“I LIKE TO KNOW WHAT’S GOING ON”: LAWRENCE HILL ON DONATING TO THE FISHER

(Fun)draising | Samantha Summers

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Cultural heritage institutions rely on both financial and in-kind (material) donations to keep their collections thriving. In 2008, author Lawrence Hill donated his papers to the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library. I sat down with him at the bustling Paisley Coffeehouse in Hamilton to discuss why he chose to donate his papers, and what the Fisher does to maintain their relationship with him.

The Paisley Coffeehouse and Eatery in Westdale, Hamilton. Photo courtesy of Daniel Osorio.

What made you want to donate your papers to the Fisher in the first place? 

Well, I’m sort of the perfect person to have donated. My father and paternal grandmother believe you should never throw anything out because of family history, and so I was already a person who never threw anything out. You know, paperwork, short stories, terrible short stories I wrote when I was thirteen or fifteen. Poems, photos, letters to my family written when I was a child, teenager, or young adult. I already had boxes and boxes of stuff. And also early drafts of books.

Why the Fisher? You’re a major Canadian literary figure, I’m sure many institutions would have wanted your papers.

Well, for one thing they reached out to me… and I just have a fondness for the [University of Toronto]. I went to high school right beside it. It was a place that welcomed my father to Canada when he came here as an immigrant from the United States and began his graduate degree at the UofT. Plus, it’s close and I can get access to them easily. So if I need to see stuff in my own holdings, it’s easy to get there.

The Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, home to the Lawrence Hill holdings. Source.

Do you continue to have a close relationship with the Fisher?

I do. I’ve made several subsequent donations. Sometimes if there’s a special show they’ll invite me to it. There was a special show about the holdings relating to the Nobel Prize-winning poet Derek Walcott; they put on a special exhibit of his holdings a few years ago. They included some of his paintings, and I didn’t know that in addition to being a Nobel Prize-winning poet, he was also an active recreational painter. I went to look at that exhibit, just to enjoy it. So yes, we are in touch, and it’s a very special part of my professional life.

Are there more ways that you would like to be involved in the community at the Fisher, or are you happy with where you stand with them?

Well, as a researcher I always like to know how to find stuff. So sometimes I draw upon people in the archival community just to help me locate things as a researcher of novels and non-fiction. If there’s special events I like to know about them. I like to know what’s going on.

Do they keep in touch with you about how your papers are being used?

Informally. It’s not like a formal report. One year I donated a series of letters written to my father pleading for the right to have a kitten. And so I’m told by Jennifer Toews [Thomas Fisher Modern Manuscripts and Reference Librarian] that it’s the most frequently requested item in my holdings. They are kind of funny, very silly, and they’re very poorly written letters that I wrote earnestly as a child to plead for a cat, or to criticize my father for not being kind to the cat once I had one. They’re pretty emphatic letters, and they were written between the ages of six and ten or so. People seem to find them interesting, and I also find them kind of interesting to look back on. I hear little reports like that, like, “By the way, Larry, lots of people have been in to ask to see your kitten letters.”

The “kitten letters” appear in the Lawrence Hill fonds finding aid on the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library website. Source.

So does that surprise you? What people are interested in seeing?

No, not really. I’m a writer too, and if I were writing about another writer I’d be very interested in the personal. The personal is often the thing that creates such clear interest for people. Even when the archives were soliciting my materials, they were very clear they were interested in the personal. Diaries, letters, and photos are among the things they’re interested in the most. Who needs a copy of a book I published? They could get that anywhere. They’re looking for things that provide a kind of personal insight that others wouldn’t have access to.

Do you feel like they’re being put to good use then, all the papers you have at the Fisher?

I feel they are. Again, I’m not aware of what’s happening on a monthly or yearly basis, but I am told that people check them out, so I feel they’re being put to good use. I don’t have my finger on the pulse of exactly when they’re being used.

Donating papers seems like a good way to thank an institution.

Very much so. My father arrived after serving in the US Army in the Second World War. He comes to the UofT as a Black man from the South in the States. He has no contacts here, he has nothing but the desire to leave his own country and create a new life for himself in Canada. The University of Toronto became his home— the professors, the students, the people who advised him. It wasn’t just an MA and a PhD, both of which he got from the UofT, but it really was his home in this new country. Although I didn’t study at university there, it has meant a lot to me to have those links through the library and through the archives. Also, by being a donor to the archives I’ve been able to concoct an arrangement which allows me to have library cards at the UofT, which I’ve used with impunity many times. It’s very helpful for researching. And I’ve spent huge swaths of my life in the Robarts library researching books, pretty well all of them. That’s one more reason why I feel really happy to make the donation and make the connection, because it’s where I’ve done my research.

Dr. Daniel G. Hill’s thesis, Negroes in Toronto: A Sociological Study of a Minority Group, is available in microfilm through the University of Toronto Library system. Photo courtesy of Samantha Summers.

You can learn more about Lawrence Hill here, and the “kitten letters” may be accessed at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book library, box 115, folder 7.

This interview has been condensed for length and clarity.

DONATIONS: THE HEART OF THE THOMAS FISHER

(Fun)draising | Samantha Summers

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The Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library is one of the best-known libraries in the country, and it has cultivated an extremely dedicated group of donors and patrons. I sat down with outreach librarian John Shoesmith to discuss the importance of donor relations to the Fisher, and to reconsider what we mean by “fundraising.”


Interior of the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library. Source.

Thanks for meeting with me. Although many of our readers will be familiar with the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, before we begin, would you mind giving me a brief overview of what the Library’s mission is?

Essentially our library’s mission is to support the teaching and research of the University of Toronto as a whole, but also our mission is to support teaching and research worldwide.

How does fundraising fit into that picture, and what role does fundraising play at the Fisher?

It’s funny, we don’t normally use the word “fundraising.” The term we tend to use is “donor relations,” and whenever I do tours for students I always talk about the importance of donor relations. It’s not something that is ever really spoken about very much in the teaching curriculum, and yet it’s so critical to what we do here at the Fisher. Even outside of “fundraising,” the library itself is built on donations. We do have an acquisitions budget, but really the foundation of the library has been based on donations of books. We couldn’t have built this library without a huge donor base, having rabid book collectors decide to give us their collections. Some of our most important collections have been built primarily by our community. A great example is Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. A Scarborough prof came off the elevator one day, had this list in his hand, and he said, “I have this list of books, would you be interested in these books?” It was a complete collection of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. That’s how a lot of our stuff has been built up over the years.

Foxe's Book of Martyrs, 1641. Source.

Reaching out to the younger demographic is so important. How do you do that?

One of the simplest thing we’ve done, and it sounds almost trite to say it, is that at one time our Friends of Fisher lectures would begin at 8pm. So a simple thing was just moving them from 8pm to 6pm, our argument being that at 8pm there’s not going to be many students hanging around campus, and they aren’t going to want to attend a lecture. Becoming a Friend of Fisher as a student is quite cheap, it’s $25. As a library we recognize the importance of our donors. We couldn’t do what we do without them. We try to pay tribute to them as much as possible, whether it’s publicly through events, or going out for lunches or dinners with them. We’re going through the process of hiring a Director for the Fisher, and they’re part of that process. The steering committee of the Friends of Fisher will meet the candidates, have a say in the process. And that’s important, because a big role for the Director is working closely with our donor community, so their voice is important.

For donors who are donating more than is average, or a particularly substantial donations, how does the Fisher recognize that support specifically? Or do they?

They do and they don’t. Earlier this year we purchased the William Caxton Cicero, which was a significant amount of money. It’s a great fundraising story, because a lot of the money had been generated by donations. This past week they had an event to honour the donors. It was very well-attended, there were probably fifty or so core donors of the Caxton. They generated this little piece for them, these little cards with the individual pages of the Caxton. It’s a very small gesture, but they loved it. One of the donors phoned and said, “I want to purchase twenty more of these.” So it’s small things like that. The Caxton was great, because they really felt like part of the acquisitions team, because it’s such an important purchase for us. That was such a great donor story for everyone involved, for us and for the donors themselves.



A gift of custom Caxton Cicero stationary given to donors who helped the Fisher purchase the Caxton. Photo courtesy of Samantha Summers.

When you get these incredible acquisitions with the help of donors, which is more rewarding: Seeing the text itself and interacting with it, or seeing how excited people are that they’ve contributed to this incredible text?

I think it’s both. We were chatting with Allan Gottlieb, who used to be the ambassador to the United States. Long time politician, was a book collector for a long time, mostly collecting fine bindings. He approached us probably two years ago wondering if we were interested in his bindings, and of course we were. He was very tied to them, he had a hard time getting rid of them. So what we did was create a prominent place [for them], and then after we received the donation we had a little tea for him and his family that was held in the mezzanine, and the books were out on display. Just a small thing to say, “Your donation is valued and is important to us. It has a prominent display. We recognize how important these books are to you. You can come any time and take a look at them. They’re not going anywhere.”

The Caxton is the best success story we’ve had in the last couple years or so. For us, it pointed to how excited the donor community was to be able to purchase this hugely important book. They had Alan Galey speak at the reception the other night, and they were very excited to see that Alan has already been incorporating it into his classes or into his own research. The Caxton is great simply because it’s the oldest English-language book now here in Canada. So that’s one part of it. But it’s not a momento piece, it’s actually for scholarship. To have it is one thing, but to have it as something that forms the core of someone’s research is so much more important for the Friends. They want to see this material being used.



An iPad contributes an interactive element to the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library’s latest exhibit, De Monstris: An Exhibition of Monsters and the Wonders of Human Imagination, running September 17 to December 21. Photo courtesy of Samantha Summers.

Visit the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library website for visiting information, and check out these upcoming events: George Kiddell Lecture on the History of the Book and The Johanna and Leon Katz Memorial Lecture.

This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.