John Robert Colombo

John Robert Colombo
Photo by Kristen Somborac
Born	March 24, 1936 (1936-03-24) Kitchener, Ontario Canada
Occupation	Writer, folklorist, editor, public speaker, radio and television personality
Nationality	Canada
Period	1957-present
Genres	Folkore, Science fiction, Poetry, Humour, Aphorisms, Reference, Quotations, Translations, Armorial bearing, Native studies, Almanac, Maps
Notable work(s)	Colombo's Canadian Quotations(Hurtig, 1974), Colombo's Canadian References (Oxford, 1976) The Monster Book of Canadian Monsters (BSDB, 2004), 1000 Questions about Canada (Hounslow, 2001)
Notable award(s)	Harbourfront International Literary Award, Honourary doctorate in literature by York University, Member of the Order of Canada, The Centennial Medal, The Order of Cyril and Methodius (first class), Esteemed Knight of Mark Twain, A Fellow, Northrop Frye Centre, Victoria College, University of Toronto.
Spouse(s)	Ruth Colombo
Children	Three adult children
www.colombo.ca

John Robert Colombo, CM (b. March 24, 1936, Kitchener, Ontario) is nationally known as the Master Gatherer. He is among Canada's most prolific authors of serious books. He is a poet, anthologist, editor, essayist, humourist, author or editor of over 200 books, best known as a writer and compiler of reference works and editor of anthologies pertaining to Canadian culture, history and geography, and the fields of lore and literature, science fiction, fantasy, and horror; his Other Canadas [1979] was the first anthology of Canadian fantastic literature, and established that the genre did exist with characteristic features. He also co-edited Not to Be Taken at Night [1982], the first anthology of Canadian fiction of horror and terror. He was a charter member of Hydra North, the country's first association of SF professionals (founded by Judith Merril). He has been called "Canada's Mr. Mystery" for over 30 compilations of told-as-true Canadian ghost stories, beginning with Mysterious Canada (1978). Part of this work is "The Native Series" which consists of six volumes of Native lore including now-standard studies of the Windigo and the Shaking Tent mystery.

In the past he served as an editor or editorial consultant to The Ryerson Press, McClelland & Stewart, and other publishing houses. He is a member of the editorial board of the Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, a reprint publisher of Canadiana and classic pulp fiction, and he is proprietor of his own publishing imprint, Colombo & Company.

Colombo's most famous works compile quotations by Canadians about all subjects and about Canada by non-Canadians, in a format similar to Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. In this regard he has been called John "Bartlett" Colombo. He has also been the country's most prolific compiler of told-as-true accounts of the supernatural and the paranormal, including ghost and UFO stories. He has written monographs on such parapsychological researchers as R.S. Lambert, George and Iris Owen, James Webb, and Denis Saurat (three volumes).

Colombo is a graduate of the University of Toronto in English and philosophy in 1959. He subsequently taught at Atkinson College and Glendon College, York University, Downsview, Ont., but is mainly known as an "editor-at-large." He is a recipient of the Centennial Medal, the Order of Cyril and Methodius (1st class), the Harbourfront Literary Award, a D.Litt. (h.c.) from York University and the Order of Canada. An occasional contributor to newspapers and magazines as well as radio and television, he hosted the six-part series Unexplained Canada on Space, which premiered in January 2006. He was chosen Humanist of the Year (2010) by the Humanist Association of Toronto.

Colombo has been a frequent commentator in the media. From 1990 to 2010 he led courses on presentation skills with Canada's "presentation guru," Peter Urs Bender, at the Canadian Management Centre, Toronto, Canada. Since the appearance of his three-volume collected poems in 2005, he has published each year a book-length selection of new poems that includes entries from his "dream diary." A selection of his poetry is found at www.library.utoronto.ca/Canpoetry/colombo/ and his reviews and commentaries appear on www.gurdjieffbooks.wordpress.com. His website is www.colombo.ca.

Works

Poetry

• Lines for the Last Day (1960)
• The Mackenzie Poems (1966)
• Miraculous Montages (1966)
• The Great Wall of China (1966)
• William Lyon Mackenzie Rides Again! (1967)
• Abracadabra (1967)
• John Toronto (1969)
• Neo Poems (1970)
• The Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire (1971)
• Leonardo's Lists (1972)
• Praise Poems (1972)
• Translations from the English (1974)
• The Sad Truths (1974)
• The Great Collage (1974)
• Proverbial Play (1975)
• Mostly Monsters (1977, 1995)
• Variable Cloudiness (1977)
• Private Parts (1978)
• The Great Cities of Antiquity (1979)
• Poems of the Inuit (1981)
• Selected Poems (1982)
• Selected Translations (1982)
• Windigo (1982)
• Recent Poems (1982)
• Songs of the Indians (1983)
• Off Earth (1987)
• Songs of the Great Land (1989)
• The Mystery of the Shaking Tent (1993)
• Voices of Rama (1994)
• Luna Park / One Thousand Poems (1994)
• Space Poems (1995)
• Contrails (1996)
• Earlier Lives (1996)
• Ether / Rewords (1997)
• What is What (1998)
• Interspaces (1999)
• Impromptus (2000)
• Half a World Away (2000)
• All the Poems of JRC (3 vols., 2005)
• All the Aphorisms of JRC (2006)
• Autumn in August (2006)
• Parts of the World (2007)
• End Notes (2008)
• Indifferences: New Aphorisms (2009)
• A Far Cry (2009)
• End of Greatness (2010)
• Poems of Space and Time (2010)
• Entresol (2011)
• Impronderables (2011)

Colombo making a presentation entitled: "Haunted Toronto", at the Direct Energy Centre during the Canadian National Exhibition, on August 27th, 2009.

References

• Colombo's Canadian Quotations (1974)
• Colombo's Names & Nicknames (1974)
• Colombo's Concise Canadian Quotations (1976)
• Colombo's Canadian References (1976)
• Colombo's Book of Canada (1978)
• Colombo's Book of Marvels (1979)
• The Canada Colouring Book (1980)
• Toronto's Fantastic Street Names (1982)
• Colombo's 101 Canadian Places (1983)
• Colombo's Canadiana Quiz Book (1983)
• Canadian Literary Landmarks (1983)
• 1001 Questions about Canada (1986)
• Colombo's New Canadian Quotations (1987)
• Mysterious Canada (1988)
• 999 Questions about Canada (1989)
• Writer's Map of Toronto (1991)
• The Dictionary of Canadian Quotations (1991)
• The Canadian Global Almanac (1992)
• Writer's Map of Ontario (1992)
• The Little Blue Book of UFOs (1992)
• Colombo's All-Time Great Canadian Quotations (1994)
• Omnium Gatherum (1994)
• Ghost Stories of Ontario (1995)
• Shapely Places (1996)
• Haunted Toronto (1996)
• Quotable Canada (1998)
• Mysteries of Ontario (1999)
• Colombo's Famous Lasting Words (2000)
• The Midnight Hour (2004)
• Terrors of the Night (2005)
• The Penguin Dictionary of Popular Canadian Quotations (2006)
• A Little Book of Facts about a Really Big Country (2007)
• Footloose: A Commentary on the Books of Gordon Sinclair (2008)
• Whistle While You Work (2008)

Anthologies

• Richard Maurice Bucke: Catalogue (1963)
• Probings (1968)
• Colombo's Hollywood (1979)
• Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy (1979)
• Other Canadas (1979)
• Blackwood's Books (1981)
• Friendly Aliens (1981)
• Not to Be Taken at Night (1981)
• Years of Light (1982)
• Extraordinary Experiences (1989)
• Mysterious Encounters (1990)
• Mackenzie King's Ghost (1991)
• UFOs over Canada (1991)
• Dark Visions (1992)
• Walt Whitman's Canada (1992)
• The New Consciousness (1994)
• Close Encounters of the Canadian Kind (1994)
• Ghosts Galore! (1994)
• Strange Stories (1994)
• Closer than You Think (1998)
• Marvellous Stories (1998)
• Singular Stories (1999)
• Weird Stories (2000)
• Ghosts in Our Past (2000)
• Ghost Stories of Canada (2000)
• The New Consciousness: Selected Papers of R.M. Bucke (2007)
• The Big Book of Canadian Ghost Stories (2008)
• The Big Book of Canadian Hauntings (2009)
• The Sumuru Omnibus by Sax Rohmer (2010)
• Tears of Our Lady by Sax Rohmer (2010)

Humour

• Colombo's Little Book of Canadian Proverbs (1975)
• 222 Canadian Jokes (1981)
• Colombo's Last Words (1982)
• Colombo's Laws (1982)
• René Lévesque Buys Canada Savings Bonds (1983)
• Great Moments in Canadian History (1984)
• The Toronto Puzzle Book (1984)
• Canada First Quiz (1984)
• Quotations from Chairman Lamport (1990)
• Ogdenisms (1994)
• Metro's Goldwyn Mayor (1995)
• Erotica Canadiana (1995)
• 666 Canadian Jokes (1996)
• Slightly Higher in Canada (1996)
• Colombo's Doublebook of Laws & Last Lines (1996)
• The Stephen Leacock Quote Book (1996)
• Iron Curtains (1996)
• Kidstuff (1996)
• All About Us (1998)
• More Iron Curtains (1998)
• Yet More Iron Curtains (2000)
• Canadian Capers (2000)

External links

• John Robert Colombo