It's typical Basil that when he was notified of this award he was sure we must be looking for some other Basil and couldn't imagine what he had done to deserve such a thing.

The short answer is everything.

His day job was running the UBC Library, a challenge sufficient by itself to drive ordinary mortals around the bend, which has been proven on several occasions apparently. But Basil carried it out in an exemplary manner for 17 years. For that alone he deserves a medal.

But it is a testament to the breadth of his interests and his great but gentle energies that it is mainly for his extra curricular activities we are honoring him tonight.

His library career began at McGill University where he was a reference librarian from 1954 to 1956. He joined the staff of UBC Library in 1956 as a cataloguer, became the first Head of the Special Collections Division in 1960, and then the Coordinator of Collections in 1962. He helped create the archival collection on Malcolm Lowry at UBC Special Collections, one of the world's foremost resources for Lowry research.

He served as University Librarian at UBC (1964-1981) and was Director of the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies (1981-1992). During this latter period he implemented the first post-graduate degree program in North America in the field of archival studies. For a dozen years he taught at the school the only course available on publishing in British Columbia.

He edited the British Columbia Library Quarterly 1963/64. In 1965 he was one of the founders of the Alcuin Society, which provides awards for excellence in Canadian book design. In 1967 he and bookseller Bill Duthie collaborated in the production of the first edition of Canadian Books in Print. As Chairman of the U.B.C. President's Committee on University Publishing, he was instrumental in establishing U.B.C. Press, and served as the founding Chair of its Board from 1970 to 1982.

He was one of the proponents of the 1986 Public Lending Right legislation that compensates all Canadian authors for having their works in Canadian public libraries. From 1987 he served on the founding Board of the Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing at Simon Fraser University. He has acted as a consultant to several governments and their agencies, including the BC Arts Board, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Canada Council and the National Library. Currently (2004) he is the Chairman of the Publications Committee of the Bibliographical Society of Canada. (I am indebted to that excellent online resource, ABCBookworld.com, for much of the foregoing)


I first met Basil when he organized the first and only Conference on Western Regional Publishing in 1972. It was the year in which Mary and I published the first issue of Raincoast Chronicles, way up in Pender Harbour where we despaired of ever being noticed by the outside world. But Basil noticed us and somehow managed to get me to park my bulldozer long enough to come to this meeting he was convening for people doing things like we were doing. This was no modest gathering, it turned out. It brought together everyone who was publishing anything in western Canada, from books to one-issue wonders like ours. It filled a large convention room in downtown Vancouver. We listened to inspirational talks from folks like Bookpeople, the San Francisco distributor who hand sold a million copies of the hippie bible The Whole Earth Catalogue, and who urged us to break away from the clutches of traditional eastern publishing and forge our own destiny just as they were doing. Poor Bookpeople, they finally bit the dust this year, but a part of them carries on as Publishers Group West, the dominant distributor of independent presses in the US and a corporate relative of Raincoast Books.

At Basil's meeting participants spent most of their time wandering around bumping into each other exclaiming over and over how impressed and empowered they felt to discover there were so darn many of us. It was there for the first time I realized we were not involved in something solitary and quixotic, but were part of a larger cultural movement with common interests and the potential for the kind of growth that might even provide an opportunity to permanently park one's bulldozer. It was a stunning concept for me at the time. It was also where I first met many of the people I see in this room tonight and whom we would come to know as our publishing family. It was the first time we had ever been brought together in one place, and the direct result was that we dated each other up to get back together as soon as possible, which is how we came to form the old BCPG, which wasn't hard enough to say so we changed it to the ABPBC, which is still going strong after 30 years.

I don't know how Basil came to organize that convention and I'm sure if you asked him he would credit seven other people, but I was there and it was him alright. It was typical of the visionary influence he has had on our literary landscape. If there weren't enough other reasons already, for that act alone we that act alone we would owe him tonight's honour.

But there are many other reasons, and this list actually does him a disservice because it omits so many valuable contributions that were done so quietly and graciously nobody can remember them all. When I asked one of Basil's long-time colleagues what else he did that I might have left out, they said, "Everything. My goodness, what hasn't he done? But I hope you realize he will be very annoyed with you for pointing it out.";

So Basil old friend, I'm sorry to blow your cover after all these years, but yours is an act so classy it simply can't stay a secret any longer.

It gives me great pleasure to present the 2004 Gray Campbell Award for service to books over and above the call of duty to Basil Stuart Stubbs.

-- speech delivered by Howard White of Harbour Publishing, April 15, 2004.