Nearly 60 years after it was founded, Fitzhenry & Whiteside has a new owner.

President and CEO Holly Doll is retiring, and Sutherland House Books will be taking over the backlists of Fitzhenry & Whiteside and its imprints Red Deer Press, Fifth House Publishers, and Whitecap Books.

Doll, who assumed the role of CEO after her sister Sharon Fitzhenry‘s death in 2023, says she had two stipulations for any prospective ownership transfer: the buyer had to be Canadian and they had to be willing to continue the Fitzhenry & Whiteside name and honour the publisher’s existing contracts with authors and illustrators. Kenneth Whyte, publisher of Sutherland House Books, meets both those criteria, Doll says.

The deal – the terms of which have not been revealed – takes effect on April 1. The timing is tight, but it made sense to align the ownership transfer with the March 31 end of Fitzhenry & Whiteside’s existing distribution agreement with Firefly Books so they wouldn’t have to move their inventory twice.

“I think it’s the hardest decision I’ve ever made, but I would like to retire,” Doll tells Q&Q. “We have a very strong legacy of supporting Canadian authors and illustrators and I wanted to make sure that that legacy continues.”

Doll says she and Fitzhenry had talked for years about what would happen with the company, founded in 1966 by her father, Robert Fitzhenry, and Cecil L. Whiteside, after their stewardship ended, but never came up with a solution or plan. The pair had spoken with Whyte about a possible sale of the business in the years before Fitzhenry’s death, but those talks ended as her sister wasn’t ready to sell, Doll says.

Doll will be staying on for as long as needed to ensure a smooth transition. Of Fitzhenry & Whiteside’s seven staff members, Doll says one is taking this opportunity to retire after many years.

Fitzhenry & Whiteside began as a distributor for Harper & Row before moving into publishing, expanding its industry presence during Fitzhenry’s tenure with the acquisitions of B.C.-based cookbook press Whitecap Books in 2012, Alberta-based kids publisher Red Deer Press in 2005, and Western Canada–focussed literary press Fifth House Publishers in 2005. Over the decades it has published award-winning books across genres, with titles such as Northrop Frye on Shakespeare, Bill Waiser’s A World We Have Lost, and Caroline Pignat’s Greener Grass on its backlists, alongside bestsellers such as Tomson Highway’s The Rez Sisters and John Laird Farrar’s Trees in Canada. The house also published Canadian reference titles such as the Fitzhenry and Whiteside Canadian Thesaurus and the Fitzhenry and Whiteside Book of Canadian Facts and Dates.

Whyte, who launched the narrative nonfiction–focused Sutherland House Books in 2018, says that he had always hoped to address his press’s reliance on its frontlist by acquiring a backlist. The acquisition of Fitzhenry & Whiteside not only provides backlist support, but also potential growth.

“The great thing about Fitzhenry & Whiteside and its group of companies is that it could help us credibly launch in any direction we wanted, whether it was food and cookbooks, children’s or YA, or fiction or anything else,” Whyte says. “Over the years, those four brands under the Fitzhenry & Whiteside banner have done just about everything and they have a good reputation in everything they’ve done.”

Sutherland House will be publishing the 15 to 20 books that Doll had already committed to over the next year. Further publication plans for each of the imprints have yet to be determined.

In the meantime, Whyte is keen to assure existing Fitzhenry & Whiteside authors that their backlist titles will continue to be printed and sold.

“We are really anxious to continue selling their books and continuing to deliver royalties, and so on,” Whyte says. “When you have 1,400 authors and books published over a period of 60 years, it’s hard to know where everybody is and how to contact them. It’s going to take us a little bit of time.”