WHO TO CALL:
Ant & Entertainment Editor
Layne Christensen

985-2131 (118)

TARTING YOUR own

publishing house is not a

vareer option likely to
impress bank managers or
investment counsellors, For
West Vancouver's Pamela
MeColl, it was the gradual
but inevitable convergence of
experience and a determina.
tion to “do it her way.”

A lifelong interest in food and
wine — she attended Trekind's Bally
Maloe Cooking School “for fun.”
she says —~ led her to ponder the
luck of a distinctively British
Columbian salmon cookbook: the
one appearing most prominently in
local bookstores is by Californian
James McNair.

Her background in fine art (she
studied art at Queens, U. Vie and the
National Theatre Schoo! in
Montreal) and a decade as an art
consultant to corporate and public
institutions led her to artist Bruce
Muir and his paintings of salmon via
David Edwards of the Humberston-
Edwards Gallery in West
Vancouver.

The result was inevitable; British
Columbian Salmon, A Celebration of
Paintings and Cookery, a unique
“collectible cookbook” in which
salmon recipes contributed by chef's
from B.C.'s top-flight lodges and
restaurants are combined with excel-
lent reproductions of Muir's paint-
ings of the magnificent fish.

Inevitable? An “art cookbook"?
A couple of publishers McColl
pitched the idea to were interested.
but hesitant about the unusual genre-
crossover concept. As negotiations
progressed, McColl says. “I could
see the book getting away from me,
turning into something other than
what T envisioned. It was one of
those situations where you realize
you have to compromise or have
faith in your own vision.

Then a friend said, “Pam, you
know if you want to do something
your own way, you hive to do it
yourself.”

“She was right.” McColl says. “I
thought I'm a self-motivated. goal-
oriented creative person and I can do
this.”

“Just do it” is a phrase that trips
lightly off a T-shirt; in practice it’s a
hard “roe” to hoe. Neophyte publish-
ers do not qualify for provincial or

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SPOTLIGHT FEATURE

federal arts grants and no financial
advisor would counsel a 36-year-old
divorced mother of two children to
anything but prudence.

Bucking conventional wisdom,
McColl financed the project hersell.
taking equity out of a property meant
to finance the completion of her
house in Roberts Creek on the
Sunshine Coast. “It was a hard deci-
sion.” McColl admits, “It was a case
of finishing the house, more or less,
and having nothing left for the pub-
lishing project, or lock up the house.
walk away and do the book.”

Still bucking the conventional
wisdom, which says beginner pub-
lishers should start small and grind
out enough cheaply produced books
to qualify for grants, McColl was
convinced that first-class production
sells itself. “You should have seen
the first cover,” she says laughing, “I
tore it up and sent back the pieces.
But it was worth it when I took the
book into a store in Qualicum and
the owner took McNair’s book out
of the display and put ours in it’s
place. I have the greatest respect for
James MeNair, but 1 couldn't help
being proud of that.”

Her persistence has paid off with
TV appearances on the Dini Petty
show and with Keith Morrison on
Canada AM. novio mention the
out-of-left field calls from cookbook
collectors and outdoor journalists in
the U.S. In fora penny, in fora
loonie, she decided. after visiting the
North Shore Outdoor School and
meeting principal Vie Elderton. to
donate a dollar from the sale of each
book to the school in the Squamish
Valley which promotes awareness of
salmon conservation among North
Shore students,

Having founded Terra Bella
Publishers, McColl has discovered
what it means to grab the tiger's tail:
once you do, you're committed, let-
ting go is so dangerous you have to

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PAMELA McCOLL formed her own
publishing company when an idea
for a “fine arts” cookbook garnered
lukewarm response from focal pub-
lishing houses. The since-published
British Columbian Salmon: A
Celebration of Paintings and
Cookery contains salmon recipes by
B.C. chefs and illustrations by
Vancouver artist Bruce Muir.