My publisher, and Canada’s, the marketing department tells me, is 100 years old. That’s pretty remarkable. McClelland and Stewart has undergone some big changes over the last decade, including changing hands from private ownership to an agreement that saw the University of Toronto taking 75% of the company while Random House got the remaining quarter. It’s a strange parasitic arrangement and I’m not sure who is sucking who’s blood, or if any fluids are being exchanged at all, but it seems to be working.

Last night M&S had a soiree in the Distillery — the same giant room as the Griffin Awards were held in last week. While the decorating budgets were obviously quite different, I was surprised how versatile the space is. There were several hundred people there, mostly of an older age group. I think occasional ninja Paul and I were the only M&S poets in attendance. Certainly the only young ones. Or as I said jokingly, we were the only poets who didn’t realize that the reason our invites arrived a week after the RSVP deadline was because they were trying to tell us something. Ba-dum-bump.

One thing I did notice last night that set me back a bit, was how many people are reading this site. It floored me. It was part of the general conversation. I find that both gratifying and frightening. I can see stats at the end of the day that show several thousand people stopping by, but to hear a good fraction of them discussing the commentary gave me a start. As Amy, a lovely ninja reader and publicist put it, “EVERYONE is talking” about something I wrote. Sweet. Or Eeep! I can’t decide which.

Anyway, as you guys may or may not know, besides the crank I play here, I’m also a very serious poet. My work of late has only very subtle humour in it. Bookninja is really my only outlet for jokes and being a dink. I play a character here that ranges from catty to facetious to sniping to morose to very honestly earnest. And yes, I’ve even engaged in the odd bit of gossip and schadenfreude. It’s a contradictory, contrarian style that more often goes for the funniest bit over serious commentary, but that’s part of the voice that’s developed here over the last three years. It seems to be something the readers like and it’s surprisingly easy to write. It takes me about half an hour to an hour to do all the updates I do, including searching out the articles. So writing time, per post, is about two minutes.

I guess what I’m saying is, I am loathe to think people think of me as a gossip columnist. Especially when I do what I’m about to do: dish gossip. Because, frankly, this is too good to give up.

So, I’m standing there last night when the speeches start up. I had made a solemn promise to myself to get out before the speeches started, but now I was trapped. I had been talking with a certain publisher of a largish independent press and a certain editor at a big newspaper. Avi Bennett got up and started to talk. The acoustics were so bad that the miked voices disappeared into the rafters. So people basically kept on chatting. At one point I did make out Bennett asking people to quiet down. “I gave 30 years of my life to this company, perhaps you could give me a minute and a half.” It was starting to sound like a family dinner. But things did quiet down a bit.

Then a few moments later I noticed a Margaret Atwood gliding through the crowd in that way she has — it kind of looks like a ghost walking… you don’t see her legs move, but suddenly she’s closer to you. Anyway, she was stopping at pockets of people here and there, leaning in and then moving on. When she stopped at the publisher and editor in front of me, she leaned in gracefully, looked everyone in the eye and simply and curtly said, “Shhh.”

Everyone froze as though a teacher had just come into the bathroom and caught them mid-puff. I felt a cold sweat break out on my forehead. I praised luck and higher powers that I had disengaged from the conversation a few moments before the speeches started. Shoulders were up, cools were cramped. Even those watching felt admonished. When she moved on, people relaxed a little and looked around. It was like that scene in Lord of the Rings when Galadriel reveals to Frodo a glimpse of what the world would be like under her wicked rule. Then we were back in the sylvan glade of the Distillery, panting and clutching our chests. The raw power!

So, at this point, I couldn’t resist leaning in to my old pal the editor and saying, “So… shushed by Margaret Atwood, eh? Nice.”

He seemed genuinely pleased, as the jaded are when they experience something actually fantastic and new. “I’m putting it on my gravestone. ‘Here’s lies… Shushed by Margaret Atwood’.”

We chuckled and I, trying to deflect any hard feelings or insecurity anyone might have had with my defence mechanism humour, said, “Well, at least she had the decency to do it herself instead of inventing a robot to come shush you.”

Without missing a beat, the publisher beside us leaned in and said, “Darling, that WAS the robot.”

Okay. Even though my instinct is to protect Atwood like she’s a family matriarch, that was just too good. I just had let you guys know. It was better even than the moment overheard at the Griffins last week when someone commented that Darren Werschler-Henry, the great avant-gardist who has recently broken both arms in a bike accident and now has metal pins sticking out of his arms, looked and moved a bit like a robot and someone else said, “Which I suppose makes Christian pretty jealous.” (Ed. Note: Darren told me to post that.)

And now, to protect my reputation as a serious poet of metaphysical magnitude, from this day forward I foreswear all gossip column anecdotes. (You have to admit, it was worth it.)

Happy Birthday M&S, you’re a grand old gal and no one can shush you.