W.R. Draper Company

W.R. Draper Company

W.R. Draper Company. Toronto lithographers, in the 1980s the largest music-printing establishment in Canada. The company was established around the turn of the century by William R. Draper (b ca 1861, d Toronto autumn 1921). A member of the Queen's Own Rifles Band, Draper also, by 1892, was manager of the Toronto branch of the Philadelphia music publisher William F. Shaw & Co. In the late 1890s Draper was associated with the Verrall and Draper Music Publishing Co, which ca 1899 became the Draper Music Publishing Co. Draper also, ca 1898-1906, was managing director of the Canadian-American Music Co in Toronto. The combined publishing output of Draper and Canadian-American consisted of fewer than 100 songs, some of them Canadian. Printing always has been the Draper company's main activity, though Draper himself composed such items as the march Boys of the Old Brigade (Canadian-American 1903), the song 'Only You in Dreams' (Draper 1918) with violin obbligato, and the Veteran's March (Draper 1920). Some publications in the popular genre were 'printed for the composer' by the company in the 1916-30 period. The company was purchased in 1922, after Draper's death, by Frederick Cecil Madill and Robert Ewart Forsythe, and was transferred from its Pearl St quarters, moving through a succession of addresses to Dee Ave in Weston, Ont, in 1944. W.R. Draper claims to have been the first music printer in North America to employ the offset process. In 1986 Harald Madill sold the company to David Thorn, who moved the offices to Downsview, Ont. The company, with a staff of 10, has printed for such music publishers as Algord (Whaley Royce), Berandol, Boosey & Hawkes, Frederick Harris, Jarman, E.C. Kerby, Warner/Chappell and Waterloo.