the Portico
“Our mission is to enhance the relationship between the University and its alumni and friends and promoted pride and commitment within the University Community.”Women’s issues drive publishing career
Student unrest was an issue all over North America around 1970, at Columbia, UC Berkeley, Kent State and even the University of Guelph.
One group of Guelph activists planned to withhold tuition fees to get the administration to change a controversial policy. There was angst over an appearance by a former premier of Northern Ireland, and the Mac and FACS girls did their bit for the budding women’s liberation movement by bringing The Happy Hooker author, Xaviera Hollander, to speak on campus. In general, the movement to better the lives of women, minorities and gays was in the air.
Textiles major Susan Winlaw, B.A.Sc. ’73, and theatre major Alex Law, xxx, played a role in many of those big events when they were U of G students. As professionals and a married couple, they’ve continued to share a desire to make things better for women.
Winlaw enjoyed a 32-year career at Simpsons-Sears and then Sears Canada, where she went from testing products in the safety/quality lab to running a cafeteria, buying for different departments, and managing human resources initiatives. Law became a journalist, writing about sports, business, politics, entertainment and eventually the auto industry. He has driven more than 2,000 different cars in endless countries and published stories in newspapers and magazines in Canada, the United States and England.
While travelling together to auto shows and vehicle launches, Winlaw began to write too and developed a sense of how they could provide a service to women. When she took early retirement at the end of 2005, they turned their ideas into action by compiling information for women about safety in and around cars. In 2008 they published Car Advice for Women (and Smart Men).
The book was the start of their successful book publishing business, BAM Press. It’s been a long road from “washing and drying clothes, dissolving fibres and burning carpets in the textiles lab,” says Winlaw.
Much of the book focuses on safety advice for women drivers. “For example, women tend to be shorter than men, but when a couple pick out a car, they usually pick one to fit the husband. That puts the woman close to the steering wheel when she is driving, a dangerous place to be,” says Winlaw. “We recommend adjustable foot pedals or pedal extensions to allow the woman to be farther away from the steering wheel. The farther she is away, the greater her chances of surviving a crash and not suffering too many injuries.”
Another potential hazard most women don’t consider: driving small cars. “The most common vehicle on the road is a pickup truck,” says Winlaw. “If you’re driving a small car and you’re in a collision with a pickup truck, you will lose. That’s simple physics. Years of real-world crash results prove that people in small cars are four times as likely to die as people in large cars.” Yet women often choose small cars for their good gas mileage and manoeuvrability, she says.
Winlaw discovered that she liked writing, but didn’t want to be focused on danger and car crashes all of the time. So she and Law turned their attention to something they both love: movies. “The two of us make a really good writing team,” she adds. They’re first two review books were Movies About Weddings and Movies About Christmas (Naughty or Nice?), and they’ve just finished the first volume of Movies About Women. The latter discusses more than 125 films by female directors; The Happy Hooker is indeed one of the movies reviewed.
“Our goal is not to tell you about the over-hyped, highly-advertised movies out there,” she explains, “but to point out the fantastic movies you haven’t heard of and point attention to as many women directors as possible.”
Their review books include movies dating back to the early days of film, but are mostly more modern. Many of these movies are readily available, but without some sort of reference book, it’s hard to know if the more obscure ones will actually interest you. That’s what Winlaw and Law provide, she promises. “We give you a sense of the movie so you can decide if you want to watch it or not.”
In some cases they compare earlier versions with re-makes, and Winlaw says the reviews in the book provide springboards for discussion about the differences between each version.
Law also has a published novel, To An Easy Grave, so he and Winlaw were familiar with the challenges of traditional publishing when they decided to start BAM Press. “The entire publishing industry has changed,” says Winlaw. “It’s now a long and arduous process, and authors are required to do as much work on publicity and promotion as on writing the books. It’s a lot of work to look after the publishing as well as the writing, but in the end there are more financial rewards. And it allows us to support women and to give back; we donate a portion of each book sold to a charitable cause.”
Another “safety” book and more books about movies are planned. Winlaw says they have a list of 20 to 30 themes they’d like to follow up. While they’ve enjoyed writing these first three, they will have other people with special interest in a theme contribute to some of their upcoming projects.
For more information, visit http://bampress.com.
Story by Teresa Pitman
