We decided to move ellipse to Fredericton during a comparative Canadian literature graduate students’ conference in Sherbrooke in 2002. I was there to give a paper on the Sherbrooke School of Literary Translation. Marie-Linda Lord, from the Université de Moncton, was there. We learned that ellipse was either going to close, or find a new publishing team. I told Marie-Linda I thought New Brunswick would be a good place for ellipse, she agreed, and I started to redesign the magazine.

       I approached éditions ellipse inc. like building a house. We constructed the scaffold and frame before we settled in. We established a bilingual organization registered as a non-profit company, with bylaws, a mandate, a governance structure, an AGM, and meetings. We did all this before we published our first New Brunswick issue. We physically moved hundreds of cartons of back issues from Sherbrooke to my basement. Monique Grandmangin and Patricia Godbout helped us load the truck and gave us advice; Charly Bouchara sent us the list of subscribers, most of whom remained loyal through the transitions. We prepared one transitional issue to prove that ellipse had moved into its new home, and then remodelled the magazine by publishing a huge, bright blue issue devoted to Fred Cogswell. By that time, we could apply for grants, which provided the foundation and kept the heat on—in both senses of the phrase—for the decade ellipse was housed in the Maritimes.

       Creating an entirely new organization around a magazine that already had a venerable reputation as an academic and literary journal was the only way I could ensure its survival in the early 2000s. More than 30 years later and six hundred kilometres away from its first issue, the literary landscape on which ellipse settled was a very different one. I was part-time faculty at the University of New Brunswick, but didn’t foresee attaching ellipse to a university. I was on the editorial board or board of directors of several literary, arts, and community organizations, and a member of writers’ and translators’ associations, and I knew the challenges of arts funding. I also knew that Fredericton and Moncton had communities of hardworking artists. The directors, editors, and many contributors would be artists and Rebuilding the House writers from our region who, for the most part, knew nothing about ellipse. We would run it like a little mag, and in fact renamed it “revue ellipse mag.” We had Francophone and bilingual editors, though two of our board members, Nancy Bauer and Ray Fraser, were English-speaking writers chosen for their experience and commitment to literary organizations. This was part of our mandate: we wanted to develop a culture of literary translation in New Brunswick from the ground up. This meant inviting writers to translate writers, offering translation workshops to students and to the public, and discussing the work of translation as an art form, in a province where it was seen as a service. We published a few issues with one Francophone (not necessarily Québécois) and one Anglophone poet in translation (often Governor General’s Award winners) in the tradition of the Sherbrooke publishers; more often, we compiled work around a theme, often in double issues. One of the issues I am most proud of presented work in Indigenous languages. Often with the help of Hugh Hazelton, my favourite guest editor, we extended our reach to other languages and countries—Argentina and Brazil, for instance. Many Acadian and Atlantic writers, like Herménégilde Chiasson and Joe Blades, both involved in ellipse, are multidisciplinary artists, and it made sense in our vision to feature contemporary Canadian artwork in each issue. 

       In 2003, we launched an issue on the Governor General’s Award-winning poet, and my dear friend, Robert Dickson. Because the publication was delayed after he had arranged to visit New Brunswick, we again expanded our mandate. Now, éditions ellipse inc. would also organize Canada’s first festival of literary translation, Side-by-Side. Many members of the Literary Translators’ Association of Canada were invited to Fredericton and Moncton. Sonya Malaborza, who returned to New Brunswick during that period, became actively involved in both the magazine and the festival, first as a summer student and then as a contributor and participant. Our festivals integrated readings of poetry in both official languages, multilingual poetry readings for United Nations Mother Tongue Language Day, organized by Nela Rio, conversations on literary translation, including one with Jonathan Kaplansky and Hélène Rioux translating each other, lavish brunch readings hosted by Rose Després, and workshops for students, professional translators, and writers, including our annual Translation Slam experiments. Side-by-Side Festival Côte-à-Côte (the capitalization in French was intended, as a recognition that each “side” had equal standing) was appreciated and well attended. We invited Wolastoq Elders and writers to open our first event with a prayer, a song, or a poem. I think the festival promoted understanding among cultures in a deeper, more immediate way than the magazine. At a time when printing and selling the required number of copies of the magazine was becoming impossible for our team (and for my family), the festival was generously financed by municipal, provincial, and national arts funders. I believe the enthusiasm around it enabled ellipse to become known to new audiences and to survive in Fredericton for an extra year or two. If I were to sum up in one sentence the unique role of ellipse in the Maritimes, I would say it was building a community of writers outside academe that truly recognized literary translators as artists.