While most years start off with so much promise, unfortunately the first couple weeks of 2010 have seen two great Canadians in the field of literature and book arts pass away.

Poet, author and artist P.K. Page passed away on the 14th well into her 93rd year.  One of Canada’s great poets and an major influence on woman writers, Page had won numerous literary awards and honours as well as being named a Companion to the Order of Canada.  A wonderful article is on the CBC website with a link to her reading from Planet Earth.

Passing away just the week before on the 8th was typographic genius Jim Rimmer. A marvellous graphic artist, typeface designer and letterpress printer (being the proprietor of the Pie Tree Press), Jim has created some of Canada’s greatest typefaces and fine books over the years only to just recently add a shining star to his accomplishments by finishing his letterpress edition of Tom Sawyer using Hannibal Oldstyle, a font design by Rimmer for the printing of the book.   In fact, the first ever piece of letterpress printing I did was used his beautiful uncial style Fellowship font.  A very nice little write-up was done in the recent issue of The Printer Letterpress Monthly*.  His brilliance and eagerness to teach and guide fellowing designers and printers will be greatly missed among the letterpress community.  There is a wonderful video trailer for Making Faces (documentary with Jim Rimmer on typeface design) on Youtube here.

* E-mail me if you are interesting in a copy of the PDF as it is too large to post.