WYANT o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-02-15 published
MECH,
Wladyslaw
In his 100th year. Veteran of First and Second World Wars, wounded
at age 16 at the Battle of Warsaw in 1920. Decorated by the Polish
Government with 1918-21 Military Cross, Poland to her Defender
Medal, Long Service Medal, 10th Anniversary Medal, Silver Cross
of Merit. During Second World War served with the Polish Forces
Carpathian Brigade under British command and took part in actions
at El Alamein, Fortress Tobruk, Monte Cassino, Bololgna and Ancona.
Awarded Cross of Merit with Swords, Monte Cassino Cross, Tobruk
Emblem, the 1939-1945 Star, Africa Star, Italy Star, the 1939-1945
War Medal and the Defence Medal. In 2001 the Polish Government
awarded him a special medal Sursum Corda #16. He was born on
October 14, 1903 in Poland,
son of a Reeve in Potok Wielki. He
was predeceased by mother Maria
TOMALA, father Thomas, brothers:
Piotr, Ludwik, Jan, sisters: Stanislawa, Karolina, Natalka, Julia
and by his wife
Julia née
FUSZARA in 1974. He emigrated to Canada
with wife Julia and son Zdzislaw in 1947. During his 20 years
with the Scarborough Board of Education he was active in the
Polish Combatants Association and a founding Board Member of
Wawel Villa Senior Citizens Centre where he resided until his
death. He will be remembered for his constant involvement at
the Villa where he organized chapel and social activities, ran
arts and crafts, poetry readings and other cultural events. Lover
of outdoors, he planted and maintained summer and winter gardens
while keeping his characteristic dry humour. He was loving and
proud of his son Zdzislaw Romuald, M.D., Fellow of the Royal
College of Physicians, Q.J.M., his daughter-in-law Lilli, B.A.
Associate, Royal Conservatory of Music of Toronto (Toronto),
his grand_sons Major Konrad R.W., Royal Military College '82,
B.A. B.Eng., M.B.A., Canadian Forces Decoration and Captain André
Z.I., Royal Military College '84, B.Eng, M.B.A., both of whom
followed the family artillery tradition dating to Napoleonic
times, granddaughter Danuta
WYANT, B.Sc. Toronto. He will be greatly
missed by Kim
BREAKELL-
MECH, wife of Konrad, Blaise S.
WYANT,
Vice President, Financial Advisor, Wood Gundy, husband of Danuta
and by great-grandchildren Anders
MECH of Vancouver, Armand and
Eugene MECH of Mississauga and Faith and Hilary
WYANT of Toronto
who will miss visiting and jumping on him.His leadership and
love of the countries he served will be long remembered. Friends
may call at the Turner and Porter ''Peel'' Chapel, 2180 Hurontario
Street, Mississauga (Hwy. 10North of Queen Elizabeth Way), from
2-4 and 7-9 p.m. on Sunday. Funeral Mass will be held on Monday,
February 17, 2003, at St. Maximilian Kolbe Church, Mississauga,
at 10 a.m. Interment Pine Hills Cemetery.
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WYATT o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-04-22 published
He founded Readers' Club of Canada
Nationalist visionary struggled financially to publish Canadian
writers
By Carol COOPER
Special to The Globe and Mail Tuesday, April
22, 2003 - Page R7
In the early 1960s, when writers asked Peter and Carol
MARTIN
where to publish their manuscripts on Canada, the couple realized
how few choices there were. Inspired, the Martins, both voracious
readers, staunch nationalists and founders of the Readers' Club
of Canada, decided to start their own press. In 1965, Peter Martin
Associates came into being. Last month, Peter
MARTIN died of
lung cancer in Ottawa.
In an industry overshadowed by American companies, Peter
MARTIN
Associates was among the first in a wave of independent publishing
houses to open during a time of rising Canadian nationalism.
Launched in a downtown Toronto basement on a shoestring budget,
skeleton staff, idealism and enthusiasm, the company flew by
the seat of its pants. Its employees were often young and new
to the business. But many, including Peter
CARVER,
Michael
SOLOMON
and Valerie
WYATT, went on to become Canadian mainstays.
"It really was a time of Canadian nationalism and those of us
who believed in that cause could see what Peter and Carol were
doing," said Ms.
WYATT, a children's editor who spent four years
with the company in the seventies.
During the 16 years before its sale in 1981, Peter Martin Associates
published approximately 170 works, mainly non-fiction. Its presses
put out I, Nuligak, the autobiography of an Inuit man; The Boyd
Gang by Marjorie
LAMB and Barry
PEARSON;
Trapping is My Life
by John TETSO; and the Handbook of Canadian Film by Eleanor
BEATTIE.
Others who came through their doors included Hugh
HOOD,
Robert
FULFORD, John Robert
COLOMBO, Douglas
FETHERLING and Mary Alice
DOWNIE -- all to have their works published.
Started with small amounts of seed money from private investors
and no government funding, Peter Martin Associates constantly
struggled financially. At one point, for a bit of extra cash,
the office became the designated nuclear-fallout shelter for
the street. Pat
DACEY, once the firm's book designer, lugged
suitcases of books up the street to sell at Britnell's bookstore
with summer employee Bronwyn
DRAINIE.
Working at Peter Martin Associates was always fun, Ms.
WYATT
said. "You went in to work happy and you stayed happy all day."
Still, in a time when Canadian works received little recognition,
she remembers finding it difficult to get media interviews for
the author of Martin-published book.
Yet another title caused trouble with its subject. The company
was putting out a collection of previously published sayings
of former prime minister John
DIEFENBAKER, called I Never Say
Anything Provocative, edited by Margaret
WENTE. Mr.
DIEFENBAKER
heard about the project, called Mr.
MARTIN and threatened to
sue. Mr. MARTIN stood firm.
"He handled it with such élan," said writer Tim
WYNNE-
JONES,
then in the art department. "He was suitably dutiful, but not
in awe. Mr.
DIEFENBAKER was just over the top, as was his wont."
The book went to press and Mr.
DIEFENBAKER did not go to court.
Once listed along with Peter
GZOWSKI in a Maclean's magazine
article on "Young Men to Watch," Mr.
MARTIN was born on April
26, 1934 in Ottawa to a dentist father and a mother who drove
an ambulance in the First World War. The younger of two sons,
he attended Trinity College School in Port Hope, Ontario and
the University of Toronto, where he earned a degree in philosophy.
During a year in Ottawa as the president of the National Federation
of University Students, Mr.
MARTIN met his first wife
Carol.
They married in 1956 and moved to Toronto. Three years later,
they founded the Readers' Club in Featuring one Canadian book
a month, it distributed works by Mordecai
RICHLER,
Irving
LAYTON,
Morley CALLAGHAN and Brian
MOORE among others, and supplied its
members with coupons. While continuing to run the Readers' Club
(sold in 1978 to Saturday Night Magazine and closed in 1981),
the MARTINs started Peter Martin Associates.
Throughout his career, Mr.
MARTIN spoke out for Canadian publishing.
Alarmed by the sale of Ryerson Press and Gage Educational Press
in 1970 to American firms, he called a meeting of publishers
to discuss problems in the industry. Named the Independent Publishers
Association, the group started in 1971 with 16 members and with
Mr. MARTIN as its first president. In 1976, it was renamed the
Association of Canadian Publishers and continues today with 140
members. As a result of the group's efforts, Canadian publishing
began to receive federal and provincial funding.
In the late 1970s, the
MARTINs went their separate ways. Afterward,
Mr. MARTIN published a small newspaper, The Downtowner, and owned
a cookbook store with his second wife, Maggie
NIEMI. In 1983,
they moved near Sudbury, Ontario, where Mr.
MARTIN did freelance
book and theatre reviews, then moved to Ottawa in 1985 to work
as president for Balmuir Books, publisher of the magazine International
Perspectives and consulting editor for the University of Ottawa
Press.
After a spinal-cord injury in 1997, Mr.
MARTIN was left a quadriplegic,
except for limited use of his left arm. Even so, he remained
active, maintained a heavy e-mail correspondence and spent time
in the park reading while seated in a bright-yellow wheelchair.
Mr. MARTIN leaves his children Pamela, Christopher and Jeremy
and his wife
Maggie
NIEMI. He died on March 15.
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