Photos from the archives courtesy ECW Press, L to R: Ken Lewis, Scott Mitchell, and Bob Hilderley in the 1980s; Jack David downstairs from ECW’s old office at 1980 Queen East in the early 90s; ECW staff outside the Gerrard Street E office in 2019; 
David Caron (l) and Jack David (r) at Word on the Street in 2018.

Jack David has told the origin story of ECW Press so many times he’s not even sure if it’s true anymore. 

In 1973, he was talking with some of his fellow grad students before a Canadian poetry class at York University when the subject of what to do with the money the English Grad Students Association would be getting from the university’s larger graduate student association arose. David, who was new to York, asked what they’d done with it the previous year. 

“They said, ‘Well, we got $400. It’s a kickback from the overall graduate students’ association, and we had a beer party.’ And I said, ‘That was a good idea. Why don’t we start a magazine?’” 

In its earliest days, the journal of literary criticism called Essays in Canadian Writing was a one-man, one-cat operation, with David, kept company by the one-eyed Max (whose hairs turned up as lines on the copied pages), working in his basement to produce the first issue on a rented Xerox in 1974. The staff soon doubled in size: co-publisher Robert Lecker came on board for the second issue, and the pair incorporated the business in 1977. The journal was the main event until David and Lecker decided there might be a book market for the bibliographies of Canadian writers they included in their issues. An attempt to have the bibliographies, including a 500-page volume on Robertson Davies, published by Peter Martin Associates went well – until Peter Martin Associates went out of business, leaving David and Lecker with unpublished but completed bibliographies. They approached other publishers but failed to generate interest, so decided they would publish the books themselves. 

“We both had what turned out to be undeveloped entrepreneurial needs, and neither of us really knew it,” David says. 

They also had what David and ECW co-publisher David Caron call “the publishing gene.”

This year, ECW Press marks its 50th anniversary. The independent publisher has come a long way from its humble beginnings: there are now 21 people on staff, and the press publishes 45 to 50 titles a year across multiple genres. 

Although its wide-ranging list may seem a far cry from its roots in literary criticism, David sees the evolution of the press’s list over time as a natural process that followed editors’ interests and passions. 

“At one point Robert and I were meeting and said, why do we have to do [books about] Canadian writers only?” he says. “Who’s got a gun at our head? It’s our company. We can do whatever we want.”

Lecker decided to pursue his interest in Canadian musicians, and ECW took the success of 1992’s k.d. Lang: Carrying the Torch – which took off when the Alberta-born singer’s breakout album Ingénue launched her career internationally – as a sign that this area of publishing could work. The only biography of lang at the time, the book was in demand outside of Canada, and began ECW’s relationship with U.K. book distributor Turnaround Publisher Services that continues to this day. 

“If you’re passionate about that topic and you do a really great book on it, somebody else is going to want to read it because they’re passionate about it. That became a pretty good watchword for us for a long time, and still is,” Caron says. 

But passion alone doesn’t make for longevity in independent publishing. In the early 2000s, ECW was one of the many Canadian publishers affected by the bankruptcy proceedings of General Publishing, whose distribution arm, General Distribution Services, owed about $5 million to Canadian publishers. 

One of the consequences of this was that ECW almost went under. The financial issues took years to resolve, and led to “money issues” between the co-publishers, David says. He offered to buy Lecker out under the press’s shotgun clause, and Lecker left ECW in 2003. Caron joined as co-publisher in 2004 and, in 2013, bought all of the company’s shares from David.

Caron is clear-eyed about the role luck has played in ECW’s enduring presence in Canadian publishing over the decades. 

“We had crappy times in the early ’90s and we made it through because we did a kd lang book. And then we had crappy times again with GDS, and along came Neil Peart and Ghost Rider [the Rush drummer’s first memoir],” he says. “There will be other crises. Are we going to have that person or that book or that thing that’ll help us get through? Maybe not. But maybe, we’ll scratch our way through and we’ll try and keep on going.”  

One thing that will remain constant is the press’s commitment to granting its staff the freedom to pursue their interests and passions. 

Senior editor Jen Knoch, who first joined ECW as a technology intern in 2008, says that new publishing areas are developed as new editors join the team, a recent example of which is the sci-fi/fantasy list of editor Jen Albert.

“It’s always been the kind of place where you can follow your interests and bring those to the company, and that’s part of why our list is so wide-ranging,” Knoch says. 

That freedom to pursue interests extends beyond acquisitions: Knoch is passionate about sustainability in publishing, and is always looking for ways to improve ECW’s operations. In 2022, the company became the second publisher in Canada to become a certified B corporation, or beneficial corporation. The fact that the press has always been receptive to her suggestions for choosing the more sustainable practices “is, in fact, one of the things I hold most dear about working there,” she says.

For debut author Elliott Gish, whose novel Grey Dog was published earlier this year, that multiplicity of voices is part of what drew her to ECW. 

“You have literary fiction, you have genre fiction, you have memoirs about pro wrestlers, you have so many different things under one banner, and I just think that that’s really fabulous, that they’re able to diversify so much with the voices that they promote.”

Anne Emery, whose 14th book and 13th Collins-Burke mystery novel with ECW is out now, said she appreciates not only the editing process but also their honest approach to success in publishing.

“I didn’t want anybody saying, ‘oh, we’re going to make you a star,’” Emery says. When she first met David at a Halifax pub in 2005 before her first book was released, he told her of a famous Canadian author who couldn’t quit his day job until the publication of his eighth book.  “I really appreciated that reality,” she says.

Editor Jen Sookfong Lee, who joined ECW in 2021, says part of the attraction to ECW was the experience she had with the press years earlier as an author. 

“It was the best publishing experience of my whole life,” she says. “The way ECW collaborates with their authors was a real eye opener for me – the way independent presses can be really responsive and creative with how to best launch a book into the world – and I wanted to be a part of that.”

Lee values the freedom she has to acquire “weird books,” and the welcome she and acquiring editor Pia Singhal, who joined at the same time, have received. 

“I’m really feeling really celebratory,” she says of the press’s milestone anniversary, “and really really proud at how ECW has evolved while retaining its weird, scrappy spirit.”

Looking ahead to the future, Caron is starting to think about succession, and says that ensuring that ECW is giving opportunities to a broad range of people, including people of different ages, is something he thinks about a great deal. 

But no matter what comes next, ECW’s commitment to its uniquely broad mix of publishing interests isn’t likely to change.

“I see a fairly steady line, which is: ‘let’s do great books and let’s not be concerned with whether they’re about wrestling or Leonard Cohen. Let’s just do great books,’” David says. “And if we do that and everybody gets behind the books – or most of the people – then we’ll probably stay in business.”