Tundra Books Founder May Cutler Dies at 87
RSSBy SLJ Staff
May Cutler, the founder of Tundra Books and the first woman publisher of children's books in Canada, died March 3 surrounded by her family at her home in Montreal. She was 87. Cutler was hospitalized in February and had been battling several illnesses, says the Montreal Gazette. Founded in 1967, Montreal-based Tundra published many award-winning books, which included the prestigious Canada Council's Governor General's Literary Award. May worked with author Roch Carrier and filmmaker Sheldon Cohen, when they teamed up to create one of Tundra's favorites, The Hockey Sweater. She also introduced Mohawk artist C. J. Taylor and the legends of the continent's aboriginal peoples to children across the country. In her own books Breaking Free and I Once Knew an Indian Woman, Cutler was known for sensitively portraying immigrants and First Nations Canadians. In 1987, she received the Eve Orpen Award for Publishers Excellence and the Claude Aubrey Award for distinguished contributions to children's literature. Cutler retired from publishing after 28 years and sold Tundra to Avie Bennett, then president and owner of McClelland & Stewart. "To have learned book publishing at the feet of the master was both humbling and embracing," says Catherine Mitchell, Tundra's former director of foreign and special markets, who worked closely with Cutler. "May was such an impressive person, so full of vim and vigor, and ready to put herself on the line every day. She believed in art and expressing ideas forcefully, and she lived that maxim to the very end. What a privilege to have known her." Alison Morgan, Tundra's managing director said Cutler's legacy lives on. "We attribute the success of our award-winning list to the tenets established by May Cutler when she founded Tundra. We continue to hold on to those guiding principles today, and they are at the heart of our success, in Canada and around the world." Born in Montreal in 1923, Cutler received a B.A. in English and philosophy from McGill University in 1945 and Cutler is survived by her four sons, Keir, twins Adam and Michael, and Roger, and six grandchildren. Funeral arrangements have not yet been announced. Authors, artists, friends and colleagues are invited to leave reminiscences on a memorial page on the Tundra Books blog. In a blog post dated March 6, Bill Mersereau, who had worked closely with Cutler for about 10 years, from the mid-80s until she sold the company in the mid-90s, said Tundra Books was "May Cutler's child, and it really was the quintessential small press, fiercely and staunchly independent." He went on to say that she considered her books, her authors, and her staff like her own children. "She was at pains to ever let a book go out of print, a sentiment most unheard of in publishing nowadays," Mersereau wrote. "I still remember schlepping cartons of books from skids on her basement back and forth to the office, filling orders of 1 and 2 copies of this or that title published a decade or two earlier. So, May, I raise a glass to you, and thank you for keeping alive that art form that is the small press, for sharing your keen eye for new and original stories for people to enjoy the world over, and for creating a publishing house that is truly unique not only to Canada, but to the world."
Cutler is credited for introducing children to artists such as William Kurelek, Ted Harrison, Arthur Shilling, and Song Nan Zhang. She also discovered Dayal Kaur Khalsa, who admired her publisher so much that she named the heroine of her books May.
an M.A. in journalism from Columbia University. She worked for the United Nations before she began a career in journalism, first at the Montreal Herald and later at the Canadian Press, where she was the second woman the company had ever hired. She also worked at the Montreal Standard. She received an M.A. at McGill in 1951, where she taught in the English department and set up a three-year extension program in journalism before retiring to have her four children. From 1987 to 1991, she served as the first female mayor of Westmount, Quebec.
