Throughout his long career, Dean Cooke often led the way as Canadian publishing evolved.Courtesy of family
Upon first meeting literary agent Dean Cooke in 1992, Canadian novelist Guy Vanderhaeghe made a weak pitch about his own publishing prospects.
“I painted my career in the darkest colours possible because I didn’t want to misrepresent myself,” Mr. Vanderhaeghe recently told The Globe and Mail. “So, I said, I’ve never made any money writing. I have no intention changing what I write or how I write. You will likely never make any money from me. I don’t show my work to an agent or a publisher until it’s finished. So that’s the kind of client I would be.
“And he said, ‘that’s fine.’”
Back then, Mr. Cooke had been an agent for only a few months and Mr. Vanderhaeghe, a Saskatoon writer, had published a handful of books that had sold poorly. But their first lunchtime meeting sparked a literary relationship that lasted more than 30 years and led to publication of such Canadian classics as The Englishman’s Boy and The Last Crossing.
Mr. Cooke, who started his distinguished publishing career as an editorial dogsbody at a small independent press with large ambitions became one of Canada’s most important agents with a client list that included novelists John Irving, Nancy Richler and Richard B. Wright, children’s author Robert Munsch, and poet Patrick Lane. Renowned for his good taste, flair and elegance in all aspects of his life, Mr. Cooke died on April 14 at his vacation home in Palm Springs, Calif., after a short illness. He was 71.
One of Mr. Cooke’s partners at CookeMcDermid, Suzanne Brandreth, remembers him as “a discerning, careful matchmaker” who knew how to balance the business aspect of publishing with the art of creation. “He specialized in the business of relationships,” she says. “He knew everyone’s tastes.”
Dean Lloyd Cooke was born in Rochester, N.Y., on Dec. 31, 1954, to Lloyd Cooke, a Bible college student originally from Saskatoon, and Elma Cooke (née Dale), a bookkeeper from Shawville, Que. Dean, the older of two children, was born shortly after his father returned from a stint in Germany with the U.S. army. By 1960, the Cooke family was living near Syracuse, N.Y., where the senior Mr. Cooke worked as a guidance counsellor and vocational teacher before becoming a Free Methodist pastor in 1975.
In 1972, Dean started his university education at Ottawa’s Carleton University, where he read copiously, acted in amateur theatre and marched in the summer ranks of Parliament Hill’s Ceremonial Guard. But a severe bout of mononucleosis sent him back to his family in New York state before he could finish his English degree.
Dean Cooke with author John Irving in France.Janet Turnbull-Irving/Supplied
After two years as news director at a local radio station, he made his way back to Canada to join his university friends in Toronto. There he landed his first job in book publishing – an editorial position at Virgo Press that was coveted by Janet Turnbull, a recent master’s graduate of University of Toronto.
She recalls that upon arriving at her interview, she was told, “‘I’m really sorry but I just hired that guy over there,’ and he pointed at Dean, a skinny guy with red hair. I hated him.”
Mr. Cooke’s short time at Virgo was spent on a multitude of chores, both mundane and glamorous, from warehousing and shipping to editing and sales calls. During his tenure, the company had three bestsellers, including Ian Adams’s high profile S: Portrait of a Spy that landed the author both a libel suit and freedom-of-expression headlines. In the aftermath, Virgo shipped 75,000 paperback copies.
As Virgo sank into bankruptcy through 1981, Mr. Cooke was rescued from oblivion by none other than Ms. Turnbull, who had recently been made head of Doubleday Canada’s three-person publishing team. (By establishing a small editorial operation in Toronto, the large American company was allowed by Canadian law to distribute its titles directly into the country.) The editor and her new assistant clicked immediately, both personally and editorially, launching a close friendship that flourished over the course of their parallel careers.
Ms. Turnbull-Irving (her name changed after wedding American author John Irving in 1987) recalls their long days together in the cramped Bond Street office. “Neither one of us had been publishers. … We completely relied on each other because there was no mentor. We were just flying by the seat of our pants. And, oh my god, we had like five or six bestsellers on our first list.”
About the same time, Mr. Cooke started dating his future husband Jaimie Hubbard, a business journalist who ultimately became editor-in-chief of the Canadian edition of TV Guide.
Mr. Cooke eventually took over Ms. Turnbull-Irving’s senior role at Doubleday Canada, before moving to Lester & Orpen Dennys as managing editor. His final corporate job was publisher of Seal Books, a division of Bantam, a job previously held by his editorial soulmate Ms. Turnbull-Irving.
Occasionally, Mr. Cooke’s publishing adventures found their way into the press. In 1981, he described to The Globe and Mail how Ontario’s chief film censor Mary Brown was hindering author Malcom Dean’s research for a Virgo book on the history of censorship in Canada. (Virgo published Mr. Dean’s Censored! Only In Canada later that fall.)
In December, 1990, Mr. Cooke told Toronto Star publishing columnist Beverley Slopen that he was rushing 40,000 copies of a non-fiction murder book, Who Killed Cindy James by crime writer Ian Mulgrew, into print four months ahead of schedule so as to beat a book about the same crime by publisher McClelland & Stewart. The Seal release bested McClelland & Stewart’s by a month. Ms. Slopen failed to mention that the “rival” publishers were both affiliates of Bantam’s Canadian publishing group.
Just a few months later, Mr. Cooke steered Seal Books around a high-profile libel suit by Conservative senator Pat Carney. (Sherrill MacLaren’s Invisible Power: The Women Who Run Canada had incorrectly suggested Ms. Carney abstained from voting on an abortion bill that in fact she had voted against.) Shortly after accepting an-out-of-court settlement, The Globe and Mail reported, Ms. Carney renewed her fight by threatening to sue any stores that sold the book. The book remained available to readers across Canada after Mr. Cooke personally assured bookstores that the settlement prevented such action.
In mid-1992, Mr. Cooke surprised his colleagues by leaving Seal to become a literary agent. While other publishers and editors gloomily watched their industry shrink and consolidate, he identified an opportunity for himself and authors. He told The Globe and Mail that while the book industry had cut back on acquisitions drastically, author prospects were about to brighten. The publishers had, he said, “… holes in their lists. It’s time for them to start picking up projects for the future again.”
His husband, Mr. Hubbard, was also surprised to hear of Mr. Cooke’s agency plans and worried about giving up one of their steady jobs when they had a mortgage. “He just came home one day and said he wanted to buy this agency, and I said I don’t know how you’re going to do that but go for it if you really want it … and not a week later he said it was done.
“There were some lean times and there were some active discussions about what the future holds … and what we should be doing. But it was always a question of moving forward. There was nothing that he couldn’t overcome.”
Mr. Cooke launched his new career on the top floor of their narrow Victorian house in September, 1992 with the purchase of Peter Livingston Associates, whose owner had died, orphaning many authors. He renamed the company Livingston Cooke, the first of a string of expansions, amalgamations and partnerships, each with a new name, that culminated in 2017’s CookeMcDermid. When he sold his share in 2021 as a first step to retirement, the agency represented more than 300 writers.
His friend Ms. Turnbull-Irving, who had been an agent for several years, says, “I am just amazed by his success. … He managed it with such great calm and elegance. He ran a company and cared for authors and he read their manuscripts … closely and well.”
One of his first major clients was Mr. Irving, author of The World According to Garp, for whom he managed Canadian and U.K. sales.
“Because Janet trusted him so much, I trusted him too,” Mr. Irving told The Globe and Mail last week. “He became a first reader of my novels and manuscripts. … In addition to my personal affection for him, I just really trusted his literary instincts.” Many years later, Mr. Cooke became his sole agent.
Those editorial instincts stood Mr. Cooke in good stead with both writers and publishers. Sarah MacLachlan, retired publisher of House of Anansi Press, recalls that his approach to publishers was one of true collaboration. “He was able to understand what publishers were up against in creating books, as he had had a long and successful career on that side of the industry, and so you never felt like any of his asks on behalf of his writers were unreasonable.”
During a 1994 Ottawa Citizen interview, when Ms. Turnbull-Irving told Phil Jenkins that an agent tries to make both sides happy, Mr. Cooke quipped, “Or only a little unhappy.”
One of Mr. Cooke’s innate abilities was to recognize talent in an author even if there was no book to sell. He signed up short story writer Kevin Hardcastle in 2017 even though he had no novel in progress, then helped him navigate issues with a previous publisher as a favour. After a nine-year collaboration, Mr. Hardcastle is finally about to launch County Road Six this spring.
“He had to read all the bad versions of it and give me feedback. He did all that hard lifting, and it wouldn’t be anywhere without him. He really stuck with me.”
Throughout his long career, Mr. Cooke often led the way as Canadian publishing evolved. He introduced computerized desktop publishing to Doubleday in 1985, long before most other publishers. He vigorously championed writers even as booklists shrank, separated authors’ Canadian rights from American rights to strengthen homegrown publishing, and fiercely defended author royalties when inexpensive eBooks disrupted the print industry. In 2009, he started selling foreign rights on behalf of some major Canadian publishers that were cutting back their international marketing programs.
Mr. Vanderhaeghe remembers Mr. Cooke fondly. “I can’t ever recall having a disagreement about anything with him and it wasn’t because he was weak. When he had to speak up, he had no hesitation. He was kind. He was razor sharp. He was a helluva lot of fun to be around. He had a great laugh.”
On a memorial site post, children’s author Gillian Chan, posted that when it came to negotiations, Mr. Cooke once told her, “Think of me as your personal bad guy.”
Mr. Cooke leaves his husband, Jaimie Hubbard; his sister, Roberta Cooke; and five nieces.
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