Avie Bennett

At first blush, 2012 was not a good year for independent Canadian book publishing. It began with Random House, owned by German conglomerate Bertelsmann, finally and completely swallowing up McClelland & Stewart, the iconic publisher once as central to Canadian culture as the CBC. It ended with 42-year-old Vancouver-based Douglas & McIntyre, the largest independent publisher in the country, home to such household names as David Suzuki and Douglas Coupland, essentially filing for bankruptcy protection. Reports in the Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail portrayed an industry in apparent free-fall

Canada’s biggest multinational publishing house just got bigger. Random House of Canada has become the sole owner of McClelland & Stewart, one of Canada’s oldest publishing houses.

Random House has owned a share of M&S since 2000 when its sole owner and chairman Avie Bennett sold it 25% of the company and donated 75% to the University of Toronto with the intent that M&S would maintain its editorial independence. Random House had been providing services such as sales, production, human resources and accounting to M&S since that time.