Publisher and businessman Avie Bennett oversaw the release of title from celebrated Canadian novelists such as Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood and Michael Ondaatje in his time with McClelland & Stewart.ALEX MEYBOOM
In 1985, when the developer Avie Bennett took over the venerable Canadian publishing house of McClelland & Stewart, founded eight decades earlier, he did not know much about Canadian literature – his new company's main product. He was not about to pretend that he did.
One day, David Staines, a literature professor at the University of Ottawa and general editor of M&S's New Canadian Library reprint series of Canadian classics, stopped his boss in the hall and said, "We have to publish Ethel Wilson."
Mr. Bennett replied, "Who is Ethel Wilson?" He had never heard of the Vancouver author, whose fiction such as Swamp Angel and Love and Salt Water – published in the 1940s and 50s – had greatly influenced Alice Munro and others.
As Prof. Staines recounted at Mr. Bennett's funeral last week, the shopping-plaza mogul sought out Prof. Staines the next day to tell him that he had read two of Ethel Wilson's novels overnight and wanted to discuss them.
"Some people thought he was just a business guy, not interested in books, but that was absolutely wrong," said the editor Douglas Gibson, who was hired away from Macmillan by Mr. Bennett in 1986 and given his own imprint. "Avie loved books. And he was such an original thinker. He was determined to find a new and different way to approach every problem."
Mr. Bennett had endless ideas for biographies and political memoirs to be commissioned, many of which became bestsellers. It helped that he knew everybody and played poker regularly with Ontario cabinet ministers.
He and Mr. Gibson got Elizabeth May to write about Haida Gwaii; outspoken Newfoundland politician John Crosbie to write his memoir, No Holds Barred; Christina McCall and Stephen Clarkson to write a two-volume biography of Pierre Trudeau; Robert Hunter to write Occupied Canada about the mistreatment of native people – just a few of the many books that advanced the national conversation.
"Avie and I shared a strong belief," said Mr. Gibson, "that books really mattered".
From Macmillan, Mr. Gibson had brought with him outstanding fiction talent – Alice Munro, Robertson Davies, Mavis Gallant, W.O. Mitchell, Jack Hodgins, Guy Vanderhaeghe. Other celebrated Canadian novelists edited by the late Ellen Seligman and published during the Bennett years included Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, Rohinton Mistry and Jane Urquhart.
"Among the poets enthusiastically published in Avie's time were Leonard Cohen and Al Purdy, both of whom were close to him," Mr. Gibson recalled.
The company issued about a hundred titles a year, as well as acting as agent for several foreign presses.
Later, in 2013, Mr. Bennett lived out every publisher's dream: He was thrilled to attend the formal ceremony in Stockholm with Alice Munro's daughter Jenny, who accepted her mother's Nobel Prize in Literature. But by then Canadian publishing had changed drastically and his glittering acquisition had slipped from his grasp; he no longer owned McClelland & Stewart.
Mr. Bennett died on June 2 in Mount Sinai Hospital of unknown causes. His son Paul Bennett said his father collapsed suddenly the previous day at the Hazelton Place Retirement Residence where he lived for the past 17 months. He had become frail and used a walker. He had moved into the retirement home when his wife Beverly could no longer look after him in their Yorkville condo. Only a few days earlier, father and son – both huge baseball fans – had gone to see the Blue Jays play (they lost 3-1).
Avie Bennett was born in Toronto on Jan. 2, 1928, the second of two children of Sophie (née Kleinberg) and Archie Bennett. Archie and his brothers, Dave and Jacob, were home builders, working with their father, Saul; the family had relocated from Kingston, where Saul had operated a lumberyard.
The three brothers founded Principal Investments in the 1930s and began to prosper when they turned to building commercial properties in the forties. "My great-uncle Dave was the driving force," Paul explained.
In 1952, taking advantage of the postwar boom, they built Sunnybrook Plaza at Bayview and Eglinton Avenues, the first such shopping plaza in Ontario. By the late fifties, they had built a string of shopping plazas across Canada estimated to be worth $100-million. A story in The Globe and Mail in 1956 called the brothers, by then in their 60s, the country's biggest commercial landlords, whose tenants included every Canadian bank and retail chain store.
Avie Bennett went to the University of Toronto but left without a degree in 1948 to work for the expanding family firm. His college years, however, were not wasted because on the steps of the university library one day he had met a co-ed named Beverly Shapiro who became the love of his life. He was 22 when they married in 1950 and Paul, the first of their six children, was born a year later.
"I went everywhere with my father when I was a child," Paul recalled. "I remember he took me with him in 1954 to show me Dixie Plaza, which was under construction and opening soon."
A plaza opening called for a big celebration with balloons, clowns, snacks, perhaps a band. "I was 3 years old and I said 'Will you give out Dixie cups?' And that's exactly what he did." (They were filled with ice cream.)
Then, in 1962, Principal Investments became overextended and collapsed. When the company went into receivership, the founding brothers took the opportunity to retire, leaving Mr. Bennett to cope with the fallout.
"One day we had money and the next day we didn't," Paul recalled. "Luckily we didn't lose our house because that had been put into our mother's name."
Mr. Bennett spent the next decade paying off Principal's creditors to bring it out of receivership. He could have declared bankruptcy and walked away "but that was not in his make-up," Paul said.
During this period, he established his own real estate company, named First Plazas, which owned the shopping mall in London where George Cohon opened the first McDonald's in Ontario. "My Dad was George Cohon's first landlord, " Paul recalled. "Every year, we got a card from George with a coupon good for a free Big Mac."
In the late seventies, Mr. Bennett sold two of his most valuable Toronto properties, Lawrence Plaza and Dixie Plaza to Murray Frum, another developer. He was flush with cash but growing increasingly bored.
It was his daughter-in-law, the late Alison Gordon, who got Mr. Bennett interested in McClelland & Stewart. In 1984, she wrote Foul Ball!, an account of the five years she spent covering baseball for the Toronto Star, and she often spoke of the financial difficulties of her publisher Jack McClelland, who was pleading for another government bailout.
When Mr. Bennett read in the paper that M&S was issuing debentures (unsecured bonds), he bought in and was appointed to the publisher's board of directors. He also acted as a loan guarantor for M&S at the bank.
Some time later, he received a call from a frustrated and desperate Jack McClelland: The bank said he must come up with $300,000 by Friday and he didn't have it. On the spur of the moment, Mr. Bennett asked the veteran publisher if he would consider selling his struggling firm. The answer was yes.
First Plazas became the owner of McClelland & Stewart, whose offices were moved to 481 University Ave., a building belonging to Mr. Bennett. His real estate firm was also headquartered there. The arrangement meant that he could write off the losses of the publishing house against the steady earnings of First Plazas. There were substantial advances to authors and lavish book launches at the Art Gallery of Ontario.
"Bennett's readiness to continue plowing his own cash into M&S meant the company could travel first class," Roy MacSkimming wrote in his book The Perilous Trade, about the Canadian publishing industry. "It was understood in the trade that he covered annual operating losses of $1-million to $2-million, particularly in the early years."
The company grew with the acquisition of Hurtig Publishers (which put out the Canadian Encyclopedia), Macfarlane Walter & Ross and the children's publisher Tundra.
He had enough left over to become for a time part-owner of the Montreal Expos. After Charles Bronfman decided to sell the beloved baseball team in 1994, it was purchased by a consortium of investors that included both Avie and Paul Bennett. The ownership stake was flipped over to the Miami Marlins and was still in effect when the Marlins won the 1997 World Series. "My Dad had the World Series ring," Paul said. He sold out in 2001 to Jeffrey Loria, the Marlins' owner.
At the start of July, 2000, Avie Bennett made a stunning announcement amidst much fanfare. He was 72 and getting out of publishing. He had sold 25 per cent of M&S – all the editing, printing, warehousing, ordering, distribution networks, the nuts and bolts of the business – to Random House Canada (a subsidiary of the German conglomerate Bertelsmann) and donated the remaining 75 per cent to the University of Toronto.
This unusual deal somewhat tarnished Mr. Bennett's sterling reputation. A new book by Elaine Dewar, The Handover, has revealed that in return for his gift to the university, Mr. Bennett received a $15.9-million tax deduction. Yet at the start of 2012, when the university passed its 75 per cent share to Random House, it was worth only a token $1 due to accumulated losses.
Today, M&S is just another Random House imprint, publishing nine or 10 Canadian titles a year – a shadow of its former self. The Handover presents Mr. Bennett's creative exit strategy as an end run around Canada's long-standing book policy, which states that a majority share in a Canadian press cannot be sold to a foreign publisher.
In old age, as honours rained upon him – three honorary degrees, an Order of Canada (he was promoted to companion, the highest rank) and an Order of Ontario – Mr. Bennett became a great philanthropist. He gave some $8-million to U of T, in addition to the troublesome gift of his company. He created a scholarship fund for First Nations students, he gave generously and often anonymously to the National Ballet, York University (where he was made chancellor in 1998), and the Art Gallery of Ontario.
When the AGO discovered that a major high-rise development was being planned on the north side of Dundas Street directly across from the art museum, Mr. Bennett simply purchased two of the Victorian houses located there and refused to budge, foiling the land assembly.
He taught his children to be generous. At his funeral his youngest son, Richard, recalled that as a child he once found a $20 bill when he was walking with his Dad. "You are a very lucky boy," said his father. "Now you must give half of it away."
Mr. Bennett leaves his wife, Beverly; children, Paul, Robin, Sara, David, Jane and Richard; and 10 grandchildren.
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