May Cutler was a fearless Quebec book publisher who championed children's literature in Canada with such classics as Roch Carrier's The Hockey Sweater and William Kurelek's A Prairie Boy's Winter. She was also the girl from the other side of the tracks, the outsider, who surprised everyone, including herself, when she became the first woman elected as mayor of the tony Montreal suburb of Westmount.
An author and playwright, Culter was 87 when she died on March 3. A memorial service will be held March 19 at Victoria Hall in Westmount.
"You didn't mess with May," said Westmount Mayor Peter Trent, a former adversary who became a friend. "She had three university degrees, and Irish cop for a father, and a chip on her shoulder that would make a Sumo wrestler tremble. She had no patience for pretence. She didn't measure out her life with coffee spoons, but with brass buckets. She was an imposing woman, superbly turned out, with a flair for the dramatic."
May Ebbitt was the vigorous and headstrong daughter of an Irish Protestant Montreal beat constable. She was born on Sept. 4, 1923, and raised in a tough French-Catholic East End Montreal neighbourhood. She was the youngest of three children, and the only girl in the family. Her parents didn't place much value on higher education for women, so Cutler worked to put herself through school.
She received her arts degree from McGill University in 1945, then headed to Columbia University for a degree in journalism. It was while working as a receptionist at the United Nations in New York that she learned to appreciate the aggressive entrepreneurship that she saw in the United States.
When she returned to Montreal, she wrote for the Montreal Herald and The Standard while taking her M.A. in English literature. In 1952, she married labour lawyer Philip Culter, who was later appointed to the bench. They had four boys.
She founded Tundra Books in 1967 and self-published her own book, The Last Noble Savage. When Vancouver writer and illustrator Ann Blades had trouble getting her first book, Mary of Mile 18, published, Cutler financed its printing without government grants and launched Blades's career. "She was determined to do absolutely top-quality books," Blades said. "That was a lifetime ago. She was a great mentor. She took a great risk in publishing me. It would never happen today."
Culter had discriminating good taste, an off-the-wall sense of humour, and a keen marketing sense. On Halloween she would hand out books instead of candy to children who showed up at her door. Not all of them appreciated the gesture.
"She was independent, she was aggressive, she could wear people down," said her son Keir. "But she also turned a lot of her enemies into friends. She was so into charity, helping other people and giving back. When she started Tundra Books, she hated the Canadian inferiority complex, the prevailing attitude back then that we weren't as good as the Americans.
"In the end, the world came to her. She won awards all over the world for her books. It was normal for her to travel the world three or four times a year to receive awards at international book fairs."
By the time Cutler sold her publishing house to McClelland & Stewart in 1987, it had a solid international reputation.
She decided to run for mayor out of spite after the City of Westmount refused to let her to move her publishing house into a building that had been zoned for 17 professionals, including dentists, engineers and chiropractors.
The city's position was that if the building were rezoned to allow publishers, what was to stop pornographers from renting space?
Instead of getting angry, Culter decided to get even. The city, she claimed, was treating its residents "like high-strung neurotics, and needed a shakeup." Historically, the City of Westmount had been run as a private club. Its mayors were really anointed, elected by acclamation from within the ranks. But Cutler defeated Brian Gallery, who was then acting chairman of Canadian National Railways.
Gallery, who thought he was a shoo-in, had recently undergone surgery. When polls late in the race showed him trailing, he was forced to campaign on crutches. Image was everything. Cutler won. On her first day in office she refused to sit in the mayor's chair, claiming it was too ostentatious.
"Cutler briskly began by shaking up council. She sparked with the pyrotechnical brilliance of a high-voltage wire," Sherrill Maclaren wrote in Invisible Power: The Women who run Canada.
After former Quebec premier René Lévesque died in 1987, Cutler adamantly refused to have the section of Montreal's Dorchester Boulevard, which runs through Westmount, renamed in his honour. "I despise nationalism - Quebec nationalism, Canadian nationalism, Toronto nationalism. It's all the same. Jingoism!" she told The Globe and Mail in an interview.
Her lasting legacy as mayor was to spark the restoration of Westmount's library, a handsome Victorian building that opened in 1899. During her term, however, she alienated the entire city council with her brash, uncompromising style.
"In her desire to clean up city hall, to brush it clean, instead of using a broom, she used a torch," complained former councillor Rhoda Vineberg. When council demanded she resign, Cutler went on strike. She called a public meeting to resolve the issue, where she appealed directly to the city's residents for their continued support. They gave it to her. Having scored her point, she stepped down as mayor after one term.
Her reaction to growing old was to lead public protest demonstrations against forced municipal mergers on the Island of Montreal and to write a couple of plays, Aah-pootee! That's Snow and The Man Who Killed the Man who Killed Jimmy Hoffa.
When she was 86, she travelled to Antarctica, and - as she was dying - completed a biography of Quebec painter Paul-Émile Borduas, which will be published posthumously.
She was also an inveterate writer of letters-to-the-editor. Typical was one she sent to Gazette publisher Michael Goldbloom after the English language daily ignored a story that she and many of its readers considered important. "Who decides what play is given to your news stories. Has that person dropped in from Mars and knows nothing of what happens here," she thundered. "Am I telling you how to run your newspaper? You're damn well right I am."
Philip Cutler died in 1987. May Cutler leaves her children, Keir, an actor, her twins, Adam and Michael, and Roger, who is a crown attorney in B.C.
A memorial service will be held March 19 at Victoria Hall in Westmount.