Prolific Toronto publisher Michael de Pencier dominated newsstands

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Michael de Pencier was a small-time publisher in the summer of 1971 when his next-door neighbour on Toronto’s Ward’s Island, CBC radio host Peter Gzowski, suggested he buy a struggling magazine called Toronto Life.

A year later, at age 37, he had bought the periodical for $1, staffed it with a can-do-anything team and proceeded slowly to build a magazine empire that dominated Canadian newsstands throughout the 1980s and 90s. Some titles, like Canadian Business and Canadian Geographic, were editorial ugly ducklings in need of transformation. Others, like Fashion and Canadian Art, were custom-made to serve a Canadian readership that had depended too long on periodicals from the United States.

Mr. de Pencier, a lifelong conservationist who sold his Key Publishing holdings in 2002 when the magazine business still held value, died on Oct. 6, two days after suffering a stroke on his tree farm in southwestern Ontario. He was 89.

After the sale of his 49.3-per-cent stake in Key Media (worth up to $18-million according to speculative news reports at the time), Mr. de Pencier launched InvestEco Capital, an investment house focused on green technology and sustainability. Later, he dedicated himself to rehabilitating Ontario’s tree canopy and was personally involved in the planting of millions of saplings. In addition to passion, he brought business acumen and a lifetime of personal contacts to his environmentalism.

Michael Christian de Pencier was born Jan. 19, 1935. His parents, Joseph, a Toronto stockbroker, and Evelyn (née Richardson), a granddaughter of the head of Bank of Nova Scotia, raised their family in “Rosedale Cottage,” a small house in one of the city’s most prosperous enclaves.

While Mr. de Pencier wore his membership in the Toronto establishment lightly, he was proud of his deep Canadian roots, especially the fact that his grandfather, Archbishop Adam Urias De Pencier, had served as the second Metropolitan of British Columbia. (The family debuted in Canadian records with the 1784-arrival of a German Hessian mercenary named Christian Theodor von Pincier who changed his name to de Pencier after a stint fighting for the British during the American Revolution.)

Following a master’s degree in philosophy, Mr. de Pencier turned down a job in insurance and joined forces in 1962 with his boyhood friend Philip Greey to publish magazines. Mr. Greey managed a sprawling converted warehouse for his family’s property business but was always ready for a distraction. Their grandly named Greey de Pencier Publications bought Apartment Owner magazine for $2,000 and later added the struggling Quill and Quire book trade journal and a curling magazine to their stable. They also provided business management services to The Canadian Forum, Canada’s left-leaning literary/public affairs journal – work that brought them in contact with poets Margaret Atwood, Al Purdy and Earle Birney.

The young publishers’ headquarters was located downtown on The Esplanade in the bowels of Mr. Greey’s warehouse near the old St. Lawrence Market, the stylish new O’Keefe Centre and the city’s iconic Flatiron Building. The largesse of the Greey family enterprise kept rents low even as the district became trendy and Mr. de Pencier’s future enterprises expanded deeper into the building whenever additional space was needed. Staff members toiled in the steamy aromas wafting up from the city’s famous Old Spaghetti Factory located next door. Mr. de Pencier, the president, worked in a windowless office with walls so thin he could converse with his next-door neighbour, art director Ken Rodmell.

The same year he launched his publishing business, Mr. de Pencier married Honor Bonnycastle, a Winnipegger whose parents were the publisher and editor of Harlequin romance novels. The young couple had met aboard the RMS Empress of England during a 1957 trans-Atlantic voyage enroute to short-term teaching jobs in England.

Mr. de Pencier’s office on The Esplanade was a short walk and ferry ride from the Toronto Islands, where the young couple summered in a modest cottage so that their three children, born between 1966 and 1969, could properly experience Ontario summers. Their neighbours included a cross-section of Toronto’s creative class: poets, writers, artists, editors and Mr. Gzowski.

After a decade learning the business of magazine publishing, Mr. de Pencier relaunched Toronto Life magazine, financed in part by friends and a timely $250,000 inheritance from an uncle. He hired a gifted crew to run it from his shabby offices. (Mr. Greey opted to focus on real estate although he held onto his share of publishing house Greey de Pencier Books.)

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John Macfarlane, a young editor at Maclean’s magazine took the editorial lead and hired managing editor Bernadette Sulgit from the Toronto Star and gifted freelance art director Mr. Rodmell from The Canadian magazine. Terry O’Malley, creative director of ad agency Vickers and Benson, ran the marketing department. The staff that followed were generally less experienced but built solid careers on their Toronto Life foundation.

Forty-four years later, Mr. de Pencier told Toronto Life journalist Gary Ross, “I wanted people who were energetic, motivated and intelligent. After a year, unmotivated people with plenty of experience are still unmotivated. Smart, energetic people soon become smart, energetic and experienced.”

One of those hires was Al Zikovitz who signed on as an advertising salesman in the 1970s and later built his own successful magazine company with Cottage Life. He is one of a handful of old colleagues, including Mr. Macfarlane and Mr. Rodmell, who annually met up with their old boss for a boozy pre-Christmas reunion.

“He was one guy I worked with who I truly admired,” Mr. Zikovitz, now 84, says of Mr. de Pencier. “His honesty. His integrity. His quality. I couldn’t come up with anything I didn’t like about him. … Everything he did was for the betterment of the world.”

An instinctive entrepreneur, Mr. de Pencier eventually found a sustainable way to finance the journalism featured in his flagship periodical. In 1978, he bought Key to Toronto, a modest giveaway tourist guide that he polished up and filled with ads; it became an essential promotional publication for every restaurant, hotel and attraction in the city. Four years later, he began building his chain of Where magazines that eventually spread to tourist kiosks and hotels in dozens of North American cities. While only Toronto Life required expensive editorial content, all three enterprises brought in a flood of ad revenue, as did Wedding Bells, a lush quarterly filled with blushing brides, lavish dresses and Cinderella dreams.

Under his rebranded Key Publishers Inc., Mr. de Pencier went on an expansion campaign that included new joint ventures such as Key Porter Books, in partnership with editor Anna Porter, and Canadian Business magazine, an ancient Chamber of Commerce publication ripe for an overhaul, co-owned with future Liberal finance minister Roy MacLaren and Toronto Life editor Sandy Ross. He converted the Royal Canadian Geographical Society’s drab journal into the glossy Canadian Geographic; and Fashion and Gardening Life served special interests within Toronto Life’s subscriber base. He published the children’s magazine Owl because he thought it was the right thing to do, even though there was no advertising revenue. Canadian Art magazine was another labour of love. Eventually Key and its affiliated companies had more than 200 employees.

A hands-off executive in most day-to-day affairs, Mr. de Pencier took time to pursue related interests, helping set up the Canadian Magazine Publishers Association and Canadian Magazine Awards Foundation, and lobby for government protection from American magazines establishing “Canadian editions” to siphon off advertisers with little editorial investment. He also served as a director with numerous arts organizations including the Canadian Opera Company and the Shaw Festival.

“His feet never touched the ground,” one friend observed.

For 30 years, Key’s magazines revealed the inner workings of Canadian business and cast a spotlight on the people and institutions changing Toronto. Right from the start, Mr. de Pencier staked his success on the city’s future.

John Tory, former mayor and one-time publishing rival, says, “He loved the city. He chronicled its growth and reflected it in his magazines. … He was a man ahead of his time.”

In 2002, Key Media was sold to St. Joseph Corporation, one of four bidders, and Mr. de Pencier set up shop in a new office – with a window. (“Same building, different door,” jokes his son Nicholas de Pencier, a filmmaker.)

Just as he had bet earlier on the future of Toronto, he now turned his focus on environmentalism and green technology, explaining in an interview that he “didn’t want to get flagged with social responsibility too much because we were [offering] solid money-making opportunities.”

Teaming up with new media entrepreneur Andrew Heintzman, a like-minded conservationist almost half his age, Mr. de Pencier founded InvestEco Capital Corp., an environmentally aware investment firm that put clients’ money into private green tech, renewable energy and sustainable food companies.

His interest in the environment extended beyond finance. He served as chair of the Canadian board of the World Wildlife Fund and later took on a personal mission to plant millions of trees across Ontario. He joined forces with gardening entrepreneur Mark Cullen to convince thousands of ordinary citizens with little interest in conservation projects to fund tree planting.

“He recognized the value of stories,” Mr. Cullen recalls. The pair initiated campaigns that raised $10-million to plant trees in memory of 117,000 Canadian veterans who died in wars with another two million trees to honour all Canadian veterans.

Mr. de Pencier and his wife, a former art curator at the Royal Ontario Museum, spent much of their retirement at their sprawling 69-hectare farm northeast of Orangeville where friends and family members were regularly pressed into service rewilding the property.

According to his son Nicholas, Mr. de Pencier was “incorrigible,” continually visiting his rural neighbours to convince them to plant more trees. “He was still getting doors slammed in his face at 89,” he says. “But he was a salesman who was hard to say no to.”

Mr. de Pencier had just finished a tour of his property aboard his electric golf cart, when he suffered the stroke that led to his death.

He leaves his wife, Honor; his children, Nicholas, Miranda and Mark; and four grandchildren.

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