For the past several months,” one of Canada’s largest publishers of college textbooks, McGraw-Hill Ryerson, “has been quietly trying to coax companies into buying advertising space in their texts,” reports Rick Westhead in a story for Toronto’s The Star. Westhead says the publisher “has made presentations about its prospective textbook ads to more than a dozen advertising agencies,” and even brags in one brochure that ads “can be so targeted, you can even buy a specific major.” The brochure also tells potential advertisers that the ads, which cost up to $1.40 per book, will help them “Reach a hard to get target group where they spend all their parents’ money.” But even some ad companies are rebelling against the idea, says Westhead. Randy Stein of Toronto’s Grip Media ad agency tells him, “Textbooks are one of the last bastions. There are some things that should remain pure and sacred. What’s next, university professors with logos on their blazers like NASCAR?” A rep from J. Walter Thompson predicts “The reaction would be horrible. It’d be a disaster.” And University of Toronto student Heather Campbell says, “this is supposed to be a place of learning . . . textbooks should be free of corporate influence.” Meanwhile, after granting Westhead only a “brief interview,” a McGraw-Hill spokeswoman, Diana MacDonald, contacted him again to say that the idea of the ads was to bring “beneficial corporate and social awareness campaigns to the attention of students” and to “generate revenue to support programs which help professors and teachers cope with the rapid changes in their environment.”