As editor, economist, humorist, and drama and literary critic for over half a century, B. K. Sandwell was one of Canada's outstanding public voices. Editor of the Canadian Bookman from 1919 to 1922, he was instrumental in founding the Canadian Authors' Association and in lobbying successfully in the early 1920s for important amendments to the proposed Canadian copyright bill. Later, under the two decades of his editorship, Saturday Night came to represent for its broad readership what the Canadian Forum was to the more restricted academic and intellectual community--an outspoken Canadian journal of independent opinion and an instrument of national self-definition.

Bernard Keble Sandwell was born in Ipswich, England, in 1876, the son of the Reverend George Henry Sandwell, a Congregational clergyman, and his wife, Emily Johnson Sandwell. In 1888 Sandwell's family immigrated to Canada and settled in Toronto. Here Sandwell attended Upper Canada College, where he was taught by Stephen Leacock...