Windsor Library settles in wrongful dismissal suit

A controversial lawsuit brought against the Windsor Public Library Board by its former CEO, Brian Bell, has been settled out of court. Windsor Star columnist Anne Jarvis criticized the settlement with Bell, which she pegs at more than $80,000: “I’d say Christmas has come early for Brian Bell.”

In 2008, Bell was fired without severance when it came to light he had been articling at a Windsor, Ontario, law firm while on paid sick leave from WPL. Bell, citing wrongful dismissal, sued the board for $500,000. Jarvis notes that the library’s education incentive program had already paid out nearly $36,000 towards Bell’s business and law school tuition. Bell now practices law in Toronto and specializes in employment and labour issues.

The columnist explains that the library opted to settle the suit because it had “mishandled the firing,” “breached Bell’s privacy,” and “couldn’t find Bell’s file or correspondence between the board and Bell.”

“Whatever,” writes Jarvis. “All I know is I’m forking out yet more money for Brian Bell.”

Toronto library board leaves room for more staff cuts

Earlier this week, the Toronto Public Library Board made clear its opposition to reducing hours and closing branches, but left itself open to additional staff, collection, and programming cuts.

At a meeting that stretched over five hours and saw more than 100 community members in overflow seating, the library board discussed its options for attaining a 4.3 per cent cut to its 2012 operating budget in order to reach the 10 per cent total reduction demanded by Mayor Rob Ford. The board had previously approved eliminating 100 full-time staff positions and implementing new technologies, amounting to a savings of $9.7 million, or 5.7 per cent of the budget. On Monday, chief librarian Jane Pyper proposed trimming hours at 59 of the system’s 98 branches and shaving from collections to bridge the remaining gap.

According to the Toronto Star, board members rejected any changes to service hours, claiming it would go against public interest. Pyper assured that cuts would otherwise come from adult literacy, home library, and homework programs. “If the board’s top priority is to preserve branch open hours [...] we have to look at programs we have tried to protect which generally speak to children and those who are less able to access our services,” Pyper says in The Globe and Mail.

The board did pass a motion to increase room rental fees for library auditoriums, theatres, and meeting rooms, and told Pyper to hit on more money-generating options, such as raising overdue fines, introducing new charges for failing to collect items on hold, paid parking spots, and sponsorship. (Pyper has already dismissed many of these as ineffective.)

TPL Workers Union president Maureen O’Reilly, who presented a deputation at the meeting, says the night took a surprising turn when a board member tabled a motion requesting Pyper to look into dropping 60 additional full-time jobs. O’Reilly says chair Paul Ainslie improperly permitted the motion to proceed considering another motion had already been put to the floor calling for no further cuts to the library budget (a recommendation that was unanimously approved by the board’s own budget committee on Nov. 1). O’Reilly says the chair’s action flouted procedure and compounded the sense of disconnect between the board’s decision-makers and the community.

The board will meet next on Dec. 12. In the meantime, it will continue its public survey and wrap up a month-long series of public consultations Friday evening at the Bloor/Gladstone branch. City councillors Mike Layton and Ana Bailao will be in attendance from 6:30 to 8 p.m.

Toronto Public Library explores money-making options

Following a city mandate to cut $17 million from its operating budget, the Toronto Public Library is looking at ways to bring in more revenue.

On Monday, the library’s board will meet to consider a budget committee report outlining money-making ideas, many of which have already drawn fire for risking to commercialize the library.

The report recommends looking into partnerships with retailers to sell books via the TPL website. It also suggests the library consider selling e-books, possibly through U.S. distributor OverDrive.

Another suggestion is to increase fines for overdue books to approximately double the current rates, which could be paired with “a different fine schedule for low-income users.” Other ideas range from used book sales to charging for parking. From the Toronto Star:

[The report] also recommends creating a new fine for people who put holds on books and don’t pick them up … [and] expanding advertising channels and opportunities including an advertising bookmark and getting sponsorship of WiFi services.

Booksellers’ picks of the year: international non-fiction

Canadian booksellers contacted by Q&Q say 2011 has been an especially strong year for international history and biography, with one book clearly taking the lead.

“The huge one would be the Steve Jobs title,” says Colin Holt, manager of Bolen Books in Victoria. Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson’s biography of Apple’s late co-founder and CEO, had its publication date moved up from 2012 after Jobs’s death in October. Indigo, Chapters, and Coles stores opened early on Oct. 24, the book’s release date, so Canadians could get their hands on a copy right away. Steve Jobs has since become a #1 bestseller.

In Toronto, Book City branches have already seen high sales of U.K.-born historian Niall Ferguson’s latest title, Civilization: The West and the Rest, a follow-up to Ferguson’s 2009 bestseller, The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World.

At Nicholas Hoare’s Toronto location, books with buzz include Rome: A Cultural, Visual, and Personal History by Australian art critic Robert Hughes and Jerusalem: The Biography by British writer Simon Sebag Montefiore. Fiona McCarthy’s The Last Pre-Raphaelite, a biography of artist Edward Burne-Jones, and Franny Moyle’s Constance, chronicling the “tragic and scandalous” life of Oscar Wilde’s wife, are also top sellers.

Outside of history and biography, booksellers also pointed to Gully Wells’s memoir, The House in France, and Arguably, an essay collection by British-American writer Christopher Hitchens.

Weekend reading list: top stories from around our offices

Every weekend Q&Q rounds up the highlights from other websites in the St. Joseph Media family. This week’s top stories include a gastronomical homage to Ferran Adrià at the Cookbook Store and the unveiling of Team Canada’s Olympic uniforms.

A visual tour of El Bulli Imitació, Matt Kantor’s epic 22-course homage to Ferran Adrià at the Cookbook Store [Toronto Life]

The Bay unveils Team Canada’s London 2012 Olympic Games apparel [Fashion Magazine]

Get kids talking with the high-low game [Canadian Family]

Wine and Food Festival preview with expert David Lawrason [Ottawa Magazine]

MoneySense weighs in: best credit cards for travel –  [Where Canada]

Four dishes to fight cold and flu season [20 Minute Supper Club]

Thirteen cost-cutting ideas from photography to catering [Wedding Bells]

Photo gallery: Church Street’s best Halloween costumes [Torontoist]

Fall preview 2011: Canadian fiction

In the July/August issue, Q&Q looks ahead at the fall season’s biggest books.

NOVELS

One of the most anticipated releases of the fall season is surely the new novel from internationally acclaimed author Michael Ondaatje, his first since 2007 Governor General’s Literary Award winner Divisadero. Set in the early 1950s, The Cat’s Table (McClelland & Stewart, $32 cl., Sept.) tells the story of an 11-year-old boy crossing the Indian Ocean on a liner bound for England, and the mysterious prisoner shackled on board. • Also from M&S is Guy Vanderhaeghe’s first novel in eight years. Set in the late 19th-century Canadian and American West, A Good Man ($32.99 cl., Sept.) is the third book in a loose trilogy that also includes The Last Crossing (2003) and The Englishman’s Boy, which won the 1996 Governor General’s Literary Award. • A third GG winner has a new novel out this season: David Gilmour, who won in 2005 for his previous novel, A Perfect Night to Go to China. Gilmour returns with The Perfect Order of Things (Thomas Allen Publishers, $26.95 cl., Sept.), the story of a man who revisits traumatic and life-changing incidents from his past.

Marina Endicott follows up her Scotiabank Giller Prize–shortlisted 2008 novel Good to a Fault with The Little Shadows (Doubleday Canada, $32.95 cl., Sept.), about three sisters who become vaudeville singers following the death of their father. • Acclaimed novelist Helen Humphreys returns with an historical novel set in France during the Napoleonic period. The Reinvention of Love (HarperCollins Canada, $29.99 cl., Sept.) is about a French journalist whose affair with Victor Hugo’s wife causes a scandal (as it might be expected to do).

Brian Francis’s debut novel, Fruit, was a runner-up in the 2009 edition of CBC’s battle of the books, Canada Reads. His second novel, Natural Order (Doubleday Canada, $29.95 cl., Aug.), tells the story of a mother who is forced to confront the secrets she has kept about her son when her carefully constructed life is overturned by a startling revelation. • Kevin Chong returns to fiction with his first novel in a decade. Beauty Plus Pity (Arsenal Pulp Press, $17.95 pa., Sept.) follows an Asian-Canadian slacker in Vancouver whose incipient modelling career is derailed by the death of his father and the sudden departure of his fiancée.

Requiem (HarperCollins Canada, $32.95 cl., Sept.), the third novel from Frances Itani, is about a Japanese-Canadian who embarks upon a cross-country journey of discovery following the death of his wife. • Anita Rau Badami follows her best-selling novels Tamarind Mem and The Hero’s Walk with Tell It to the Trees (Knopf Canada, $32 cl., Sept.), about the Dharma family – the authoritarian Vikram, the gourmand Suman, and the old storyteller Akka. When the Dharmas’ tenant, Anu, turns up dead on their doorstep, the family’s long-buried secrets begin to boil over. • Gayla Reid returns with her first novel since 2002’s Closer Apart. Set during the Spanish Civil War, Come from Afar (Cormorant Books, $32 cl., Aug.) tells the story of an Australian nurse who falls into a relationship with a Canadian soldier from the International Brigade.

Haitian expat Dany Laferrière is back with his third novel in translation in three years. The Return (Douglas & McIntyre, $22.95 pa., Aug.) tells the story of a 23-year-old Haitian named Dany who flees Baby Doc Duvalier’s repressive regime and relocates to Montreal. Thirty-three years later, Dany learns of his father’s death in New York City, and plots a return to his native country. David Homel translates. • Another Montreal resident, poet Sina Queyras, has a novel out this fall, the author’s first. Autobiography of Childhood (Coach House Books, $20.95 pa., Oct.) is about one day in the lives of five siblings haunted by the death of a brother years before. • Infrared (McArthur & Company, $29.95 cl., Sept.), the new novel by Nancy Huston, is about a photographer who travels to Tuscany with her father and stepmother. Employing internal dialogues with the photographer’s mental doppelgänger, Huston opens up her hero for exposure and provides an intimate picture of her interior life.

CanLit mainstay David Helwig returns with a novella, his first since 2007’s Smuggling Donkeys. Killing McGee (Oberon, $38.95 cl., $18.95 pa., Oct.) tells the story of a professor’s dual obsessions with the assassination of D’Arcy McGee and the disappearance of one of his students. • Toronto-based poet Dani Couture returns with her first novel, a surreal and iconoclastic take on that perennial CanLit staple: the family drama. Algoma (Invisible Publishing, $19.95 pa., Oct.) tells the story of a family attempting to cope with the aftermath of a young child falling through the ice and drowning. • Shari Lapeña also has a novel about a perennial CanLit concern: raising money to allow one time to write poetry. Happiness Economics (Brindle & Glass, $19.95 pa., Sept.) tells the story of a stalled poet who takes a job writing advertising copy to start a poetry foundation.

Jamaican-born novelist, poet, and non-fiction author Olive Senior returns to long-form fiction with Dancing Lessons (Cormorant, $22 pa., Aug.), about a woman looking back on her life after a hurricane destroys her home. • Memoirist Frances Greenslade (A Pilgrim in Ireland, By the Secret Ladder) has a debut novel out this August. Shelter (Random House Canada, $29.95 cl.) is a coming of age story about two sisters searching for their mother, who abandoned them after their father was killed in a logging accident.

Not one, but two novels this season extend the burgeoning CanLit focus on towns that have been/are about to be flooded (after Johanna Skibsrud’s The Sentimentalists, Anne Michaels’ The Winter Vault, and Michael V. Smith’s Progress). Tristan Hughes’s Eye Lake (Coach House, $19.95 pa., Oct.) is about the town of Crooked River, Ontario. Named for a river that was diverted to make way for a mine, the town harbours secrets that surface when the river reclaims its original course. • And in September, Goose Lane Editions will publish Riel Nason’s The Town that Drowned ($19.95 pa.), about the suspicions, secrets, and emotions that flare up when the township of Haverton is scheduled to be flooded to allow for the construction of a massive dam.

Edward Riche follows up his Thomas Head Raddall Award winner The Nine Planets with Easy to Like (House of Anansi Press, $29.95 cl., Sept.), a satire about a screenwriter and oenophile who dreams of travelling to Paris, but is trapped in Canada by an expired passport and a growing Hollywood scandal. Relocating to Toronto, he bluffs his way into the upper echelons of the CBC. • Former president and CEO of Penguin Canada, David Davidar was forced out of his position under a cloud of scandal after accusations of sexual harassment. Davidar’s new novel, Ithaca (M&S, $29.99 cl., Oct.), is, perhaps not coincidentally, about the rise and fall of a publishing star.

Canadian literary icon Michel Tremblay returns with a new novel, the first in a trilogy. Set in 1913, Crossing the Continent (Talonbooks, $18.95 pa., Oct.) takes the author’s characters out of Quebec for the first time, to tell the backstory of the people who populate his Chroniques du Plateau-Mont-Royal series. Long-time Tremblay collaborator Sheila Fischman translates.

A resident of St. John’s, Newfoundland, lately one of the most fertile spots for Canadian writing, Michelle Butler Hallett crafts genre-busting stories and novels that frequently experiment with gender and perspective. Her new novel, Deluded Your Sailors (Creative Book Publishing, $21.95 pa., Sept.), focuses on the culture industry from the perspective of Nichole Wright, who makes a discovery that puts a government-funded tourism project in jeopardy, and a shape-shifting minister named Elias Winslow. • Another Newfoundland native, Kate Story, has a novel out with Creative this season. The follow-up to 2008’s Blasted, Wrecked Upon This Shore ($21.95 pa., Sept.) tells the story of Pearl Lewis, an emotionally damaged, charismatic woman who is seen at different stages in her life.

In 1972, Christina Parr returns to her hometown of Parr’s Landing, a place she fled years earlier. The dirty secret of Parr’s Landing? A 300-year-old vampire resides in the caves of the remote mining town. Christina learns why she should have stayed away in Michael Rowe’s Enter, Night (ChiZine Publications, $17.95 pa., Oct.). • English literature professor Janey Erlickson struggles to make headway in her academic career while caring for a tyrannical toddler in Sue Sorensen’s comic novel A Large Harmonium (Coteau Books, $21 pa., Sept.). • Paul Brenner, a Vancouver lawyer, dines with his son, Daniel, one Friday evening. The next day, Brenner receives word that his son has been murdered. Hold Me Now (Freehand Books, $21.95 pa., Oct.), the first novel from Stephen Gauer, examines a father’s grief and a lawyer’s faith in the legal system.

SHORT FICTION

Anyone who has ever wondered what might transpire if the author of Bigfoot’s autobiography were to illustrate a story collection by Canada’s reigning postmodern ironist can stop wondering. October sees the publication of Highly Inappropriate Tales for Young People (Random House Canada, $24 cl.), the first collaboration between author Douglas Coupland and well-known illustrator Graham Roumieu.

D.W. Wilson currently lives in London, England, but is a native of B.C.’s Kootenay Valley. The winner of the inaugural Man Booker Prize Scholarship from the University of East Anglia, Wilson’s debut collection, Once You Break a Knuckle (Hamish Hamilton Canada, $32 cl., Sept.), is a suite of stories about good people doing bad things.

Novelist Anne DeGrace has her first collection of short stories on tap for September. Flying with Amelia (McArthur & Company, $29.95 cl.) spans the 20th century and crosses vast swathes of territory. Wireless telegraphy, German POWs in Manitoba, the Great Depression, and the FLQ crisis all crop up in her stories. • David Whitton’s story “Twilight of the Gods” was included in the 2010 sci-fi anthology Darwin’s Bastards. The story also appears in Whitton’s first solo collection, The Reverse Cowgirl (Freehand, $21.95 pa., Oct.), which sports the most sexually suggestive title for a collection of CanLit stories since Pasha Malla’s The Withdrawal Method.

Toronto writer Rebecca Rosenblum follows up her Metcalf-Rooke Award–winning debut collection Once (a Q&Q book of the year for 2009) with The Big Dream (Biblioasis, $19.95 pa., Sept.), a collection of linked stories about the lives of workers at Dream, Inc., a lifestyle-magazine publisher. • The Maladjusted (Thistledown Press, $18.95 pa., Sept.), Toronto writer Derek Hayes’ debut collection, focuses on people who run afoul of the dictates of polite society. • Also from Thistledown, Britt Holmström’s Leaving Berlin ($18.95 pa., Sept.) examines contemporary women in both Canadian and European settings.

The fine print: Q&Q’s fall preview covers books published between July 1 and Dec. 31, 2011. All information (titles, prices, publication dates, etc.) was supplied by publishers and may have been tentative at Q&Q’s press time. • Titles that have appeared in previous previews do not appear here.

Henk Harren, bookseller, 1944 – 2011

Henk Harren, owner of Windsor’s The Book Mark, has died of a heart attack. He was 67.

Harren, a native of Holland, came to Canada at 18 to escape the military draft. He opened his downtown bookshop in 1973 and was at the helm until financial pressures forced its closure in 2007. From The Windsor Star:

After studying business at the University of Windsor and getting married, [Harren's daughter, Pauline] Pare said Harren in 1973 began what he knew since age five would be his eventual career — a bookstore proprietor.

[...]

After a long day of selling books, Harren liked to curl up at home in his green-vinyl easy chair, with his wooden pipe and a favourite read. “It was like a scene out of an old illustration,” said Pare.

Being the owner of a small independent bookstore certainly wasn’t about making money, but Pare said people wandering in off the street in need of a few dollars would find a generous businessman. The Book Mark was definitely a browser’s delight, with thousands of titles stacked in apparent randomness.

U.S. literary journals thrive with low overhead and dedicated audiences

A couple of weeks ago poet Michael Lista got the attention of the publishing Twitterverse with his National Post essay “Why literary magazines should fold.”

Now, we don’t need another American TV sitcom to point out the differences between our two cultures, but here’s an interesting article about the financial health of U.S. West Coast literary journals. Turns out, boutique publishers like The Threepenny Review, Zoetrope, and McSweeney’s Quarterly are doing just fine these days, but not for the reasons you might think. According to The New York Times:

If literary journals “are poised to do well,” as Laura Cogan, editor of San Francisco-based ZYZZYVA, said, it may be because they share qualities with many successful online ventures: skeletal staffs, low overhead and specialized audiences.

The article suggests journals associated with academic institutions have financially suffered the most over the last couple of years. Not that the successful print publishers are sitting around counting their money bags — they’ve been investing in the online side of their businesses by overhauling websites and promoting online subscriptions. McSweeney’s even hired a digital media director.

But, as the article concludes — and here’s where Canadians can nod in agreement — if these publishers are doing well, it is relative to their notions of success:

“No one has ever been able to make a good living writing or publishing literary fiction,” Stephen Elliott, a writer and founder of The Rumpus, said. “It doesn’t matter that there are exceptions. The rule stands.”

U.K. poets band together to protest cuts

It’s National Poetry Month here in Canada, an annual initiative by the League of Canadian Poets to bring public attention to poetry. But across the Atlantic, the beginning of April more closely resembles T.S. Eliot’s characterization as “the cruellest month.” On March 30, Arts Council England (ACE) announced cuts to over 200 arts organizations, including the Poetry Book Society, which Eliot himself established in 1953. Responding to the cut in funding, British poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy said that it was “a national shame and a scandal” that “goes beyond shocking and touches the realms of the disgusting.”

In response to the denial of funding for the Poetry Book Society, a letter of protest has been signed by more than 100 poets. The Poetry Book Society claims it will have to shut down entirely if the proposed cuts kick in as of April 2012.

This reaction is to some extent predictable; what is less predictable is the reaction in opposition to proposed funding for British publisher Faber. In light of cuts to the Poetry Book Society and certain smaller publishers, the decision to give money to a relatively well-off publisher such as Faber has ruffled some feathers. From the Guardian:

Former Faber director Desmond Clarke, also a former chair of the board at the Poetry Book Society, said he found ACE’s decision to favour the publisher over the Poetry Book Society “extraordinary.”

“As a commercially profitable publisher, Faber is more than capable of investing in a small number of poets each year,” he said. “The reality is that Faber has made enormous amounts of money by publishing poetry, and out of the royalties of Cats which has provided it with many millions over the years.” T.S. Eliot, author of Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, which inspired the musical, left his literary estate to Faber.

Clarke added: “If I were still a director of Faber I would actually be embarrassed that we should take money when the Poetry Book Society has lost funding.”

The broader picture shows that literature is actually the biggest winner in ACE’s new budget, seeing a 10 per cent increase in funding, while all other cultural arenas experience a net loss. The same article quotes Rachel Feldberg, director of the Ilkley Literature Festival (one of the organizations that will benefit from ACE’s allocation of funds) as feeling “torn” between her own elation and sadness for those who lost out:

“It’s exciting for us but for our colleagues the outlook may be bleak,” she said. The increased funding will enable the festival to continue and expand projects including work with young people in Leeds and Bradford schools.

EU proposes seven-year limit on Google

An independent panel of arts and communications experts has advised the European Commission to limit the amount of time a private company such as Google can exercise preferential use of digitized materials from the public domain.

Speaking at a press conference in Brusells yesterday, Androulla Vassiliou, EU commissioner for education and culture, said that Google’s current 15-year limit should be halved to seven years in order to encourage competition in both digitizing and commercializing digitized assets.

Germany’s international broadcaster Deutsche Welle reports that Google Books is currently the world’s biggest producer of digitized content of public domain works. In the six years that Google Books has been around, it has already digitized 15 million texts.

As the company responsible for the digitization of a work, Google is currently granted an extended period of preferential use throughout which access to the item is limited, in Google’s case, to a library’s website, noncommercial websites, or Google’s website. In pushing for the new limit, the panel is hoping for increased access for not-for-profit organizations, specifically Europeana, an online portal for digitized works of European arts and culture funded by the EU

According to The New York Times, the commission also recommended “direct[ing] more public funds to digitizing those works to increase educational resources and develop new businesses.”

The commission also suggested that that would offer value for money, as the funds needed to build 100 kilometers, or 62 miles, of roads would be enough to pay for the digitization of 16 percent of all available books in E.U. libraries.