Exacting editor William Eldred Toye used his blue pencil to help raise the quality of Canadian books

William Eldred Toye’s high editorial standards may at times have caused tears, trepidation and at least one near mental breakdown, but they also fuelled a half-century of excellence in Canadian publishing.One unhappy author, retired Ottawa archivist Norah Story, sought psychiatric counselling in 1962 in response to a barrage of Mr. Toye’s marginal notes on her sprawling manuscript for The Oxford Companion to Canadian History and Literature. Armed with medical advice, she complained to his boss at Oxford University Press Canada that Mr. Toye was a meddling “whipper-snapper” eager to show off his own knowledge at her expense. Not so, countered managing editor Ivon Owen, who believed that her work had benefited immensely from Mr. Toye’s advice.