Allan MacDougall, cofounder and former CEO of Vancouver's Raincoast Books, has died. He was 71. Born in Montreal, MacDougall started in book publishing in 1972, beginning with McClelland and Stewart in Toronto, where he served first as a sales representative and then as sales manager. He then moved to Vancouver, joining Mark Stanton in launching Stanton and MacDougall Ltd., a publisher rep group. The business partners then co-founded Raincoast Book Distribution in 1979; MacDougall became CEO in 1998, a position he held until his retirement in 2010.
Under MacDougall's leadership, Raincoast became Canada's largest book distributor and wholesaler, and had several notable achievements, including becoming the Canadian publisher of the Harry Potter series, which sold 12 million copies in Canada.
Throughout his career, MacDougall was involved in several other aspects of publishing, including serving on the faculty and steering committee of the Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing at Simon Fraser University, and on the boards of D&M Publishers for15 years and the Vancouver Public Library for 12 years.
"Allan we will miss you always," John Sawyer, current CEO of Raincoast Books, said in a statement announcing MacDougall's passing. A date for a memorial will be announced soon.
