“Fratricidal Warfare”: English-Canadian Textbook Publishers Take on the Americans, 1970-1980

• In Event: Power and the Development and Reorganization of Intellectual and Physical Spaces

Abstract

By the late sixties, foreign (mainly American) interests dominated educational publishing in Canada. A combination of a new sense of nationalism and an economic crisis in the book trade shaped demands for the federal government to formulate an appropriate industrial strategy for publishing. Of central interest here are the tensions between two publishers’ associations and the efforts of the government to promote the cause of Canadian nationalism. The Canadian Book Publishers’ Council (CBPC) (1910), comprised mainly of American subsidiaries, and the Independent Publishers Association (IPA) (1971) formed by Canadian-owned publishing companies in response to this national crisis, became bitter rivals, engaging in what one publisher called “fratricidal warfare”.

Authors

• Penney I. Clark, The University of British Columbia

• Wayne Knights, The University of British Columbia