by Nancy Pollak

In this article, Nancy Pollak brings to life the history and legacy of Press Gang—Vancouver’s pioneering feminist printer and publisher. Press Gang operated as a collective from 1974 until 1989 when it split into two branches: the printers (who folded in 1993) and the publishers (who continued until 2002). This article focuses on the unified printer-publisher phase. A shorter version of this piece was published in the Rise Up Newsletter circulated by email. Subscribe to our newsletter here.

The only

It bears saying that Press Gang was the only feminist printing and publishing collective, owned and operated by women, in English-speaking Canada.

 “Freedom of the press belongs to those who own the press” was a nail-on-the-head motto for the women of Press Gang in Vancouver, BC. 

The press could variously be described as a dogged collective, a funky printshop (offset lithography), a meticulous publisher of finely edited and designed books, and a model of feminist activism, collectivity, and flaws.

Like all liberation movements, feminists in the 1970s and onward generated an explosive array of print media. Pamphlets, posters, flyers, chapbooks, stickers, broadsheets, manuals, books — Press Gang was unique in printing and publishing all such formats, for itself and for the progressive communities it served.

And Press Gang was magnetic. Simply to walk into the building was to experience a tumult of radical images, ornery and intricate machines, women in ink-stained aprons (often harried, often helpful), and piled evidence of really making something, including a difference.

The press was incorporated as Press Gang Publishers Ltd. under the B.C. Companies Act, but always operated collectively under a handful of names: Press Gang, informally; Press Gang Printers and Publishers, formally. In 1989, after an amicable parting between the printing and publishing wings, the publishers incorporated as Press Gang Feminist Publishing Collective (aka Press Gang Publishers) and the printers became Press Gang Printers Ltd. and eventually unionized. The printing collective folded in 1993; the publishers by 2002.

This article focuses on the printshop-come-publisher phase of Press Gang’s existence (1974—1989).

Earliest days

The press originated in the early 1970s in East Vancouver.  A small group of men and a few women came together, without funding, to operate an informal basement printshop for leftist and radical movements. This original Press Gang encouraged customers to do their own printing – to actually run the offset printing press. Demystifying trade skills would be an enduring goal of the feminist collective. 

A summer Opportunities for Youth government grant came in 1972 and led to the hiring of more women. By early 1974, struggles between the men and women caused a split. The women assumed ownership of most of the equipment and re-visioned the press as a feminist, anti-capitalist collective. Attrition further reduced the collective to two women (Pat Smith and Sarah Davidson).

Over the next decade, Press Gang would blossom and stabilize, relatively speaking. The print shop moved into a grungy basement at 821 East Hastings Street, moving again in 1978 to a vast ramshackle building at 603 Powell Street in the light industrial zone of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. 

The economic base of the press also shifted. The collective was taking more seriously the business of sustaining a movement printshop. A large Solna press was purchased with the grant money of a sister collective, Makara, the feminist culture magazine; Press Gang printed the magazine’s 13 issues in exchange.  

By now the press was printing commercially for community groups and progressive organizations. Press Gang forged ties with paper merchants, typesetters, and camera-work and other industry supply houses (e.g., laundry service for ink-ridden solvent-soaked rags). 

Two offset presses–the Solna 124 (18x 24 single colour) and an A.B. Dick 360 (11×17 single colour)–plus an assortment of pre-press and bindery equipment–rather antiquated, more or less mechanized–enabled the printers to provide an impressive range of finished products.

In the beginning, collective members were unpaid or lightly paid through job grants. As Press Gang took on customers, workers were paid according to need (dicey) and, eventually, with small salaries (marginal). 

Circa 1978, a sample Press Gang salary was $75/wk. In the late 70s and early ’80s, living on little money was manageable due to low rents and communal and co-op housing. A sample communal rent: $120/month. The press’s low wages affected who could commit themselves to join the printers, rarely mothers.

Politics in life and on the page

The collective’s political dispositions were far-ranging. Besides feminism, women had strong anti-capitalist and, to use the language of the day, anti-imperialist bents. 

Press Gangers were involved and ardent about workers’ rights, Latin American and other liberation struggles, lesbian rights, the anti-psychiatry movement, mothers’ issues, Indigenous women’s status, peace and anti-nuke, legal reform, anarchist groups, violence against women, the cooperative movement, all manner of cultural resistance – among other grassroots activisms.

Press Gang was the go-to-printers for these movements. The press had a basic “won’t print sexist, racist, or homophobic material” policy, but was otherwise non-doctrinaire. 

Working in a collective and unionization

The collective had a natural commitment to collectivity. Press Gang was rooted in worker control, with a non-hierarchical organizational structure, consensus decision-making, and fundamental kindness and caring for one another.

In its early days, Press Gang ran with an everyone-does-everything ethos. There was little job specialization, rather a “print-in-the-morning-bookkeep-at-noon-paste-up-in-the-afternoon” workday. On-the-job training was friendly but haphazard. This approach was exhilarating and exhausting. 

By the late 70s, more definition to roles and more rationality to workflows were established. But decision-making about substantial matters was still done collectively. 

Press Gang hammered out a worker-contract for itself in the mid-80s, with language on maternity and sick leaves, holidays, continual wage increases and paid overtime, health and safety protections, etc.  In general, the collective aspired for a safe and non-exploitative work environment–as activists well know, it’s tricky to not self-exploit.

“From the wageless days of burning desire, when there was no question that you’d go into the press in the middle of the night to print an imperative leaflet, to today’s worker-contract, there has been an unquestionable evolution at Press Gang.” — Kinesis, Oct. 1986

The press was also decidedly pro-union yet could not easily unionize. 

“We operate as a collective,” said a Press Gang one-sheet from the 1980s, “and since we have no boss we are unable to unionize. Though several of us, individually, belong to the Service Office and Retail Workers Union of Canada (SORWUC) and, as a collective, support the trade union movement we have, as yet, found no way for Press Gang to join a union and be able to attach a union ‘bug’ to our work.”  

The press created a bug equivalency, which it added to its print jobs: a tiny Printed by Press Gang, a feminist worker-controlled collective.

And then in June 1989, the press succeeded in joining the Communications Workers of America Local 226. “Press Gang has supported the labour movement’s picket lines and boycotts for 20 years,” read the press’s promotional brochure, “It is with a real sense of pride that we put the union label on our printed material.”

Owning and running the means of production

Controlling the means of production–running printing presses, burning plates, stripping negatives, binding booklets–was an essential political value at Press Gang. 

And doing so as women, who’d traditionally been discouraged not only from operating industrial machinery but from troubleshooting and mastering such machines, was an essential feminist value. 

One small example of structural sexism in the printing industry: Sarah Davidson was the first woman to ever attend printing night school at Vancouver’s vocational college in the 1970s. “At that time,” recalls Sarah, “VCC still had two bindery courses: Bindery Male (you ran machines) and Bindery Female (you didn’t run machines).”

Paula Clancy reflected on the obstacles and achievements in a Kinesis article. “Considering we were women working in non-traditional jobs,” said Paula, “with no role models, little experience or training, no money and a competitive business, the fact that we exist at all is incredible” (Kinesis, Oct. 1986).

 Also remarkable was the collective’s determination to upgrade their printing technology. The Solna was replaced by a used but newer Harris L125 (19×25 single colour); the old A.B. Dick was replaced by a new one, and a brand new Hamada 600 (11×17 single colour) was purchased. 

Acquiring financing for the Hamada was tricky. Press Gang was rejected by a slew of banks and, at first, by the local community credit union. The collective persisted–printers are accustomed to making many, many, many impressions–and the credit union eventually approved the loan.  

“The Hamada was a huge leap forward technically,” said Dorothy Elias. “It had a fabulous registration table with micrometer adjustments, so we were able to do multi-colour printing on it.”

Press Gang’s presses were machines to be proud of. And being adept press operators was a source of quiet pride to the workers.

Press Ganger Sarah Davidson operates the Solna press sometime in the 1970s (L); a pamphlet announcing equipment upgrades to a Hamda 600 and Harris 125 (R).

Moving into publishing

Printers face an occupational hazard: the longing to produce their own creations (though rarely their own letterhead). The hazard is heightened for feminist printers, most of whom are passionate readers, often writers and designers, and always in love with paper, type, and ink. 

By the mid-70s, Press Gang satisfied the itch to publish with its first title, the anthology Women Look at Psychiatry (ed. by Dorothy E. Smith and Sara J. David, 1975). 

The book was fearless in its exposure of mainstream psychiatry as a mechanism of social control. The contents were analytical, intensely personal, and cutting edge. This combination of qualities–rebellious in purpose, accessible in tone, and polished in editorial standards–would become the hallmark of Press Gang titles. 

Running a print shop while publishing books is not the easiest of duets. Printing is the racing tick-tock of daily production and deadlines (with satisfying and sometimes disastrous results). Publishing has seasons, iterations, and subtle negotiations (with ecstatic and sometimes lamentable results). 

Until 1982ish, collective members would divide their time between printing and publishing matters. A morning spent mixing ink and guillotining card stock could be followed by an afternoon discussing manuscripts and an author’s contract. Sisters were certainly doing it for themselves–and wasn’t that the spirit of the times?

Press Gang’s other early titles included a children’s book, Muktu, The Backward Muskox (1975) by Heather Kellerhals-Stewart, illustrated by Karen Muntean; a poetry collection, Jody Said (1977) by Beth Jankola; a second anti-psych book, The Anti-Psychiatry Bibliography and Resource Guide (1979) by K. Portland Frank; and An Account to Settle: The Story of the United Bank Workers (SORWUC) (1979) by the Bank Book Collective. 

An Account to Settle was by and about the outrageously gutsy women who tried to unionize Canada’s banks (and confront Canada’s sexist union establishment). The book was printed elsewhere as a mass market paperback–cheap newsprint! and thus affordable to bank workers everywhere.

The press also published one of the late 20^th century’s outstanding political posters, Class Consciousness by Pat Smith. Smith was active in Chilean solidarity in Vancouver and a brilliant (and scrappy) leftie-dyke-working-class feminist.

By 1982ish, the press decided to informally separate its publishing activities from the printers’ daily grind. An individual collective member, in tandem with a volunteer committee, was tasked with shepherding the publishing work. The informal division eventually led to the formal and friendly split into two distinct collectives–printers and publishers–in 1989. 

In this in-between period, the press published an impressive catalogue of titles. Daughters of Copper Woman (1981) by Anne Cameron became a surprising and troubled best-seller. The collection was Cameron’s rendering of powerful oral stories of women Elders of the Nuu-chah-nulth nation–stories they asked her to record and publish for the sake of preservation. Press Gang accepted the manuscript and Cameron’s entitlement to the stories. 

Some years later, Stó:lō author Lee Maracle spoke about the wrongness of the project at Montreal’s International Feminist Book Fair (1988): bluntly, this was appropriation of Indigenous culture and Indigenous women’s sacred stories. Maracle asked Cameron to “move over” and stop occupying these cultural spaces. It was wrong and an appeal that seems blindingly obvious today.

Anne Cameron had declined royalties from Daughters of Copper Woman from the outset. Press Gang had set aside those monies and attempted to give it all to Elder women of Ahousat. However, the press was unable to find anyone willing to administer the funds; in the end, thousands of dollars were sent to the Meares Island anti-logging struggle of the Ahousat and Tla-o-qui-aht First Nations. Press Gang went on to publish several books by Lee Maracle, including I Am Woman: A Native Perspective on Sociology and Feminism (1996). 

Two other outstanding books from this early era were Stepping Out of Line: A Workbook on Lesbianism and Feminism (1982) by Nym Hughes, Yvonne Johnson, and Yvette Perrault, and Still Sane (1985) by Persimmon Blackbridge and Sheila Gilhooly. 

The former was, in its own words “the distillation of the political work of hundreds of B.C. lesbians…intended to de-mystify feminism, lesbianism, and political activism (p 8)”. Indeed, Stepping Out of Line was an inspiring lets-change-the-world manual and compendium of dyke wisdom, suffering, courage, and sexiness. 

Still Sane was also a hybrid text, with images and words. Based on life-scale sculptures by Persimmon that depicted Sheila’s psychiatric incarceration for being a lesbian, the book exemplified the collaborative element of feminist culture. As the preface noted, the project made “no apology for claiming that the raw details of our ordinary lives can be the basis for the best kind of art: provocative, reassuring, beautiful, enraging.”  

Barbara Kuhne became a key figure in Press Gang’s publishing work during this time, along with Della McCreary and designer Val Speidel. (Reminder: This Rise Up article focuses on Press Gang’s printer/publisher era; much more will hopefully be written about the publishers.)

Other printers, other publishers

Although Press Gang was English Canada’s only feminist printing-and-publishing collective, the press was part of a far-flung, multifarious women-into-print movement.  

Women’s bookstores abounded in the 70s-90s. Vancouver has two full-fledged feminist bookstores (the collectively run, unimaginatively named Vancouver Women’s Bookstore, and Ariel Books). These stores often served as de facto cultural centres, hosting readings and filled with books, magazines, newspapers, comics, newsletters, posters, and paraphernalia of feminist and womanist publishers.

The women-in-print movement – the people who ran actual printshops and publishing houses – was part of this fluorescence. In 1983, Press Gang participated in the Northwest Women in Print Conference in Seattle, along with 250 women. Other printers in attendance included Storefront Press, Work Shop Printers, and Victoria’s Ink, all based in Seattle. In 1985, a National Conference on Women in Print was held in San Francisco. The Iowa City Women’s Press and the San Francisco Women’s Press were fellow travelers and friends: printers and publishers, like Press Gang. 

Press Gang also had personal ties with Canada’s other English-language feminist publisher of this early period, the Women’s Press in Toronto. Pat Smith and Penny Goldsmith were involved with both presses. The Women’s Press was more academically oriented than Press Gang, but both collectives were steeped in feminist activism. Until the early 1980s they collaborated on sales representatives and other book trade business (the tiresome but oh-so necessary nitty-gritty of getting books into bookstores and readers’ hands).

In the wider world

Press Gang was thoroughly grassroots, but astute enough to engage with mainstream organizations and supports. Members of the collective attended Vancouver’s vocational college (VCC) to acquire printing industry skills. Remarkably, four women earned journeyperson status as press operators: Carmen Metcalfe, Dorothy Elias, Lynn Giraud, and Paula Clancy.

Collective members also took Community Economic Development courses through the local credit union, did publishing skills workshops with the BC Association of Book Publishers, and accessed funding and other publishing supports through the Canada Council. 

The collective

Most members of the collective were lesbians, all were feminists, and the original flavors of anti- capitalist and anti-racist remained firmly rooted.  

But the collective itself was overwhelmingly white throughout the press’s history. Class and education backgrounds were varied. Although Press Gang was theoretically child and mother-friendly, few collective members were parents. The printshop itself–with its steep stairs, heavy supplies, solvents and inks, and presses requiring fast reflexes and sharp eyes–made Press Gang quite inhospitable to women with disabilities. 

As the 1980s ended, the press took up an affirmative action program to bring on board and train women of colour, but economic pressures would lead to a shrinking collective before long.

In the end

Press Gang was outstanding in countless ways, including its hardiness. Most feminist print shops in North America had folded by the mid-80s. They succumbed to technological change, shifting currents in women’s and progressive movements, collective burnout, and the undermining nastiness of neo-liberalism. There was less public funding for community and cultural organizations, further fraying of an already patchy social safety net (goodbye UI, hello EI), and rising costs of living entwined with stalled wages. Altogether, this slo-mo barrage of individualistic, dog-eat-dog dynamics was good for Big Business and bad for everyone else.

Press Gang was not spared the pressures. But it was tech change that proved the hardest to overcome. High-speed photocopiers and desktop publishing were the death of many small printshops, never mind a feminist collective. People could knock off and run off their own print materials, cheaply, easily–ho-hum design and boring paper be damned! This was the future of the small press: often no press. And it proved fatal for an idealistic and under-capitalized–as in, no capital(ism)–printshop such as Press Gang. 

The printshop doors closed in 1993, a deliberate closure that honoured the press’s history. Press Gang Publishers would continue as an extraordinary stand-alone feminist publishing house for almost another decade.

Nancy Pollak joined–pleaded to join–the Press Gang collective in 1978. She worked full time at the press for 5 years, then on and off for many more. Her involvement with printing and publishing at Press Gang was life-changing, if only for the sustained mingling with wonderful women and embodied work.