While it could provide a decent living, there was never any serious money to be made in book publishing. The shadow of insufficient cash flow constantly hung over the passions of acquiring the next book. Geoff Feilding, then executive editor at McClelland & Stewart, cautioned me about this early in my career. I wasn’t listening very intently.

In 1970, James Douglas and I founded the Vancouver-based Douglas & McIntyre. It was considered the poster child for a successful Canadian independent publishing house for a long time. But for any book publisher dependent on the market, quarterly fiscal results are deeply discouraging.

The first quarter absorbs bookseller returns from the previous fall season. The second quarter is neutral, which is disappointing because new spring books never enjoy the sales success of fall books, and backlist sales seldom make up the difference. The third quarter is full of promise as fall books are being shipped and beginning to sell. The fourth promises redemption as lead fall titles are beginning to sell and are reordered. The Christmas season makes or breaks most booksellers and publishers. Prayers to the gift-giving gods are frequent.

As a business strategy, it is pathetic. As a cultural strategy, it is essential to civilized nations. The great English publisher Geoffrey Faber had the emphasis right: “Books are not mere merchandise. Books are a nation thinking out loud.” That cornerstone aspiration is what drives the model.

My own abiding passion for Canadian culture always blunted my enthusiasm for pursuing the American market, however beneficial I understood that neighbouring pot of gold to be. I’d learned that fighting to preserve Canadian cultural space was always problematic. The issue was deeply resented in the American corporate world. Canadian ideas—expressed in the country’s books, magazines, television, movies, and music—are usually squeezed to the margins. The mechanisms of their distribution were, and remain, primarily controlled by American corporations. Profit is the primary concern. Nation building is of little consequence. Americans feel that Canada is their turf and they have the commercial weapons to prevail.

In the 1980s, then prime minister Brian Mulroney launched negotiations with the United States for a new free trade agreement of unprecedented scale. Everything, potentially including culture, was on the table. Political debates soon exploded. Everything we held dear was going to be trampled by the American elephant.

To defuse the panic, and ensure effective business input, Mulroney struck fifteen sectoral advisory groups on international trade (SAGITs) to offer advice. Each was to be made up of business leaders, with regular, detailed, and confidential briefings covering the progress of negotiations. One of the designated groups was to deal with culture and the arts. I was asked to join it, a rare opportunity for a cultural emissary from Western Canada to join an important national debate. From my first meeting in fall 1986 through to the dismantlement of the system almost twenty years later, including one term as chair, this gave me a front-row seat during the country’s, and the world’s, evolving trade wars. A side benefit was the high-powered access to much of the Ottawa bureaucracy, including ministers and deputy ministers.

“Books are not mere merchandise. Books are a nation thinking out loud.”

My colleagues on the first SAGIT included an impressive group of luminaries from the Canadian art, book, film, and sports worlds. The initial meeting began calmly enough. Soon, conflicting emotions flared. Paranoia was in the air. The group’s prevailing mood softened as briefings became more frequent and more transparent. Simon Reisman had been appointed Canada’s lead negotiator, and there was little doubt he could successfully keep the Americans at bay. Apparently, and encouragingly, marching orders from the cabinet to Canadian negotiators had specifically emphasized that the final agreement had to protect Canadian culture.

For Canadians, the heart of the agreement was not tariffs but market opportunity. Canada sought broader access to the flourishing American economy. The US wanted access to Canada’s energy, water, and cultural industries. When the end was in sight, Canadian negotiators dug in their heels and insisted on a “cultural exemption,” a world first within a trade agreement. The exemption meant that Canada’s fragile cultural industries were off the table. The ability of Canadians to hear, see, and read their own voices—enabled by subsidies, quotas, ownership requirements, or any of the other measures in the cultural toolbox, without reprisal—was protected. In practice, this meant without fear of American reprisal. Canadian ideas were judged so essential to Canada’s national interest that measures to strengthen their reach had........

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