Founding editor of Tamarack Review, Ivon Owen, dies

A funeral service is being held today (Saturday) for one of the founding editors of one of Canada's most influential literary magazines, the Tamarack Review. Ivon Maclean Owen died November 10 in Toronto at the age of 87. According to the Canadian Encyclopedia, Tamarack was founded during lean times for literary journals but went on to publish the early work of many distinguished Canadian writers, including Alice Munro, Timothy Findley and Mordecai Richler.

According to an obituary in the Globe and Mail

From the late 1940s until the mid 1970s he worked at Oxford University Press, then one of the primary publishers of poetry, educational and non-fiction books in this country. During Owen's tenure as chief editor and manager, OUP published, among many other titles, Margaret Atwood's early volume of poetry, The Animals in That Country, as well as Modern Canadian Verse, ed. by A.J.M. Smith.

With Robert Weaver, an acquaintance from university days, and others, including Kildare Dobbs and William Toye, he founded The Tamarack Review in 1956. Until its demise in 1982, Tamarack was the pre-eminent literary periodical in Canada. It published early stories by Alice Munro, Mordecai Richler and Timothy Findley.

After retiring from OUP, Owen worked as a book reviewer and a freelance editor for magazines, newspapers and publishers including Saturday Night, The Financial Times and Hurtig. Predeceased by his former wife, Patricia Heighington and his son Trevor Owen, he is survived by his son, journalist Gerald Owen, his brother Trevor Owen and his extended family.