Canada Law Book CEO Stuart Morrison 1950-2001

Simon Chester wrote yesterday on Slaw.ca about the passing away of Stuart Morrison, President and CEO of Canada Law Book, a legal publisher acquired last year by Thomson Reuters.

Morrison died of leukemia last weekend:

"Stuart loved controversy – paradoxically, because he was, in many ways, an arch-conservative. His prime contribution to Canadian legal publishing was probably his creation of the Law Times, which in its early years was a provocative, irreverent, muck-raking publication which was fun to read and which generated a fair number of libel suits. After a few damage awards, Stuart decided that libel insurance might be a good idea, and perhaps fact checkers had their uses. After a few controversies too many, the advertisers started to walk, and Law Times pulled in its horns."

(...)

"Stuart was a bundle of paradoxes. Every Stuart story had a twist. Highly opinionated, though undereducated. Canadian though somehow terribly English. Convention-shocking in a conservative trade. A legal publisher whose heart was more in marketing – and running a tight business – than publishing books. A bon vivant who put in time on the line learning how to be a sous chef. Hard headed, though with a soft centre for blind horses and vulnerable animals."

"In the end a combination of malaria (picked up in Namibia) and leukemia did him in. He will be mourned and missed by his family and friends."

"He didn’t want a funeral. You’ll see no obituaries. Next time you have a drink, think of him and smile. That’s all he would have done."