In 1967 General Synod decreed that the Anglican Book Centre, a perennial money loser until that time, be given a new mandate to become self-sufficient or to shut down. At that time, the Rev. Michael Lloyd, publisher to the Anglican Church of Canadaand director of the Anglican Book Centre (ABC), recalled that "ABC owed the banks about $213,000 and General Synod another $200,000." "Today, ABC not only pays its way, but manages to return money to General Synod every year." "Along the way, ABC has become a successful publisher of books, some of which, by any Canadian standards, qualify as best sellers. In a sense, ABC owes its success as a book publisher to the BAS, something which Mr. Lloyd says he and others foresaw in the mid-1970s. `We felt that a new book of liturgy would be wanted in the next few years and we wanted this book to be produced and published here in Canada rather than us relying on it being published in Great Britain as had always been done in the past,' Mr. Lloyd recalls."
The author talks about absence and memory and how "We can miss things we have known and lost, things that never were but that are imagined. We can miss things that we once had or people we once knew and we can miss things that never existed or that have never been a part of our lives". He talks about visiting Ground Zero in New York "where the absence of everything was overwhelming. ... . The people standing near me were silent, thoughtful, seeing something, perhaps, totally different from what I was seeing. Minds filling in what the eyes could not see. And missing things that had been, people who had been".
Contents: Governance/Flowchart -- Letters Patent [2002] -- Bylaws -- Officers -- Agreement with the Dioceses [2002] -- Terms of Refernce [Approved by General Synod, 2004] -- Statement of Ethics and Standards of Professional Practice, Associated Church Press [Adopted April 13, 1983] -- Advertising Agreement [with Fenn Company dated 2003] -- Anglican Journal Privacy Policy [dated January 1, 2004] -- Policies and Practice for Information Managed by AJ [dated January 1, 2004] -- Anglican Journal Advertising Policy -- Anglican Journal Circulation Policy [dated January 1, 2004] -- General Synod Pension Plan Participation Agreement -- Group Benefit Program Agreement -- Thoughts on the Editorial Independence of the AJ dated November 2002 / Vianney (Sam) Carriere, Director, Communications and Information Resources..
Archbishop Peers spent 16 days visiting four of the Province's nine dioceses. His visit was welcomed as recognition that the church there is part of the wider Communion.
Author comments on the tendency at General Synod to be overly modest about about the work they do and especially to speak about the person behind the work. "It's when I attempt to fuse the work and the person that I run into trouble. That's when I meet this Jericho Complex ["if we trumpet our achievements, our people, our resources too loudly, will the walls not come crashing down?"] that builds an artificial dichotomy between the work that is done and the person doing it. I know it is artificial because every time someone leaves 600 Jarvis and is replaced, the work changes dramatically. ...Thus it is that I've made a sport of that part of my job that allows me to go hunting for heroes. I have no great difficulty finding them."