John Meier wants to own every English-language first edition book that has ever won the Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction. (You may remember him from a Quillblog post back in November.)

Today, Meier, 51, was profiled in the The Globe and Mail. Marsha Lederman describes the Ikea Billy bookcases where Meier houses his collection on the ground floor of his parent’s house. He uses blackout curtains to protect the books and sometimes even shelves them backwards so as not to expose colours prone to fading, such as the Day-Glo orange on his four copies of Brian Moore’s The Luck of Ginger Coffey (1960).

Meier is currently trying to raise $500, 000 to display his collection at the Cultural Olympiad, which will coincide with the 2010 Winter Olympics. After the Olympics, Meier hopes to take his books on a cross-country tour of Canada. The Canada Council will not fund the project because it “constitutes privileged treatment” of the English-language Governor General winners for fiction.

Read the article here. For more on Meier read this story about the National Book-Collecting Contest published in Q&Q last month.