Dundurn Press founder Kirk Howard has died. He was 80.

Howard died in Newmarket, Ont., on June 30 after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease, his family said in a death notice.

He was born in Hamilton in 1942, and started his professional life teaching before founding Dundurn Press in 1972, the start of a 50-year career in Canadian publishing. Named after Hamilton’s Dundurn Castle, the focus of the press was to publish books on Canadian history. Under Howard’s leadership, Dundurn began to grow in the mid 1990s, when it acquired three small imprints, Simon & Pierre, Hounslow Press, and Boardwalk Press. In the early 2000s, that growth continued with the acquisition of Beach Holme Publishing, National Heritage Books, the Canadian Book Review Annual, Thomas Allen Publishers and others. Howard retired in 2019 after selling Dundurn to a group of tech entrepreneurs.

In 2017, he was awarded the president’s award by the Association of Canadian Publishers. Howard had previously served as the organization’s president, and also served on numerous industry boards over his career, including a stint as president of the Organization of Book Publishers of Ontario (OBPO). He also established the Commonwealth Book Publishers’ Association.

He was named a member of the Order of Canada in 2018 for his commitment to Canadian authors and Canadian publishing.

Correction, July 6: This story has been updated from the original to reflect that Kirk Howard was 80 when he died, not 81.