On April 14, David Macfarlane launched T0ronto: A City Becoming (Key Porter Books) with the help of a panel of (municipally) talking heads. The event happened at The Gladstone Hotel in Toronto (where else?) as part of This is Not A Reading Series. (Photos by David Cuthbertson, courtesy of Key Porter Books.)

David Macfarlane signs a copy of the book.

Macfarlane talks T.O. as his fellow panelists – photographer Michael Awad, Globe and Mail columnist John Barber, architect John Van Nostrand, and author and columnist Linda McQuaig – listen.

P.S. – Toronto.

Penguin Canada held a “100 Years of Anne” launch party at Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum on a snowy Tuesday, February 12, evening. (All photos by Jason Nolan.)

Penguin editor Helen Reeves tells about when she first broached the idea of an Anne of Green Gables prequel in 2005 with L.M. Montgomery’s family heirs.

Kate Macdonald Butler (granddaughter of LMM) and a Canada Post official unveil two new Anne-themed stamps, and The Royal Canadian Mint unveiled a new 25 cent Anne-themed coin at the event. Former Governor General Adrienne Clarkson, a loyal Anne fan, also came out for the event.

Budge Wilson, author of Before Green Gables, personally addresses a copy of the book for a fan.

Budge Wilson takes a brief rest while in the background L.M. Montgomery scholar Dr. Elizabeth Epperly signs a copy of Imagining Anne: The Island Scrapbooks of L.M. Montgomery, also launched that evening.

Every publisher gets a little bad press now and then; it’s part of the game. But rarely does it come from the stamp-collecting media.

McClelland & Stewart, though, has gotten some unflattering attention from Canadian Stamp News. The publisher launched a new postage stamp last year to commemorate its 100th anniversary, and it seems the design was not a hit with the philately journal’s readers. In a mail-in poll of 6,000 collectors, the M&S stamp placed first … in the Least Favourite Stamp category.

Plans for the Q&Q stamp have gone back to the drawing board.