Antoine Del Busso

Early Life and Education

Antoine Del Busso moved to Montreal in 1955, at the age of 10. After studying political science at Collège Mont-Saint-Louis and at the Université de Montréal, he became involved in teaching and Quebec publishing.

Career

Teaching

Antoine Del Busso taught political science at the Collège de Montmorency for approximately 10 years, from 1969 to 1979.

Publishing

Antoine Del Busso was introduced to the world of publishing in 1968 through a summer job as an editor at the Centre de psychologie et de pédagogie, which specialized in publishing school textbooks. He was also a project manager there until 1972. Later he worked at the Éditions du renouveau pédagogique (ERPI), headed by Pierre Tisseyre. Del Busso was the deputy director from 1972 to 1976.

At ERPI, he met important new acquaintances from the Boréal Express team, including Jacques Lacoursière and Denis Vaugeois. The latter asked him to replace him when he was elected as a member of the Parti Québécois MNA in 1976. Del Busso enthusiastically accepted while continuing to teach at Collège Montmorency. From 1978 to 1989, he was President and Chief Executive Officer and main shareholder of Éditions du Boréal.

As a publisher, Del Busso published hundreds of Québécois authors, including Normand Baillargeon, Yves Beauchemin, Hélène-Andrée Bizier, Claude Corbo, François Gravel, Paul-André Linteau, Benoît Melançon, Jean Provencher, François Ricard, Yvon Rivard, Gabrielle Roy, Alain Stanké, Pierre Vadeboncoeur and Denis Vaugeois. Some of the non-francophones were Northrop Frye, Ingo Kolboom, Michael Ondaatje, David Suzuki and Jane Urquhart. Their books have been translated into French.

Under his leadership, Le Boréal (which was “Boréal Express” until 1987) became an important and respected publishing house. Without losing sight of its original editorial mission (evidenced by Paul-André Linteau, René Durocher, and Jean-Claude Robert's Histoire du Québec contemporain (1979)), Del Busso considerably diversified the editorial program by publishing titles such as Daniel Bertolino’s Au cœur du monde primitif (1978), or his first great literary successes such as Louis Caron‘s Le canard de bois (1981) or Gabrielle Roy’s La détresse et l'enchantement (1984).

In 1989, Del Busso left Le Boréal to take over the editorial direction of the Sogides Group (which included Éditions de l'Homme, Éditions du Jour, Éditions Quinze, Éditions La Presse, Éditions VLB and L'Hexagone), until 1991. He then became the general director of Fides Editions, which, in addition to a considerable editorial portfolio, had its own distribution structure.

At Fides, in 1993, he published the latest French print version of the Encyclopedia of Music in Canada in Montreal, which had first been published in English in 1992. In 2003, The Canadian Encyclopedia incorporated Encyclopedia of Music in Canada into its content, which included 400 contributors, nearly 3,000 articles and 500 illustrations.

In 1998, Del Busso joined the management team at Presses de l'Université de Montréal. When he left Fides in 2008, he continued to serve as general director of the Presses de l'Université de Montréal until 2015. At the same time, he started his own publishing house, Del Busso Éditeur, which merged shortly afterwards with Éditions Carte blanche, founded by his wife, Hélène Rudel-Tessier. Their children Mélanie Rudel-Tessier and Julien Del Busso now run the family business.

Other professional activities

• Member of the Advisory Committee of the Carmelle and Rémi Marcoux Chair in Arts Management (HEC Montréal)
• Participant in various federal and Quebec organizations related to public assistance programs for publishing: Canada Council for the Arts, Canadian Federation for the Social Sciences, Department of Canadian Heritage, Livres Canada Books, Ministère de la Culture du Québec, Copibec (Société québécoise de gestion collective des droits de reproduction)
• Co-founder and president of Québec Édition, a committee of the Association nationale des éditeurs de livres dedicated to internationally promoting French-language publishing in Quebec and Canada; this committee organizes collective stands at book fairs and exhibitions worldwide, notably in Brussels, Paris, Geneva, Montreuil, Frankfurt, Bologna and Guadalajara. The organization also supports Quebec publishers in their export activities by carrying out market development missions.
• Member of the Advisory Group on Quebec Cultural Heritage Policy and co-signor of its report, the Arpin Report, chaired by Roland Arpin, General Director of the Musée de la civilisation (1991)
• President of the Association nationale des éditeurs de livres (1993-1998)
• President of the Commission du livre and member of the Board of Directors of the Société de développement des entreprises culturelles (SODEC) (1995-2001)
• Lecturer on publishing practices in the Department of French Language and Literature at McGill University (2009-2010)

Awards and Distinctions

• Ordre des francophones d'Amérique, Conseil supérieur de la langue française (2003)
• Fleury-Mesplet Award, Salon du livre de Montréal [Montreal Book Fair] (2008)