One of Canada’s most beloved literary publishers is currently operating out of a converted garage in Keagan Hawthorne’s backyard in Tantramar, N.B.
“This is a bit of an interim space,” Hawthorne said as he spoke to As It Happens host Nil Köksal from his box-filled, Tyvek-covered base of operations in the community of Sackville. “There is a lot of organizing and reorganizing to come.”
Hawthorne is in the process of taking over as owner of Gaspereau Press, a boutique publishing company and printing press that operated for nearly two decades out of another small Maritime town, Kentville, N.S.
When its founders, Andrew Steeves and Gary Dunfield, decided to call it quits last year, they were determined to find a new owner who would stay true to the company’s longtime mission: stay small, and stay local.
“There are a lot of presses in this country that do it differently, and I am grateful for them,” Hawthorne said.
“Chasing after sort of blockbuster success has not been our program, and it’s just not how we operate.”
Founded in 1997, Gaspereau Press has long been a small shop with a big impact.
By operating out of Kentville and printing and binding its books by hand, in-house, the company has kept its hometown appeal, while garnering an international reputation, especially among writers.
“Every poet in English Canada wants to have a book published by Gaspereau Press, because of the fact that they know it’s going to be treated with tender loving care,” poet and University of Toronto professor George Elliott Clarke, who has published several books with Gaspereau, told CBC News last year.
The approach has, at times, had its setbacks.
In 2010, when Johanna Skibsrud’s novel The Sentimentalists, published by Gaspereau Press, won the prestigious Giller Prize, it generated more mainstream buzz than the company is used to.
The book’s rising popularity put Gasperau Press in something of a, well, bind, as they struggled to keep up the pace with the book’s demand. They ended up selling the paperback rights to a bigger Canadian publisher, Douglas & McIntyre.
But when the storm passed, instead of capitalizing on the success of The Sentimentalists to grow, Gasperau Press insisted on keeping things local.
“People need to be able to see that these things are possible, they don’t just happen in far away important places,” Steeves told CBC last year, as he prepared to close up shop.
“I think that some of the characteristics of what we’ve been able to do have been influenced by the fact that we’re not sitting in an office tower in Vancouver or Toronto or Montreal.”
Hawthorne — himself a poet who has published with Gaspereau Press — compares the company’s bespoke bookmaking process to furniture making.
“Your bum feels better when you sit on a well-made seat,” he said. “And literature is better when it’s read out of a well made book.”
Hawthorne says Sackville — a southeastern New Brunswick community, recently amalgamated into the town of Tantramar — is a perfect place for a company like this.
Sackville is home to Mount Allison University, and has always been a hub of academia, arts and culture in Atlantic Canada, he says.
“We live at the moment in a generally economically depressed region, and yet we have a very good, very large employer in this town in the university,” Hawthorne said.
“Because the cost of living is relatively affordable, people can afford to try things here, you know. It is easier to take a risk as an artist if you’re not living in a condo in Toronto or Vancouver and having literally sky-high rent.”
Still, some changes are coming to Gaspereau Press, which as of now, is just Hawthorne in his garage with one part-time employee.
The goal, he says, is to move into a warehouse by winter.
“Some parts of the process will be necessarily outsourced,” he said, referring to printing as well as some of the bookbinding.
“But the final product of the book will still have this hand-printed jacket that is put on by hand, and a wrapper that’s assembled by hand.”
No matter what happens, he says the folks at Gaspereau Press still literally “touch every book that comes out of our shop.”
This story is part of The Hometown Edition, a special series airing on CBC Radio’s As It Happens Nov. 3-7, showcasing the struggles and triumphs of Canada’s small towns. Listen here to learn more about what’s happening in Tantramar, N.B.
