“Printed in Canada by mindless acid freaks” no longer appears on the pages of Coach House books or posters and the pressmen are no longer paid in acid – these days, the drug of choice at the storied indie is caffeine, not LSD – but the independent-minded energy that animated Coach House Books when it started remains.

“Some of that spirit lingers on,” Coach House editorial director Alana Wilcox tells Q&Q. “I think it’s maybe changed in how it manifests, but that doing-it-our-own-way, doing-our-own-thing energy is still there.”

This year, the press marks its 60th anniversary of publishing and printing books in Canada. Its backlist includes books by many notable Canadian authors, from bpNichol, Michael Ondaatje, George Bowering, and Dorothy Livesay to more recent award-winning titles by André Alexis, Suzette Mayr, and Martha Baillie.

Founder Stan Bevington bought an old Gordon printing press with the proceeds of a flag-selling business he’d started in the summer of 1964, when the Canadian flag’s design was up for grabs, and alongside the late art curator Dennis Reid, published Wayne Clifford’s Man in a Window, Coach House’s first poetry book, in 1965. 

More poetry books by CanLit legends followed, including George Bowering’s Baseball in 1967 and bpNichol’s The Martyrology Book 1 in 1972. In 1968, the press moved from its first location in Bevington’s home, studio, and printing shop, to a two-storey former stable near the University of Toronto that was only supposed to be a temporary home. 

Coach House Books is still there, though its trajectory included a brief move and change in management and direction in the late 1980s. Bevington resurrected Coach House Books in 1997 after a cut in government funding led the publishing business to wind down operations in 1996. The press and the printing business have shared the same space ever since, in a heritage building down the narrow lane named after one of its early writers, bpNichol. 

Coach House Books at 60: A Visual Timeline

Wilcox, who has been at Coach House for about 25 years, first got to know the press and its people through her involvement with campus journals. The journals were printed at Coach House, and its relaxed, open-door atmosphere meant there were always any number of interesting people coming and going. 

That sense of community has always been a defining characteristic of Coach House, though Wilcox admits it has changed since the pandemic, as staff have not returned to working full-time in the office after the shift to remote work. There is no longer a guarantee of finding a pot of coffee and a plate of cookies on any given Friday, or of running into authors or artists or friends of the press. 

But recent editorial directives have formalized the community spirit that has always been at the heart of the press’s space and lists. In 2022, Coach House launched the Indigenous nonfiction imprint zaagigin, run by a four-person advisory board, and also announced the appointment of editorial consultants to broaden the press’s fiction and nonfiction lists. André Alexis, one of those consultants, brought in Baillie’s Weston Prize-winning There Is No Blue. 

“We’re thrilled,” Wilcox says of marking Coach House’s 60th anniversary. “We’re thrilled that we get to keep doing this.”

When Coach House Books turned 50, they marked the occasion at their annual end-of-summer Wayzgoose shindig. 

But 60 feels different – more momentous, and more of “an astonishing number,” Wilcox says. So to celebrate this anniversary, she wanted to be sure that they would be able to do so even in the case of inclement weather. (The Wayzgoose is a casual, outdoor affair.)

“We wanted to have an indoor party and be a little bit fancier – you know, no hot dogs,” Wilcox says. 

The Coach House diamond anniversary party will take place on June 12 at the Lula Lounge in Toronto, featuring speakers Stan Bevington, Michael Ondaatje, Sarah Sheard, André Alexis, Susan Holbrook, Sina Queyras, and more – depending, in true Coach House fashion, on who else shows up.