The BSC-SBC Fellowships Committee has awarded Ruth Bradley-St-Cyr the 2016 Tremaine Fellowship.
Bradely-St-Cyr’s proposed project The Legacy of the Ryerson Press is an expansion of her PhD dissertation, which explored the last ten years of Ryerson Press from 1960 until it was sold in 1970. In the words of a referee, “The whole [PhD] made a significant contribution to scholarship on the history of the Press in particular and of Canadian literary publishing in general. The methodology involved close attention to archival materials, particularly to relevant files in the United Church of Canada Archives and to the papers of individuals involved with Ryerson Press. Interviews with former editors and employees of the Press also provided crucial primary material. Judicious in its analysis and arguments, the thesis made a solid case throughout.”
The Tremaine Fellowship supported project will answer the question, what is the legacy of the controversial 1970 sale of The Ryerson Press for Canadian publishing? Dr. Bradely-St-Cyr proposes to expand her study of Ryerson Press to include research of royal commission fonds and to conduct interviews with selected publishers and writers active in the 1960s and 1970s. A special effort will be made to interview those who testified before the royal commission. The documentation and views gathered will enable Dr. Bradely-St. Cyr to offer an evaluation of the changes in cultural policy that followed the sale, and the consequences of the policy changes, then and now, for the Canadian publishing industry.
As another of her references wrote, “the sale of The Ryerson Press and its aftermath was a watershed period for the Canadian book industry, one which greatly deserves more research and analysis as Canadian publishing faces on-going challenges. Dr. Bradley-St-Cyr is superbly equipped to write a book on the topic on the legacy of the Ryerson Press sale, having successfully completed a doctoral thesis at the University of Ottawa which examines the last decade of the Press, the conditions which led to its sale, and the controversy, studies and attempts at redress which followed.”
The Fellowships Committee concludes that Dr. Bradley-St-Cyr’s thorough knowledge of the subject is clear, and her proposed combined methodology of archival research and oral history work will ensure that her research will bring new insights into this moment in Canadian publishing and culture.
The Tremaine Fellowship is offered in memory and through the generosity of Marie Tremaine (1902-1984), the doyenne of Canadian bibliographers. The Fellowship was instituted in 1987 and is offered annually to support the work of a scholar engaged in some area of bibliographical research, including textual studies and publishing history and with a particular emphasis on Canada. The Fellowship is open only to members of the Bibliographical Society of Canada (https://www.bsc-sbc.ca/en/bschome.html)