''Canadian Who's Who'' is a

publication To publish is to make content available to the general public.Berne Conve ...

containing

biographical A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just the basic facts like education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's experience of these life events. Unlike a profile or ...

information about 13,000 notable

Canadians Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...

. Because of the absence of biographical fact-checking by the publishers (e.g. candidates send in their own biographical details without any checking), ''Canadian Who's Who'' is not used as a reference by mainstream Canadian media, and is rarely, if ever, quoted as a source.

Background

''Canadian Who's Who'' is published and distributed annually by

Grey House Publishing Grey House Publishing is an American publisher of directories and other reference books in business, health, education and other areas. Its corporate headquarters are in Amenia, New York. It also has a Canadian office in Toronto. In 2013, Grey ...

Canada with a bright-red binding and an online searchable version is also available through a subscription. The online, searchable, electronic version of ''Canadian Who's Who'' includes more than 11,000 archived biographies, in addition to the 13,000 biographies found in the 2014/2015 print edition. Every year the publisher invites new individuals to complete questionnaires from which new biographies are compiled. The publisher also gives those already listed in earlier editions an opportunity to update their biographies. ''Canadian Who's Who'' was first published in 1910 by the Ottawa branch of ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...

''. In a rare reference to ''Canadian Who's Who'' in Canadian media, the ''

Peterborough Examiner ''The Peterborough Examiner'' is a newspaper that services Peterborough, Ontario and area. The paper started circulation in 1847, and is currently owned by Torstar and operated by its Metroland division. Between 1942 and 1955, it was edited by Can ...

'' in 2009 found reading the 1910 edition to be "as rewarding as similar time spent surfing the web". In 1932, A.L. Tunnell acquired copyright from ''The Times'' and published a second edition in 1936. Tunnell usually published new editions every three years.

University of Toronto Press The University of Toronto Press is a Canadian university press founded in 1901. Although it was founded in 1901, the press did not actually publish any books until 1911. The press originally printed only examination books and the university calen ...

became the new publisher in 1978 and began an annual schedule of publication. In 1997 it began publishing on

CD-ROM A CD-ROM (, compact disc read-only memory) is a type of read-only memory consisting of a pre-pressed optical compact disc that contains data. Computers can read—but not write or erase—CD-ROMs. Some CDs, called enhanced CDs, hold both comput ...

. Third Sector Publishing took over from University of Toronto Press in March 2011, publishing editions up to 2015, before

purchased the publication in March 2016. There is no charge, nor is there any obligation, for the inclusion of a biography in the ''Canadian Who's Who'' but according to Elizabeth Lumley, an editor of the publication, entrants must be outstanding in their field. Included are Canadians from

business Business is the practice of making one's living or making money by producing or Trade, buying and selling Product (business), products (such as goods and Service (economics), services). It is also "any activity or enterprise entered into for pr ...

academia An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary education, secondary or tertiary education, tertiary higher education, higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membershi ...

politics Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that studies ...

sports Sport pertains to any form of competitive physical activity or game that aims to use, maintain, or improve physical ability and skills while providing enjoyment to participants and, in some cases, entertainment to spectators. Sports can, th ...

, the

arts The arts are a very wide range of human practices of creative expression, storytelling and cultural participation. They encompass multiple diverse and plural modes of thinking, doing and being, in an extremely broad range of media. Both hi ...

and

sciences Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...

. In 1997, Canadian journalist Robert Fulford wrote that "Canadians chosen for inclusion submit their own entries, at whatever length they choose, and no one edits their egotism or whimsy". Fulford described the publication as "a book of 15,000 authors". In April 2018, ''Canadian Who's Who'' made a rare appearance in mainstream Canadian media in

Maclean's ''Maclean's'', founded in 1905, is a Canadian news magazine reporting on Canadian issues such as politics, pop culture, and current events. Its founder, publisher John Bayne Maclean, established the magazine to provide a uniquely Canadian perspe ...

, regarding the falsification of Canadian author

Bill Gaston Bill Gaston (born January 14, 1953 in Tacoma, Washington) is a Canadian novelist, playwright and short story writer. Gaston grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Toronto, Ontario, and North Vancouver, British Columbia. Aside from teaching at various univ ...

's biographical details.

References

External links

Grey House Publishing Canada
{{Authority control Canadian biographical dictionaries