Tundra Books

Tundra Books

Tundra Books is an award-winning, Toronto-based children's book publisher founded in 1967 by Mary Ebbitt Cutler, an acclaimed author, journalist and one-time mayor of Westmount, Québec.

Cutler was inspired to enter the publishing business by Maynard Gertler, a neighbour, friend and owner of Harvest House, one of the few Anglophone publishing houses in Quebec at the time. Cutler was also motivated to start her own publishing company when she was unable to find a publisher for her book I Once Knew an Indian Woman, which came to be the first book published by Tundra Books.

Authors published by Tundra Books include Roch Carrier (The Hockey Sweater), Mordecai Richler (Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang), and William Kurelek (A Prairie Boy's Winter).

At the end of 1995 veteran Canadian publishing house McClelland & Stewart bought Tundra Books and installed Kathy Lowinger as the head of its new division. It is estimated that 35 to 50 percent of the company's revenues come from the US market, through its subsidiary, Tundra Books of Upstate New York.