Five Rivers Chapmanry

What We Are, & What We Do

We've been operating Five Rivers Chapmanry since 1994, and are located in the historic and picturesque village of Neustadt, Ontario, Canada, about 2 hours northwest of Toronto, 1 1/4 hours northwest of Guelph at the intersections of Grey County Roads 9 and 10. The map shows an approximate 2 hour radius to our village.

Five Rivers encompasses several endeavours:

Five Rivers Glass & Mirror

This division of Five Rivers is Gary Stephens' field of expertise, and his primary occupation. He has 35 years of experience in the glass and mirror industry, and a reputation for excellence in craftsmanship and customer service.

He has done everything from custom sand-blasted glass walls, laminated glass column installations, to custom tempered glass shower enclosures and mirror walls.

Five Rivers Cooperage

When not leaping buildings as a glazier, Gary works as North America's premiere historical cooper, creating peerless white and tight cooperage for museums, living history sites, re-enactors and collectors in Canada, the United States and United Kingdom. His work forms part of the living history displays at L'anse aux Meadows Museum, Newfoundland; Buffalo Bill Historical Centre, Wyoming; and The Gibson House, Ontario, to name but a few.

Five Rivers Publishing

In 2008 Lorina established her own indie publishing house in direct response to the changing face of publishing. She brings with her 20 years of experience as a freelance writer, author and editor, and a commitment to publishing new Canadian voices which might otherwise remain silent.

Employing print on demand technologies as part of responsible management of environmental and financial resources, Five Rivers Publishing also offers not only a sound and sensible publishing model, but is now developing distribution channels that takes our books into the global market-place.

We're also pleased to welcome to our publishing venture Robert Runte, who joins us in an editorial capacity, and Kelly Stephens, as our intern editorial assistant.

Dr. Robert Runté is an associate professor at the University of Lethbridge. As an academic, editor, reviewer, and organizer, Robert has been actively promoting Canadian SF for over 30 years. He was a founding Director of NonCon, Context89, and SF Canada; and has served on the Boards of the Edmonton Science Fiction and Comic Arts Society, On Spec Magazine, Tesseract Books, and The Writers Guild of Alberta. In addition to dozens of conference papers, journal articles, book chapters, and a half dozen entries in the Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada, Robert has edited over 150 issues of various SF newsletters.

In 1989, his Guide to Canadian Science Fiction won an Aurora Award; he won a second Aurora in 1990 for his general promotion of Canadian SF. In 1994 he was honored as Fan Guest at the 52nd WorldCon, and in 1996 he co-edited (with Yves Meyard) the Tesseracts5 SF anthology. More recently, he has been a regular reviewer for NeoOpsis Magazine. In terms of non-fiction, he has co-edited (with Gerald Taylor), a popular first year textbook, Thinking About Teaching: An Introduction and produced a number of educational websites in the “Tigana learns about...” series. His most recent book chapters were on the student construction of the demands of academic writing and using blogs as research tool and data. A full CV may be found at http://www.uleth.ca/edu/runte/professional/cv.htm.

Kelly Stephens, grew up in the publishing, writing and illustration industry, and has worked as an accomplished illustrator, as well as written several papers on the subjects of public policy, immigration and refugee law, and social justice. Kelly is currently working on her first full-length book, entitled 5000 Mile Journey, and is pleased to join the team at Five Rivers Publishing as Editorial Assistant. Kelly brings with her an understanding of the written word, marketing and, of course, her own flair for artistry.

What does Chapmanry mean?

Chapmanry, or chapman, is an archaic term which in essence means a purveyor of goods, and is one of the few historical terms without a negative connotation, unlike sutler, chandler or a variety of others.

Why call ourselves a chapmanry? It fits. We undertake such a variety of endeavours it made sense to choose an operating name that would encompass them all.

Why Five Rivers?

When we first created Five Rivers Chapmanry we were located in Orangeville, Ontario, at the headwaters of four rivers: the Humber, the Nottawasaga, the Credit and the Grand, and in proximity to yet another river.

When we relocated to Neustadt, Ontario, in 2001, we found the name still worked as the area is home to the Saugeen, Rocky Saugeen, Beatty Saugeen, Teeswater and Sauble Rivers.