The Gray Campbell Distinguished Service Award is presented annually by the Association of Book Publishers of BC to an individual who has made a significant contribution to the book publishing industry in the province.
This year the recipient is Sechelt’s Betty Keller, in recognition of her work as a writer, editor, mentor and teacher. She is also the founder, along with a group of what are now known as the “founding mothers,” of the Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts.
“We were the first writers’ festival,” Keller said. “We had no prototype to follow at that time. The Vancouver Writers’ Festival came to us to learn how it was done.”
The spirit that drove the all-Canadian festival in Sechelt, now in its 35th year, is the same spirit that drove Gray Campbell, a pioneer publisher for whom the award is named.
“All the publishers were in Toronto at the end of the 1950s,” Keller said. “He was a guiding star for BC.”
Campbell, with his wife Eleanor Campbell, promoted regional stories by starting a publishing company in 1962 in B.C., the first of its kind in this province and a challenge to the Ontario commercial publishers. He is quoted as saying that he did it because they were trying to help “a few, shy, remote talents who felt they would never be able to storm the gates of the older, eastern houses.”
Keller notes that now there are many niche publishers in B.C. and accounts of regional histories are flourishing. Keller co-authored, with Rosella Leslie, a definitive history of the Sunshine Coast: Bright Seas, Pioneer Spirits.
“It’s terribly important that we write about our own histories,” she said, “and our parents’ histories. What we have been changes our attitudes towards what we become.”
In 2015 Keller earned the Lieutenant Governor’s award of Literary Excellence after a lengthy career in writing and editing.
“One of the reasons I mentor writers now,” she said, “is because I had such good mentors myself.” She cites hearing good advice from Doris Milligan, editor of the Vancouver Sun when Keller worked there briefly. Also helpful was TV dramatist Ray Whitehouse in 1955 who taught her much about being a playwright, and George McWhirter, Vancouver’s first poet laureate, who was her mentor and guide to a publisher.
This year’s Jim Douglas Publisher of the Year Award recipient is Vancouver's Greystone Books. The press and its publisher, Rob Sanders, are recognized for having built an internationally successful publishing program. Keller's and Sanders' awards will be presented at a ceremony in Vancouver Sept. 21.
