John Robert Colombo

John Robert Colombo
John Robert Colombo, August 2009
Occupation	Writer, Folklorist, editor, Public speaker, Radio and television personality
Nationality	Canada
Period	1957-present
Genre	Folkore, Science fiction, Poetry, Humour, Aphorisms, Reference, Quotations, Translations, Armorial bearing, Native studies, Almanac, Maps
Notable works	True Canadian Ghost Stories (Prospero, 2003), The Monster Book of Canadian Monsters (BSDB, 2004), 1000 Questions about Canada (Hounslow, 2001)
Notable awards	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	Ruth Colombo
Children	Three adult children
Website
http://www.colombo.ca/

John Robert Colombo, CM (b. March 24, 1936, Kitchener, Ontario) is a Canadian poet, anthologist, editor, essayist, and humorist, the author of innumerable 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 science fiction, fantasy, and horror; his Other Canadas [1979] was the first anthology of Canadian science fiction and fantasy, and established the case that such a thing actually did exist. He was a charter member of Hydra North, Canada's first association of SF professionals (founded by Judith Merril). He serves on the editorial board of the Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, a reprint publisher of classic pulp fiction, and runs his own publishing enterprise, Colombo & Company.

Colombo's most famous works compile quotations by famous Canadian figures, in a format similar to Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. He has also been a prolific compiler of Canadian stories of the supernatural, including ghost and UFO stories. He is known nationally as "the Master Gatherer," "John 'Bartlett' Colombo," and "Canada's Mr. Mystery."

He was educated at the University of Toronto in English and philosophy, graduating in 1959. He subsequently taught at Atkinson 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.

John Robert Colombo is a frequent commentator in the media. In 1990 he began to offer instructional courses on presentation skills with Canada's Presentation Guru, Peter Urs Bender, at the Canadian Management Centre, Toronto, Canada.

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)
• A Far Cry (2009)
• End of Greatness (2010)

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)

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
• John Robert Colombo