Sunday April 16, 2023
Forty years ago, I joined in a great adventure.
You see, the United Church of Canada used to have an active and influential publishing company called Ryerson Press. For a variety of reasons, too many to detail here, Ryerson Press folded in 1971. And for ten years, Canada’s biggest Protestant denomination had no printed materials of its own. No Bible studies. No theological texts. And no Sunday school curricula -- at a time when churches had to rent space in nearby schools to house the number of children involved.
Then in 1981, Ralph Milton and I decided we would each publish a book. In our spare time. For the sake of our egos, mostly.
We called it Wood Lake Press, because from the back deck of his home, Ralph could see Wood Lake in the distance.
We thought it would be a hobby. It was more like getting sucked into a vacuum. Like getting swept away down a rushing river. We had conservatively estimated our book sales at, maybe, 2,000 copies. One of the first books went to 14,000 copies. Another to 20,000.
Flag-bearers
Both Ralph and I were fairly well known in United Church circles already. Although our publishing house was 100% independent, the United Church took us into their arms, as if we were their very own publishing house brought back to life again.
Initially, I was the sole editor, responsible for making manuscripts coherent and readable. I also designed the pages and covers, applying insights from my experience in magazines to make our books look different.
Ralph was the publisher. He had the drive, the vision. And he had a rare genius for setting up international alliances with other denominations and their publishing arms.
Our staff grew from just the two of us, to five, to 12, to 31. We printed a hymnbook supplement that sold over 300,000 copies -- the biggest print run that a large commercial printer had ever handled. We created -- not by ourselves, of course -- not just one but two Sunday School curricula that went viral across Canada, and into the U.S.
A different approach
By now, Wood Lake was everyone’s favourite religious publishing house. In contrast to the bigger U.S. publishers, we offered a liberal theology. We expressed it in everyday language. We avoided time-worn platitudes and traditional definitions that expected the faithful to park their brains at the door.
We invited people to think.
We claimed to be the only publishing house in the world that had its branch office -- me -- in Toronto and its head office in Winfield.
Winfield? Where’s that?
And I must admit, it was good for our egos. Before I moved to B.C., I often had two or three speaking engagements every month. Ralph set up ecumenical gatherings and conferences all over the country, as far east as Newfoundland. People flocked to hear us, see us, buy our products.
But we got burned out. Eventually, of course, Ralph and I retired. But Wood Lake, now owned by our former employees, carried on for another 25 years.
Until this month. As church attendance has slipped, as Sunday schools have joined the dodo, sales dropped through the floor. Wood Lake’s staff was down to four, plus a few freelancers on contract.
The official announcement said, in part: “It is with much sadness that Wood Lake has had to make the decision to discontinue publishing books and curriculum. We don’t have the resources to continue …. to hold up the legacy of our best sellers and our history.”
No regrets
I’m sad to see it end. But I don’t see the closure as failure. Publishers everywhere are falling like autumn leaves. Rather, I’m proud to have been part of a 40-year effort. It was a great adventure.
Did we make mistakes. Of course we did. Would we have done some things differently? Of course. Do we regret anything? No. We -- and I mean the whole staff -- did our best.
And I like to think that we made the world -- or at least the churches in Canada -- a little bit better place to live.
Will there be a resurrection? Another publishing house to carry the torch for what’s being called “progressive Christianity”?
I hope so, but I don’t know. That’s the thing about resurrections. They can’t be predicted.
Certainly, we couldn’t have predicted what would result from a simple desire to self-publish our own writings. We took the initial steps, and then got swept along by tides stronger than anything we could have imagined.
It has been a wonderful ride. Farewell, Wood Lake. Thank you for everything.
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Copyright © 2023 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups encouraged; links from other blogs welcomed; all other rights reserved.
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Your turn
Last week I wrote about waves, and our (mis)understandings of them, and how they were symbolic of other daily matters, and… and… and…
And not surprisingly, your responses also covered a variety of matters.
Mirza Yawar Baig offered a favourite saying: “A tidal wave is a ripple magnified.”
Tom Watson got some comfort from knowing that “the wave that dumped me headfirst out of a kayak last summer wasn't really a wave at all.”
The column prompted Vera Gottlieb to reflect on her own reactions to water: “As a child I was no friend of water[in] the ocean, a swimming pool. I grew up in Caracas, Venezuela… not exactly by the ocean. But as I grew up I started to love being near a river, a lake, an ocean… any water. And today, for me, the sound of waves breaking on a beach is the best sleeping pill ever devised.”
Stella Majic agreed about the sound of waves: “I’m sitting looking out at the Atlantic still churning two days later. So different from Friday as I walked the beach when the waves were tiny. But the sound!! Love it.”
Libby Sheather was hooked by an aside on translations: “A lot is lost in a series of translations. That’s why translations should be done from the original languages with a good understanding of the culture of the times in which they were written, as well as understanding the culture into which they are being translated. My dad, an Old Testament professor, was on such a committee translating from original languages into Hindi. He knew Hindi well as he had grown up in India as well as studying it as a missionary. Some of his teaching was done in Hindi as also. He also understood well Indian culture. He is credited with the book of Job. Despite studying it for two years in school, I can’t remember enough Hindi to read it, but I’m hanging on to it.”
Margaret Tribe liked the column for a single word: “I love that you used the word ‘whiffle’. That's one we don't hear enough.”
“Thank you,” Isabel Gibson wrote.: “I'll see what positive waves I can start today.”
My column implied that sitting and watching waves might be “wasting time”. Eduard Hiebert disagreed – which launched quite an extended correspondence on a variety of subjects. But it started with this: : “Antoine Saint Exupery in a wee tad of a book, ‘The Little Prince’, includes in the final exchange with the fox, or in the following segment with the railway switchman, references to the prince having wasted time with his rose or the kids with their rag dolls. Regarding the former, the fox is heard musing ‘It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important’.”
Still on “wasting time,” Cliff Boldt: wrote, “There are times (too many if you ask Maureen) if on a walk or even sitting in my chair, I stop and stare. Just sit and stare. Love it. Relaxing, and sometimes the video from my memory that I am ‘playing’ in my mind makes me feel comfortable and sometimes makes me laugh.
“In some of your recent columns, I suspect that you too take time to stop and stare. And wonder what to write, until, like a flash, a thought comes to mind and away you go.”