The history of publishing in Canada

Illustration by Robert Holmes in "Rambles of Canadian Naturalist"
1916

In the publishing industry design, typography, type design, printmaking, commercial art, and illustration are closely related to each other.

Richard Hollis wrote in "Graphic Design: A Concise History" (1994): 

Graphic Design is the business of making or choosing marks and arranging them on a surface to convey an idea

But with the publication design, it is different. 

Until the end of 19th century, the majority of fine artists in Canada were trained in a more practical nature with quite a limited choice within the art industry. However, with the developing of the canadian publishing industry, there were more and more art colleges, founded in Halifax, Toronto, Winnipeg, Vancouver, Montreal, Quebec and other large cities, which began introducing students to commercial art, lithography, engraving, lettering and illustration.
Noticeably, that quite a number of people, who put an effort into development of Canadian print media and design, where immigrants.

Canada`s first publishers were also Canada`s first printers and type designers, hand-setting newspapers and books in small mid-eighteenth-century such as that of the Neilsons in Quebec City.

Lithography was invented by a German printmaker Alois Senefelder in 1796, and was brought to Toronto (formally York) in 1832 by Samuel Tazewell. It was then developed by Hugh Scobie in 1843, opening new possibilities for book, magazine and newspaper publishers.

Alois Senefelder

In the late 1800s, linotype machines and other innovations gradually replaced press-men and compositors. Increased mechanization in the 1900s saw most print shops replaced by printing plants.

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Prior to Confederation and the rise of responsible government in the Canadas, books, newspapers, journals, and notices were issued and controlled by the government.

In the first several decades of the twentieth century, Canadian publishers, such as Macmillan of Canada and McClelland & Goodchild (later known as McClelland & Stewart), were either branch-plant publishers or agents primarily for foreign publishers. 

Yet many publishers, including the small press and private presses, have necessarily restricted their audience and readership. No two publishers in Canada are the same.