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Mel Hurtig (June 24, 1932 – August 3, 2016) was a Canadian publisher, author, political activist, and political candidate. He was president of the Edmonton Art Gallery. He described himself as a Canadian nationalist, while he also wrote several books critical of Canadian government policy.
After selling his stores in 1972, he established Hurtig Publishers Ltd. with $30,000 in borrowed money. It became "one of the liveliest book publishing companies in Canada.""Mel Hurtig," in Grant H. Kennedy and James B. Stanton (eds.), The Albertans (Edmonton: Lone Pine Publishing Ltd., 1981), p. 151. In 1980, he started work on The Canadian Encyclopedia, spending $12 million on a comprehensive three-volume national encyclopedia first published in 1985. "How Canada got an encyclopedia to call its own" Jane Taber, The Globe and Mail, October 7, 2010. A second edition, which took four years to complete and cost $8.5 million to produce, appeared in four volumes in 1988.Mel Hurtig, "Foreword to the Second Edition," The Canadian Encyclopedia (Edmonton: Hurtig Publishers, 1988), vol. I, p. vii; John Godfrey, "The great Canadian Encyclopedia chaos," Financial Post (Sept. 16, 1988), p. 14. Much to the surprise of the publisher, the second edition was unexpectedly sold at up to a 55 per cent discount by national companies, roiling the market.James Adams, "Coles' discount slices into revenues for new encyclopedia," Edmonton Journal, (Sept. 20, 1988), p. C9.
In September 1990, Hurtig published the five-volume Junior Encyclopedia of Canada, the first encyclopedia for young Canadians. He sold the company to McClelland & Stewart in May 1991. "Mel Hurtig" The Canadian Encyclopedia
Hurtig was an Officer of the Order of Canada, was granted honorary Doctor of Laws degrees from six Canadian universities, and was the recipient of the Lester B. Pearson Man of the Year Peace Award.
In 1973, he left the Liberal Party and joined with other nationalists including Walter Gordon, Jack McClelland, and Claude Ryan to establish the Committee for an Independent Canada (CIC), which lobbied against foreign ownership of Canadian economic assets and cultural imperialism. He served as Chair for the first year of the CIC.
In 1985, Hurtig established the Council of Canadians, another nationalist organization, five years after the demise of the CIC. The primary purpose of this organization was to lobby against a perceived rising tide of support for free trade. He considered his establishment of the Council as the act he was "most proud of.""Hurtig, Mel," in Edmond Y. Lipsitz (ed.), Canadian Jewry Today: Who’s Who in Canadian Jewry (Downsivew, Ontario: J.E.S.L. Educational Products, 1989), p. 150. He would leave in 1992 but the council survives to this day, albeit with a mission of social, environmental, and economic justice rather than nationalism. Council of Canadians website
In 1992, Hurtig was elected leader of the National Party of Canada and led it in the 1993 federal election. He ran in the riding of Edmonton Northwest, but with 4,507 votes and 12.8 per cent of the popular vote, finished a distant third to Liberal Anne McLellan. It was nonetheless the best showing of the National Party candidates in that election—notably, Hurtig was the only National Party candidate to finish ahead of an incumbent MP, namely Tory Murray Dorin.
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