any financial or business interest in Brunswick Press.14                                                                                                                                                                                               On February 6, 1951, Beaverbrook stated his case bluntly: “You are surely pushing me into a position of responsibility which I will not take. You cannot persuade me to do any business now or in the future.… You will have a great venture if you a newspaper [sic]. That should be your first and only objective.”15

If there was a spark of independence and entrepreneurship in Wardell, however, it was his interest in publishing. Repeatedly he tried to bring Beaverbrook onside with Brunswick Press. He had visions of becoming a publisher of first-rate editions, pleading with Beaverbrook to help him produce high-end books, such as an illustrated catalogue of the rare books in the Bonar Law-Bennett Library at the University of New Brunswick.16 While Wardell continually apprised Beaverbrook of his ideas and achievements with respect to book publishing, Beaverbrook urged him to limit his printing to major jobbing contracts for industries such as Algoma Steel, the CPR, and Canadian Steamships.17  When Wardell envisioned his Follow Me collection of children’s Bible books to sell all over North America, Beaverbrook railed against any money being used to support ventures he thought fruitless.18 When Wardell courted local authors and published their works, Beaverbrook focused on niggling criticisms of the Daily Gleaner and invectives to make the paper more local instead.19Wardell may have correctly believed that he could build a fine book press, but he never garnered the support he needed from Beaverbrook or any of his other investors to realize the fullness of his vision.

By 1952, the need for Wardell to temper his ambitions was evident. In a letter dated 26 January, Wardell pleaded with Beaverbrook to release a promised loan for $100,000, one that Beaverbrook had held back because he did not approve of the breadth of Wardell’s enterprise. Wardell’s tone was desperate:

I am literally fighting for my life. I am so far committed and have so committed others that there can be no release. I do want to say this. I would not have dreamed of coming into Fredericton to do business except it was in partnership with you and because you wished it.… As I understood it, you had decided that you did not want to take part in trading and running the newspaper here yourself, but you wanted me to go ahead and wanted the job done. And it is a fine thing for Fredericton to have a modern newspaper and a modern printing and publishing business. I felt throughout that I was carrying out your intention and doing what you wanted done.20

In addition to Beaverbrook’s gruff reluctance to support the publishing arm of the business, Wardell found it difficult to make inroads into New Brunswick’s political and business circles. In the same letter quoted above, Wardell complained that “Fredericton is a very funny place to go pioneering in.” Just over a year later, in April 1953, his rhetoric was more pointed: “The establishment of a high-class printing plant in Fredericton proved extraordinarily difficult. The people have uncompromising characteristics and intense local prejudices. It is a poor country."21

But it wasn’t just that Wardell was a fish out of water: his lofty dreams indeed did require scaling back by the shrewd business acumen of Beaverbrook. New Brunswick’s population was small and sparsely distributed, and Wardell faced the same federal policies that had been handicapping industry in Atlantic Canada since Confederation.22 Because Wardell did not know or understand the economic climate in which he had landed, Beaverbrook had to recommend him to investors and then shield him when relationships turned sour. This was the case with Ben Smith, for instance, who sued for “fraudulent misrepresentation on the sale of shares” when his initial investment of $25,000 did not yield a profit during Wardell’s first year of operation.23

Publishing anywhere in Canada was a challenging undertaking. Due to the country’s small population and lack of technology, publishing was not the viable enterprise it was in London or New York. In 1947–48, some 4,751 literary works for adults were published in Britain, 3,895 in the United States, and a mere 137 in Canada. 24 In 1967, John Morgan Gray suggested that for a heavily illustrated children’s book to be sold at a reasonable price, it would need “to be printed in an edition of 15,000 copies or more at an investment of perhaps $20,000.”25 Even if successful, such a book would not sell that many copies in the Canadian market even after several years. While Gray’s observation was made in the late 1960s, publishing economics would have been at least as dire in the early 1950s, and especially so far away from the economic and geographic centre of Canada.

Without a sufficient market to support new book publishing, Brunswick Press, like all Canadian publishers, had to rely on job printing to realize a profit. Job printing required Wardell to court the very investors, politicians, and local businessmen he found so off-putting.26 He did list Beaverbrook’s friend, Sir James Dunn of Canadian Steamships, as an investor, and he eventually did make inroads into the New Brunswick climate and culture (mainly as Beaverbrook’s man). Nevertheless, these connections did not come fast enough to propel the business in the early years to where Wardell thought it should be.

Wardell did eventually find some success. Eight years after his move to Fredericton, a Maclean’s profile by Lawrence Earl portrayed him as a firebrand media man and Atlantic Canada’s fiercest defender. The article describes how Wardell used his media empire to advocate strongly for pet projects such as increased unity among the four Atlantic provinces, industrial decentralization from Quebec and Ontario, and a federal program to help expand the economies of the Atlantic region. Wardell’s newspaper, magazine, and job-printing businesses were all successful. Earl did note, however, “Only his book-publishing venture, which began also by encouraging writers in the area but now seems to concentrate on titles for young children, is not setting the world on fire."27

Technological Innovation: The Goss Universal Press

Thanks to Beaverbrook and his Fredericton connections, Wardell had access to what Eric Leroux deems the most important technological innovation of the 20th century with respect to printing: offset.28 Upon his retirement, Beaverbrook aimed to bring much of his amassed wealth back to New Brunswick. To avoid tax penalties imposed by the British government, he sought ways to achieve this through the transport of industrial products from Britain that would aid business at home.29 Key among these purchases was the sixty-tonne Goss four-colour offset printer that became the foundation for the newly reconceived Daily Gleaner, as well as for UniPress and Brunswick Press. The machinery was brought to Fredericton in May 1951 and put into production in June the same year. Purchased by Beaverbrook for $100,000 ($108,403 installed), the press was leased to Wardell to be paid over a period of ten years.30 Only Toronto’s Copp Clarke was using colour offset printing at the time; no other Canadian newspapers had yet adopted the technology.31 Wardell had also purchased a Crabtree Offset Press from London to round out his plant’s capabilities. 32

According to Wardell’s prospectus for his new business, this technology would establish a niche:

The general printing factory will contain an up-to-the-date process, block-making, and print-making department. The equipment has been supplied by Mssrs Hunter-Penrose Ltd. of London, to produce letterpress blocks of the finest screen and photo-litho plates for offset printing. There is a shortage of process engraving capacity throughout Canada, particularly of the standard required for high class colour reproduction. There is a similar shortage, too, in the United States. There is a ready demand for colour press blocks and plates of high quality, and the supply of these will attract orders for high grade colour printing.… The University Press, then, will be capable of producing: (i) the finest colour blocks and plates for letter press and photo-litho (offset); (ii) all kinds of letter press and offset printing; (iii) all types of book binding, including the finest quality hand bindings in leather; and (iv) modern illustrated newspapers and periodicals with colour.33

At the time, this certainly represented state-of-the-art equipment and a forward-thinking business plan.

According to C.J. Eustace, former president of J.M. Dent & Sons, the postwar period until the late 1950s was less than ideal for Canadian publishers, as they were often forced to order printing from one firm and binding from another, thus creating “disrupted schedules” and turning “many a hair grey.” He continues: “It was not until the middle 1950s that book manufacturers introduced offset equipment into their plants, and even then only small one-colour presses.”34 By 1958, multiple book manufacturers began converting from letterpress, incurring high capital costs to do so.

Given Wardell’s early adoption of the technology, he ought to have cornered the Canadian market for offset printing. UniPress did indeed acquire large job-printing contracts, including the four-color, fifty-page travel brochure produced for the Canadian government Travel Bureau in March 1955. The 500,000-copy order required seven railway cars to ship the finished product to Ottawa for national distribution.35Wardell might have made greater inroads with respect to the publishing arm of his business had he not had to continually balance off more profitable demands for the equipment such as this travel brochure.

There was so much enthusiasm for the Goss Press that when it arrived in town in May 1951, Wardell wrote an in-depth, illustrated article for the Daily Gleaner.36 In a manner that anticipated Wardell’s future interest in courting the child reader, the article centres on two fictional youths, Harry and Joey, whose curiosity is piqued by the arrival of the press at the Barbour Building in downtown Fredericton’s Phoenix Square, the home of the Daily Gleaner. As the boys ask questions, they are met with paternal answers by machine room manager, Harry Gardiner:

“This may be pretty hard to believe but we can run off anything from newspapers to periodicals in colours. What’s that? Oh yes, it will print pictures in any combination of four colours.” “

Pretty nifty, eh Joe?” said “Little” Harry. 

“Yes, and we can turn out between 36,000 and 40,000 copies per hour.” 

“Gee, that’s a lot of Gleaners, isn’t it?”

By using this framing device, Wardell explained and promoted the press to his larger readership in an entertaining and instructive way. Another full-page article that was similarly effusive about the Goss Press and Wardell’s overall publishing capabilities followed in March 1952. It made the bold claim that “University Press of New Brunswick is Fredericton’s newest big industry.”37

Wardell was keen to test the capabilities of the press by publishing children’s books, for they offered him the ability to show off what the machinery could do in a manner that was simple to understand. Scholars of children’s literature have charted the rise of the picture book in the first half of the 20th century in Europe and the United States, a result of technological advances in lithography, new theories of child development, and a diaspora of avant-garde artists from Eastern Europe.38 The success of inexpensive imprints like Puffin and Little Golden Books proved that picture books could be artful, affordable, and commercially successful.39 With his new press, Wardell had an opportunity to do something similar. At this time in Canada, “most general trade publishers with a children’s list … regarded it as a secondary concern, unlikely to improve the cash flow or prestige of the company.”40Wardell’s plan was the complete opposite: to make children’s books the foundation with which to launch the press. In so doing, he placed himself on the ground floor of children’s publishing in Canada.41

According to Sheila Egoff, only some thirty or forty children’s books were published annually in Canada from 1952 to 1964; sixty-one were published in 1965.42 Moreover, the books were not of a high standard in quality or design. Egoff wrongly states that a 1968 poetry anthology, The Wind Has Wings, was “the first Canadian children’s book to be printed in four colours.”43 By the end of 1952, Brunswick Press’s BeaverDime books and two collections of Desmond Pacey’s poetry, The Cow with the Musical Moo and Hippity Hobo and the Bee, had all been printed in four colours, thereby predating The Wind Has Wings by sixteen years.

Milada Horejs and Karel Rohlicek

For his venture into children’s publishing, Wardell had the good fortune of having two highly skilled artists on staff. In 1951, Beaverbrook placed an advertisement in the Toronto Star seeking an editorial artist in Fredericton. The position called for creating images of rural life in New Brunswick as part of Beaverbrook’s vision for the newly acquired Daily Gleaner, and as a means of supplying graphic content to other parts of his media empire. The ad was answered by a young couple, Karel Rohlicek (1925–2015) and Milada Horejs (1927–2013), who had recently immigrated to Canada after escaping Czechoslovakia in 1948 and living in Paris for three years. In Paris, they pursued postgraduate studies on scholarship at the École des Beaux-Arts, but when the Korean War broke out, the couple moved to Canada for fear of being caught up in more conflict. At the time Beaverbrook posted the ad, the couple was living in Toronto and Rohlicek was working for low wages at the Free Czech Press. Horejs used the last of their money on train fare to meet Wardell and Beaverbrook in Fredericton, hoping to better their station in their adopted country.44

Once the couple had moved to Fredericton, they were given an apartment directly upstairs from Wardell. When Wardell needed work done, he would simply bang on the ceiling with a broom handle. It was from this close proximity that the idea for Brunswick Press’s BeaverDime books was born. Always eager to find ways to expand his publishing venture, Wardell talked with Horejs and Rohlicek about the possibility of publishing children’s books. Rohlicek’s father, who ran a stationery shop in Prague, had produced classic tales in small format, six to twelve pages in length, to be sold at fabric stores. Rohlicek showed Wardell how printing of that nature worked. Wardell gave the couple a series of tales and poems, all having expired copyright, to illustrate. Although the texts were new to Horejs and Rohlicek, they researched their origins and created illustrations for the first series of BeaverDime books. Rohlicek was also instrumental in teaching the printer how to create lithography on overlays rather than producing colour line to line, as is done with comics. This style of printing would serve Wardell well.45

Proximity to the University of New Brunswick

Wardell’s arrival in Fredericton and the establishment of Brunswick Press coincided with a mid-century modernist movement in New Brunswick detailed by Tony Tremblay in The Fiddlehead Moment: Pioneering an Alternative Canadian Modernism in New Brunswick (2019). Tremblay argues this movement developed as a response to post-Confederation federalism that had reduced New Brunswick to a have-not province.46 Spearheaded by academic and administrator A.G. Bailey, this emerging modernist movement resulted in a series of projects that celebrated New Brunswick’s past achievements while simultaneously fostering new cultural developments.47  On the literary front, Bailey founded the Bliss Carman Society in 1940 and The Fiddlehead in 1945. The Fiddlehead eventually became a key national literary magazine in 1953, when Fred Cogswell took over the editorship.48  To help execute his vision, Bailey employed faculty, including English professor Desmond Pacey. Pacey published Creative Writing in Canada: A Short History of English-Canadian Literature (1952) and in so doing contributed to the establishment of a more expansive and decentred version of Canadian literary studies.49 Pacey’s scholarly focus on local poets, primarily Sir Charles G.D. Roberts and Bliss Carman, also helped to solidify Fredericton’s identity as the poetry capital of Canada.

Undoubtedly this buoyant cultural milieu appealed to Wardell and contributed to his belief that he could create a successful book press. His focus on local literature aligned with the goals of Bailey’s modernist movement. Despite having no professional connection to the University of New Brunswick, naming his company the “University Press of New Brunswick” suggests that Wardell hoped to be affiliated with activities on campus. That Lord Beaverbrook served as the university’s Chancellor during this period may also have given Wardell the impression that his business dealings would benefit from proximity to the school.

An affiliation with the university never came to fruition, however. Early on, Wardell lobbied to publish a catalogue of the holdings of the newly created Bonar Law-Bennett Library, but he was rebuffed by Beaverbrook.50Nevertheless, Brunswick Press did publish books by key UNB faculty such as Pacey, William Stewart MacNutt, and S. Morris Engel. UniPress, the job-printing arm of Wardell’s company, also had the initial contract to print The Fiddlehead, but when costs became too high, Cogswell sought a cheaper alternative.51 Although Brunswick Press supported many of the artists and writers associated with the modernist movement at the university, Wardell operated independently with goals tied mostly to financial gain.

Education and Libraries in Mid-Century New Brunswick

In spite of the cultural progress being nurtured at the University of New Brunswick, education and libraries in the province were slow to modernize. Although the Common School Act establishing a foundation for free public education in New Brunswick had been passed in 1871, universal education in the province was still finding its footing in the early 1950s.52 The 1951 Canadian Census revealed two-thirds of the adult population in New Brunswick had fewer than eight years of formal education.53 But the 1950s also marked an era of change, one that would lead to consolidation and standardization of the education system. The number of small school districts was drastically reduced, schools were combined to centralize learning, and greater uniformity of textbooks was established across all three Maritime provinces.54

The state of public libraries in 1951 New Brunswick was bleak. Public libraries existed only in Saint John (established 1884), Woodstock (1914), Moncton (1927), and Juniper, the latter being a small library established by Aida Flemming, who would go on to play a large role in supporting libraries and literacy in the province.55 New Brunswick as a whole lacked coverage for its largely rural population, and Fredericton was one of only two provincial capitals without a public library.56

As with education, however, things began to improve during the 1950s. A 1952 study on regional library service in the province led to the development of New Brunswick’s Central Library Service in 1955.57 And, despite numerous delays, on January 6, 1955, Fredericton opened the doors to the John Thurston Clark Library.58 Lord Beaverbrook also contributed to the development of public libraries in New Brunswick when, in 1952, he purchased his childhood home in Newcastle and had it converted into that region’s first public library, complete with a stand-alone children’s collection.59 Most of the work for what became known as the Old Manse Library was undertaken by Miramichi folklorist Louise Manny, who also served as librarian from 1953 to 1967. Early in 1952, her enthusiasm for what she dubbed “library year” reached its peak. In a letter to Beaverbrook, she wrote:

I am much pleased with the interest the project is arousing in Newcastle. After 175 years library-less, I did not really expect much enthusiasm, but there is a great deal, and among the very people you would most like to reach—young high school students, clerks in stores, and many young people who have never been financially able to spend money on books, even if they had known where to look.60

The slow spread of libraries meant children’s librarianship in New Brunswick was far behind what was happening in other religions of Canada. By the time Brunswick Press published its first children’s book in 1952, Torontonians were enjoying access to Boys and Girls House (a freestanding children’s library), as well as children’s rooms in sixteen of Toronto Public Library’s branches.61 Under the helm of Lillian H. Smith, the first trained children’s librarian in the British Empire when she was hired in 1912, the children’s division of Toronto Public Library was an international centre for expertise in children’s literature and professional development for children’s librarians.62 It was also in 1952 that Smith retired and wrote her groundbreaking critical work, The Unreluctant Years: A Critical Approach to Children’s Literature.63 In this book, Smith provided a framework for the assessment of children’s literature that became the standard for North American library selection policies for decades to come.64 Many of the Anglo-Canadian values espoused by Smith and adopted by the Canadian Association of Children’s Librarians likely would have appealed to Wardell; on the other hand, the conservative gatekeeping and, in particular, librarians’ practice of not ordering titles sight unseen may have hurt Brunswick Press.65

National Initiatives Lending Momentum to Brunswick Press

Two initiatives were launched in 1949 to encourage good reading habits and protect young Canadians from the negative influences of popular culture. Ever since the early 1940s, the power of comics to influence North American children and teens had been feared. Then, in 1948, a gruesome murder in Dawson Creek, British Columbia, committed by two boys who cited comic-book desperados as their inspiration, gave urgency to the passing of what became known as the Fulton Bill.66 This amendment to the Criminal Code of Canada made it illegal to produce or sell any text that had pictorial representations of crimes, real or fictitious, “thereby tending or likely to induce or influence youthful persons to violate the law or to corrupt the morals of such persons.”67 The same year, the Canadian Association of Children’s Librarians (CACL) introduced Young Canada Book Week to “promote good reading, reinforce Anglo-Canadian civic values, and construct a common literary culture for Canadian children.”68 Both the Fulton Bill and Young Canada Book Week linked childhood reading to morality, connecting them with Canada’s future as a nation. These discourses influenced Wardell, and he capitalized on them. In a letter to Beaverbrook on November 23, 1952, he said he hoped his “general scheme for a series of youth publications” would serve “as an antidote to the love and crime comics” that held a significant portion of the North American market.69

During this period, the Report of the Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences (1951), more commonly referred to as the “Massey Report” after its chair, Vincent Massey, was released. The Massey Commission had initially set out to examine the impact of new media on Canadian culture, but it instead provided a rallying cry for the development and protection of the arts in Canada. The release of the commission’s report on June 1, 1951, was front-page news across the country.70 The Daily Gleaner, under the new management of Wardell, wrote of the report’s emphasis “for a greater nationalism, a greater Canadianism to give new vitality and meaning to ‘anaemic’ Canadian cultural life.”71

In fact, during the commission’s consultation process, Massey himself wrote to Beaverbrook in praise of his cultural work in the province, particularly his support of Louise Manny’s Miramichi folklore project.72 For Wardell—new to Canada, just starting a publishing business, repeatedly encouraged by Beaverbrook to showcase the local—the cultural moment provided by the Massey Report must have been a jolt of energy. Among other recommendations, the Massey Commission proposed increased government support for arts and culture and the establishment of the Canada Council for the Arts. These became the foundation for the Canadian cultural nationalism that would produce a burgeoning cultural sector in the ensuing years. In the case of children’s literature, the Massey Report affirmed the need for one rooted in Canada. This must have also affirmed for Wardell that his plan to publish children’s books was a worthy one.

The Child Reader and the Daily Gleaner

Wardell became a fierce proponent for children’s literacy in New Brunswick and was not averse to using the pages of the Daily Gleaner to promote reading among young citizens. The Gleaner provided extensive coverage of the campaign for a public library in Fredericton and, each year, ran large features on Young Canada Book Week. Wardell threw his support behind Aida McCann Flemming, literacy advocate and wife of the New Brunswick premier. Flemming was actively involved in the library campaign and was appointed national patroness of Young Canada Book Week in 1953.73 Wardell also courted young readers directly by creating a special Junior Gleaner page in the newspaper.

Beginning in 1952, in both editorials and articles, Wardell lamented Fredericton’s lack of a public library and lauded local “enthusiasts” who were working to provide children with “the libraries they need.” “It may cost us too much to wait,” he said.74 The following year, in a full-page illustrated spread, he showcased the advocacy work of Flemming.75 A week after the John Thurston Clark Library opened in downtown Fredericton on January 6, 1955, the Gleaner ran a week-long series by Betty Lou Vincent.76Vincent interviewed no fewer than six hundred Fredericton teenagers on their reading preferences. In a front-page article, “Comics No Threat, Magazines May Be,” Vincent determined that local teens’ reading practices were mainly wholesome, with girls preferring romance and boys adventure stories. With respect to comics, most teenagers were more interested in cartoons than in crime and horror.77

Wardell did not just report on books and libraries, however: he spoke directly to youth on the pages of the Daily Gleaner. In September 1951, he launched a Friday magazine section that focused on the local; using photography and illustrations, the articles and stories in this new section foregrounded the working class and rural life of the province. Throughout the fall of 1951, the magazine featured a weekly story by the self-described “story lady” of Harcourt, New Brunswick, Marion Wathen Fox, and illustrated by Milada Horejs.78 Fox’s stories served Wardell’s mandate of appealing to children and Beaverbrook’s desire to make the paper more local in its focus. At the same time, in Saint John, the Telegraph Journal, which was not affiliated with Wardell, ran the syndicated “Burgess Bedtime Stories,” comics, and a “Questions and Answers” segment that featured questions such as “How did the pen knife get its name?”79 Such syndicated content was typical of what appeared in other Canadian and American newspapers of the time.

In the fall of 1952, on the heels of the release of Brunswick Press’s first two children’s titles—the Children’s Coloured Library and The Cow with the Musical Moo—Wardell’s plans for the Daily Gleaner expanded once again. He advertised a club for “Junior Gleaners,” and, by January 1953, he boasted to Beaverbrook that even before the club’s launch on January 23, membership was over 9,000.80 Wardell’s rhetoric was no doubt hyperbolic, as the population of Fredericton at the time was only 20,000; nevertheless, his reach to the province’s youth was still extensive, aided by his vigorous promotion of the Junior Gleaner Club leading up to its unveiling in the paper. 81

Wardell aimed to give voice to the province’s youth, and the first edition of the Junior Gleaner Club page showed how. Children wrote letters to “Uncle Mac,” submitted poems and drawings, provided commentary on ethical quandaries, and connected with pen pals.82 On the day of its debut, Wardell sent a copy to Beaverbrook, saying, “Do please read the page. To me it is fun. I think we may get quite a lift through the children.”83 Beaverbrook concurred: “The Children’s Page looks very good,” he wrote, but then added in his typical gruff fashion, “the rest of the paper needs to be localized."84 

Trends in Mid-Century Canadian Children’s Literature

In histories written about Canadian children’s literature in English, the general consensus is that it didn’t really exist before the mid-1960s. In “Publishing for Children,” Pouliot, Saltman, and Edwards state:

Until the 1960s the reading of young anglophones consisted almost entirely of American and British imports, for in addition to the usual challenges of population, distribution, and capital, domestic publishers who issued children’s titles in English had to contend with the high cost of producing illustrated books in colour for a small market, limited editorial specialization in the field, minimal reviewing of domestic titles, and the preference of school and public libraries for more widely reviewed foreign imprints. 85

Publishing scholar Roy MacSkimming asserts that the majority of pre-1960 Canadian children’s books were “earnest, didactic, and pedestrian.”86 One exception to this trend was provided by Fredericton’s Mary Grannan, who proved, throughout her career with CBC Radio and Television, that Canadian stories for children could be immensely popular, bestsellers even, and characters from children’s stories could be marketing tools in and of themselves. Her Just Mary stories and other books, published between 1941 and 1962, had sold over 400,000 copies by the early 1960s, and the doll based on her Maggie Muggins character had sales figures of 11,000 in 1948.87 While her success was the exception in Canada, it provided a precedent and set the bar high for publishers’ aspirations.

In the 1950s, the work of carving out Canadian and regional identities was well underway. Some of this work—recording and cataloguing stories and folk songs, even if not necessarily intended for children—was the foundation of children’s literature in the country for years to come. In addition to projects that focused on settler folklore, Canadian national identity was being defined via the appropriation of Indigenous tales and legends. Many would be adapted as children’s literature in the ensuing years, most notably in the picture books of Elizabeth Mrazik Cleaver, designed and produced by William Toye at Oxford University Press.88

The combination of settler and Indigenous folklore with postwar immigration from Europe created a dynamic milieu. In Ontario, for example, Czech émigré Frank Newfeld transformed Canadian children’s book design after his arrival in 1954. In his work for Oxford, McClelland & Stewart, and Macmillan, and in his collaborations with William Toye, Newfeld created the modernist look that came to define Canadian children’s books and set the standard by which they would be judged.89 Unbeknownst to most book historians, several years earlier another pair of transformative Czech artists had arrived in Canada. Milada Horejs and Karel Rohlicek enhanced Wardell’s and Beaverbrook’s vision for New Brunswick. In the pages of the Daily Gleaner, they depicted scenes of rural life, while in the children’s books published by Brunswick Press, their illustrations took on a decidedly more modern, cosmopolitan look.

Horejs and Rohlicek were integral to the look of Desmond Pacey’s The Cow with the Musical Moo and Hippity Hobo and the Bee. They were also responsible for the easy-to-sell format and eye-catching illustrations of the BeaverDime series. Of course, not every children’s book produced by Brunswick Press was innovative: some titles are imitative, and others testify to Wardell’s penchant for reprinting and repackaging. But for every Canadian Family Robinson or Angie and the Arab, there are polished works of children’s literature that have sadly remained mostly forgotten since their publication. In a 1998 op-ed for Canadian Children’s Book News, Gillian O’Reilly argued that there is a past to Canadian children’s literature that predates 1967, and there are “exciting finds” to be made.90 The children’s books of Brunswick Press are one such discovery.

Wardell's Vision For Children's Books

Even though Canadian publishing in general, and children’s publishing in particular, were in their infancy at the time, Wardell felt he could make his mark and earn a dollar while doing so. Obviously, Fredericton was far removed from the centre of Canada’s publishing industry. Even so, it was a culturally vital place replete with its own folklore, literary landscape, and academic culture centred on conversations about forging national identity.

With an innovative colour printing technology to hand, Wardell realized that children’s books would be an excellent showcase for his publishing business. The first books were small, inexpensive, appealing to a broad audience, and easily distributed in and beyond New Brunswick. Combined with a growing Canadian optimism, the postwar baby boom created the potential to sell a large volume of books to an expanding youth audience.

Publishing children’s books was also a way to foster literacy in a province that still lacked adequate school and public libraries. With access to a range of poetry, folklore, and fairy tales, all of which existed in the public domain, Wardell was able to try out publishing in a manner that bypassed the creative demands of the author—not to mention author royalties. That these poems and tales upheld a Eurocentric world view and the idea of empire in a country that Wardell believed was still a colony, no doubt helped him reconcile the awkwardness he felt in his new home. Finally, Wardell may have acted on a moral imperative that was part of the anti-comics zeitgeist of the early 1950s. Wardell certainly saw himself and his books as working for the betterment of Canada’s youth. The result was that a full two decades before the surge in Canadian children’s publishing, Brunswick Press produced a wide variety of quality children’s books.

• 1

  Taylor, A.J.P. Beaverbrook. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972. p.127.

• 2

  Ibid, p. 576. Poitras, Jacques. Beaverbrook: A Shattered Legacy. Fredericton: Goose Lane, 2007. pp. 50-54. William Maxwell Aitken (Lord Beaverbrook, 1st Baron) fonds, MGH 156. Archives & Special Collections, University of New Brunswick Libraries, Fredericton, New Brunswick. Case 128, File 1a, 78333.

• 3

  Tweedie, R.A. On with the Dance: A New Brunswick Memoir, 1935-1960. Fredericton: New Ireland Press, 1986. p.150.

• 4

  McGowan, Robert S. "University Press of New Brunswick." CLA Bulletin 7, no. 6 (May 1951): p. 212.

• 5

  Tremblay, Tony. “Mid-Century Emergent Modernism, 1935-1955”. In New Brunswick at the Crossroads : Literary Ferment and Social Change in the East, edited by Tony Tremblay, 101-128. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2017. p. 103.

• 6

  McGowan, Robert S. "University Press of New Brunswick." CLA Bulletin 7, no. 6 (May 1951): p. 212.

• 7

  Belier, Patricia L. "Brunswick Press." New Brunswick Literary Encyclopedia, edited by Tony Tremblay. Accessed September  15, 2021. nble.lib.unb.ca/browse/b/brunswick-press.

• 8

  Earl, Lawrence. "Mike Wardell's Tempestuous Love Affair with the Maritimes." Maclean's (February 28, 1859): p. 33.

• 9

  DeMont, John. Citizens Irving: K.C. Irving and his Legacy. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1991. p. 103.

• 10

  Ibid, p. 102.

• 11

  Earl, Lawrence. "Mike Wardell's Tempestuous Love Affair with the Maritimes." Maclean's (February 28, 1859): p. 34.

• 12

  Chisholm, Anne and Michael Davie. Beaverbrook: A Life. London: Hutchinson, 1992. p. 468.

• 13

  Poitras, Jacques. Beaverbrook: A Shattered Legacy. Fredericton: Goose Lane, 2007. p. 55.

• 14

  William Maxwell Aitken (Lord Beaverbrook, 1st Baron) fonds, MGH 156. Archives & Special Collections, University of New Brunswick Libraries, Fredericton, New Brunswick. Case 128, File 1a, 78366-68; File 1c, 78565.

• 15

  Ibid, Case 128, File 1a, 78366-68.

• 16

  Ibid, Case 128, File 1d, 78779-78780,78782.

• 17

  Ibid, Case 136, File 15, 83579; Case 136, File 16, 83669.

• 18

  Ibid, Case 136, File 17, 83690-91; Case 128, File 1c, 78565.

• 19

  Ibid, Case 136, File 18, 83736.

• 20

  Ibid, Case 128, File 1b, 78559. 

• 21

  Ibid, Case 128, File 1d, 78777.

• 22

  Tremblay, Tony. The Fiddlehead Moment: Pioneering an Alternative Canadian Modernism in New Brunswick. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2019. pp. 21-23.

• 23

  William Maxwell Aitken (Lord Beaverbrook, 1st Baron) fonds, MC H 156. Archives & Special Collections, University of New Brunswick Libraries. Fredericton, New Brunswick. Case 128, File 1d, 78726-29. 

• 24

  Canada. Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences, and Vincent Massey. Report, 1949-1951. Ottawa: E. Cloutier, Printer to the King, 1951. p. 228.

• 25

  Gray, John Morgan. "Canadian Books: A Publisher's View." Canadian Literature 33, no. 3 (1967): pp. 35-36. 

• 26

  Leroux, Eric. "The Canadian Printing Industry." In The History of the Book in Canada, vol. 3, edited by Carole Gerson and Jacques Michon, 349-54. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007. p. 350.

• 27

  Earl, Lawrence. "Mike Wardell's Tempestuous Love Affair with the Maritimes." Maclean's (February 28, 1959): p. 35. 

• 28

  Leroux, Eric. "The Canadian Printing Industry." In The History of the Book in Canada, vol. 3, edited by Carole Gerson and Jacques Michon, 349-54. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007. p. 351.

• 29

  Taylor, A.J.P. Beaverbrook. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972. p. 578. Poitras, Jacques. Beaverbrook: A Shattered Legacy. Fredericton: Goose Lane, 2007. pp. 47-48. Rohlicek, Karel. Interview by Sue Fisher. March 3, 2014. 

• 30

  William Maxwell Aitken (Lord Beaverbrook, 1st Baron) fonds, MC H 156. Archives & Special Collections, University of New Brunswick Libraries. Fredericton, New Brunswick. Case 128, File 1a, 78338-39; 78341-42.

• 31

  Leroux, Eric. "The Canadian Printing Industry." In The History of the Book in Canada, vol. 3, edited by Carole Gerson and Jacques Michon, 349-54. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007. p. 352.

• 32

  William Maxwell Aitken (Lord Beaverbrook, 1st Baron) fonds, MC H 156. Archives & Special Collections, University of New Brunswick Libraries. Fredericton, New Brunswick. Case 128a, File 1a, 78347.

• 33

  Ibid, Case 128, File 1a, 78388.

• 34

  Eustace, C.J. “Developments in Canadian Book Production and Design.” Ontario Royal Commission on Book Publishing: Background Papers, 38–60. Toronto: Queen’s Printer and Publisher, 1972. p. 48.

• 35

  “Book on Canada’s Vacation Spots Being Printed in Fredericton.” Daily Gleaner. March 14, 1955: 1.

• 36

  “New Press Stirs Youths’ Interest.” Daily Gleaner. May 5, 1951: 4.

• 37

  “P—For Printing and Progress.” Daily Gleaner. March 22, 1952: 8.

• 38

  Elleman, Barbara. “The Picture-Book Story in Twentieth- Century America.” In Children’s Literature Remembered: Issues, Trends, and Favourite Books, edited by Linda Pavonetti, 27–38. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited, 2003. p. 27. Hintz, Carrie and Eric L. Tribunella. Reading Children’s Literature: A Critical Introduction. Boston: Bedford St. Martin’s, 2013. p. 164. 

• 39

  Marcus, Leonard S. “From Mother Goose to Multiculturalism: Toward a History of Children’s Book Publishing in the United States.” In Children’s Literature Remembered: Issues, Trends, Beaver Books for a Dime and Favourite Books, edited by Linda Pavonetti, 7–20. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited, 2003. pp. 11-12. Conrad, Joann. “Modernity and Modernisms in Twentieth-Century American Picturebooks.” International Research in Children’s Literature 12, no. 2 (2019): p. 148.

• 40

  Edwards, Gail and Judith Saltman. Picturing Canada: A History of Canadian Children’s Illustrated Books and Publishing. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010. p. 52. 

• 41

  William Maxwell Aitken (Lord Beaverbrook, 1st Baron) fonds, MC H 156. Archives & Special Collections, University of New Brunswick Libraries. Fredericton, New Brunswick. Case 136, File 18, 83742-43.

• 42

  Egoff, Sheila A. “Children’s Literature.” In Literary History of Canada: Canadian Literature in English, 2nd ed., edited by Carl F. Klinck, Alfred Goldsworthy Bailey, Claude Thomas Bissell, Roy Daniells, Northrop Frye, and Desmond Pacey, 204–11. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 1976. p. 250.

• 43

  Ibid, p. 253.

• 44

  Rohlicek, Karel. Interview by Sue Fisher. November 16, 2013. 

• 45

  Rohlicek, Karel. Interview by Sue Fisher. March 3, 2014.

• 46

  Tremblay, Tony. The Fiddlehead Moment: Pioneering an Alternative Canadian Modernism in New Brunswick. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019. p. 233.

• 47

  Ibid, pp. 94-95.

• 48

  Gibbs, Robert. “Portents and Promises.” In Fiddlehead Gold: Fifty Years of the Fiddlehead Magazine, edited by Sabine Campbell, Roger Plourde, and Demetres Tryphonopoulos, 11–16. Fredericton: Goose Lane, 1995. pp. 11-12.

• 49

  Tremblay, Tony. The Fiddlehead Moment: Pioneering an Alternative Canadian Modernism in New Brunswick. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019. p. 138.

• 50

  William Maxwell Aitken (Lord Beaverbrook, 1st Baron) fonds, MG H 156. Archives & Special Collections, University of New Brunswick Libraries, Fredericton, New Brunswick. Case 128a, File 1d, 78779-80, 78782.

• 51

  Tremblay, Tony. The Fiddlehead Moment: Pioneering an Alternative Canadian Modernism in New Brunswick. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019. p. 187.

• 52

  New Brunswick Department of Education. Two Centuries of Educational Progress in New Brunswick, 1784–1984. The Department, 1985, pp. 9-10.

• 53

  Dominion Bureau of Statistics. Population: General Characteristics. Vol. 1 of Ninth Census of Canada, 1951. Ottawa: Queen’s Printer, 1953. Table 59.

• 54

  New Brunswick Department of Education. Two Centuries of Educational Progress in New Brunswick, 1784–1984. The Department, 1985, pp. 12-14.

• 55

  Grossman, Peter. Library Service in New Brunswick: A Report and Recommendations. Fredericton: New Brunswick Department of Education, 1953. pp. 47-48. “Mrs. Hugh John Flemming.” CLA Bulletin 10, no. 2 (1953): p. 52. 

• 56

  Bruce, Lorne and Elizabeth Hanson. “The Rise of the Public Library in Canada.” In History of the Book in Canada: 1918–1980. Vol. 3. Edited by Carole Gerson and Jacques Michon, 429–35. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007. p. 430, 433.

• 57

  Stringer, Eunice and Jocelyne Thompson. “New Brunswick Public Library Service: An Historical Overview from the 1960s.” In Hardiness, Perseverance, and Faith: New Brunswick Library History. Edited by Eric L. Swanick. Dalhousie University, School of Library and Information Studies, 85–94. Halifax: Dalhousie University, 1991. p. 86.

• 58

  Fredericton Public Library Board and Fredericton Public Library. A History of the Fredericton Public Library. Fredericton: Fredericton Public Library Board, 1994. p. 7.

• 59

  MacAllister, Edith. The Old Manse Library, Newcastle, New Brunswick: The Boyhood Home of Lord Beaverbrook. Newcastle, NB: Newcastle Printing Limited, 1980. [1]

• 60

  William Maxwell Aitken (Lord Beaverbrook, 1st Baron) fonds, MG H 156. Archives & Special Collections, University of New Brunswick Libraries, Fredericton, New Brunswick. Case 21, File 1a, 12499, 12519.

• 61

  Johnston, Margaret. “Lillian H. Smith.” In Lands of Pleasure: Essays on Lillian H. Smith and the Development of Children’s Libraries, edited by Adele M. Fasick, Margaret Johnston, and Ruth Osler, 3–12. Metuchen, NJ and London: Scarecrow Press, 1990. p. 6.

• 62

  Ibid, p. 11.

• 63

  Ibid, p. 5.

• 64

  Egoff, Sheila A. The Republic of Childhood: A Critical Guide to Beaver Books for a Dime. Canadian Children’s Literature in English. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1967. p. 130.

• 65

  Edwards, Gail. “‘Good Reading among Young Canadians’ (c. 1900–1950): The Canadian Association of Children’s Librarians, Young Canada’s Book Week, and the Persistence of Professional Discourse.” Library & Information History 28, no. 2 (2012): p. 138. 

• 66

  Ibid, p. 140.

• 67

  Ryerson University. “Canadian Legislation: Bill 10, the ‘Fulton Bill.’” A Crisis of Innocence: Comic Books and Children’s Culture, 1940–1954. Accessed October 21, 2021. https://crisisofinnocence.library.torontomu.ca/exhibits/show/a-crisis-of-innocence/canadian-bill/10-1-canadian-legisltation--b.

• 68

  Edwards, Gail and Judith Saltman. “Elizabeth Cleaver, William Toye, and Oxford University Press: Creating the Canadian Picturebook.” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada 42, no. 1 (2004): p. 135. 

• 69

  William Maxwell Aitken (Lord Beaverbrook, 1st Baron) fonds, MG H 156. Archives & Special Collections, University of New Brunswick Libraries, Fredericton, New Brunswick. Case 136, File 17, 83690-91.

• 70

  Litt, Paul. The Muses, the Masses, and the Massey Commission. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992. p. 223. 

• 71

  “Massey Report on Culture Urges Ambitious Program.” Daily Gleaner. June 1, 1951: 1.

• 72

  William Maxwell Aitken (Lord Beaverbrook, 1st Baron) fonds, MG H 156. Archives & Special Collections, University of New Brunswick Libraries, Fredericton, New Brunswick. Case 136, File 10, 83259.

• 73

  Edwards, Gail. “‘Good Reading among Young Canadians’ (c. 1900–1950): The Canadian Association of Children’s Librarians, Young Canada’s Book Week, and the Persistence of Professional Discourse.” Library & Information History 28, no. 2 (2012): p. 142.

• 74

  “A Community Need.” Daily Gleaner. 15 Nov, 1952 p. 4. “New Brunswick Libraries All Set to Celebrate Young Canada’s Book Week.” Daily Gleaner. 15 Nov, 1952 p. 7. 

• 75

  Nation Observes Young Canada’s Book Week.” Daily Gleaner. November 14, 1953: p. 5.

• 76

  Vincent, Betty Lou. “Comics No Threat, Magazines May Be.” January 11, 1955: pp. 1–2.

• 77

  Ibid, pp. 1-2. 

• 78

  Fox, Marion Wathen. “The Talking Cat.” Daily Gleaner. September 21, 1951: p. 12.

• 79

  Burgess, Thornton. “Burgess Bedtime Stories.” Telegraph Journal, July 28, 1951: p. 9.

• 80

  William Maxwell Aitken (Lord Beaverbrook, 1st Baron) fonds, MG H 156. Archives & Special Collections, University of New Brunswick Libraries, Fredericton, New Brunswick. Case 36, File 18, 83716.

• 81

  Ibid, Case 128, File 1a, 78386.

• 82

  “The Junior Club Page.” Daily Gleaner. January 23, 1953: 5. p. 5.

• 83

  William Maxwell Aitken (Lord Beaverbrook, 1st Baron) fonds, MG H 156. Archives & Special Collections, University of New Brunswick Libraries, Fredericton, New Brunswick. Case 136, File 18, 83728.

• 84

  Ibid, Case 136, File 18, 83736. 

• 85

  Pouliot, Suzanne, Judith Saltman, and Gail Edwards. “Publishing for Children.” In The History of the Book in Canada, vol. 3, edited by Carole Gerson and Jacques Michon, 216–41. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007. p. 221.

• 86

  MacSkimming, Roy. The Perilous Trade: Book Publishing in Canada, 1946–2006. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2007. p. 82.

• 87

  Davies, Gwendolyn. “Foreword.” In Just Mary: The Life of Mary Evelyn Grannan, by Margaret Anne Hume, 9–11. Toronto: Dundurn Group, 2006. p. 10. 

• 88

  Edwards, Gail and Judith Saltman. “Elizabeth Cleaver, William Toye, and Oxford University Press: Creating the Canadian Picturebook.” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada 42, no. 1 (2004): pp. 42-48.

• 89

  MacSkimming, Roy. The Perilous Trade: Book Publishing in Canada, 1946–2006. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2007. pp. 81-82. Edwards, Gail and Judith Saltman. “Elizabeth Cleaver, William Toye, and Oxford University Press: Creating the Canadian Picturebook.” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada 42, no. 1 (2004): p. 58. 

• 90

  O’Reilly, Gillian. “We Have a Past.” Children’s Book News 21 (no. 2), 1998: p. 2.