By: Tilman Baumgärtel
Screenshot of www.canbypublishing.com
At first glance, www.canbypublications.com may seem like just another website, but it represents a publishing house in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, with a rich history. Since 1997, Canby Media Co., Ltd has created pocket-sized guides for Phnom Penh, Siem Reap, and Sihanoukville, becoming indispensable to tourists and expats. And since 2000, the website evolved from a simple placeholder into a trove of practical information about places of interest, doctors, banks, travel agencies, restaurants, and bars.
Only if you take a closer look, however, you find two interconnected life stories behind this page, adventures and risks, business success and private tragedy, ultimately a story of living and dying in a foreign country.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic devastated global tourism, Canby’s A5-sized guides were a staple in Cambodian hotels, bars, and restaurants. These guides featured detailed maps and practical advice, serving a rapidly growing tourism sector. The website extended their utility, offering downloadable PDFs and a wealth of additional information. Notable gems include scans of historical maps ((http://www.canbypublications.com/maps/maphome.htm#historical). Whoever put such a extensive and at the same idiosyncratic resource together must have been a long-term resident of Cambodia, his life deeply embedded with the self-proclaimed “kingdom of wonder”. So who is behind this website that is part information resource and part self-portrait?
Debra Groves Harman at Hotel Royal in 2002
Kenneth Cramer at the office of Canby Publishing in 2002
Debra Groves Harman and Kenneth Cramer were not typical backpackers when they arrived in Southeast Asia in 1994. In their mid-30s, they joined the “banana pancake trail” without a fixed plan. “We discussed every country in Southeast Asia, but about Cambodia, I said a firm no”, writes Debra Groves in her book “Love and Loss in Cambodia: a memoir” that she published in 2019 (https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/19323484.Debra_Groves_Harman). “I’d seen black and white footage of the Khmer Rouge soldiers on television, and they’d killed millions of their own people by whacking them on the back of the neck or working them to death.”
Little did she know at this time that she would end up staying in the country for almost seven years, live through political upheaval and personal tragedy, that resulted in a divorce, and start a company that is still in existence – the publishing house Canby Publication.
Initially, Groves and Cramer taught English in Sihanoukville and later Phnom Penh. In the mid-1990s, Cambodia was still grappling with the remnants of the Khmer Rouge. “We were fascinated by the politics, geography, and culture of Cambodia,” Groves says today. Their immersion into local life allowed them to form close relationships with both Cambodian people and a small expat community. They learned the Khmer language, attended weddings and funerals, and explored the country thoroughly.
Two covers of the guides of Canby Publishing
The couple lived through tumultuous events, including the 1997 grenade attack at an opposition rally and the bloody coup later that year. Despite these challenges, they founded Canby Publications in 1997, eventually producing 173 meticulously designed guides with some print runs exceeding 20,000 copies.
Originally, it was just a way to kill time, recalls Groves: “We were living in Sihanoukville in 1994, 1995 and part of 1996. And because there wasn’t anything to do there, we rode around and researched all of the historical and geographical sites.” At a time when there wasn´t a lot of maps of Cambodia so Cramer, a philosophy-major and self-taught computer wizard, made his own maps that were the basis of the city guides that they started to publish in 1997. Groves: “He was basically riding up and down streets and exploring. And into every map that he ever created, he built one small error. In that in that way he could see, if somebody was copying his work.”
Cramer designed and edited the guides on his laptop that he had brought from the US – digital technology was difficult to come by in the Cambodia of that time, and there was no internet to send files around. “We used CD-Roms – a lot of CD-Roms”, remembers Groves. That´s how they got the files to a printer who spoke no English, but still printed perfect, beautiful magazines from that data.
Debra Groves Harman took pictures, wrote editorial content and sold ads for the guides
Groves wrote editorial content, took photos and was in charge of the revenue of the magazine: “I sold ads”, she writes in her book “Love and Loss in Cambodia: a memoir”. “The guides were free, so the ads were the only source of revenue. I rode around on Sihanoukville and Phnom Penh on the back of motorcycles under a hot tropical sun for months selling the advertisements. Ken worked on the computer in the hotel.”
Despite their professional success, the couple’s personal lives unraveled. Groves suffered two miscarriages, her husband started to indulge in the the raucous nightlife of Phnom Penh, stayed up late, smoked a lot of weed, had a girlfriend – the relationship, that had spawned a successful publishing house in Cambodia, ended in 2001, when Groves got a divorce and returned to her native Oregon, where she remarried and became a high school teacher.
Cramer drowned in the Tonle Sap in 2016, when exciting a river boat on the pier of Phnom Penh. The exact circumstances of his death remain murky, but Groves made sure that his remains returned to the US and to his family – after his cremation she took the urn with his ashes onboard the plane from Bangkok.
Despite changes in ownership, Canby Publications continued putting out magazines until the pandemic halted international tourism. The last edition of the guide to Phnom Penh was published in 2019 (https://user-r6hilji.cld.bz/The-Phnom-Penh-Visitors-Guide-62nd). The website, now static, is a poignant reminder of its heyday.
Today, Groves publishes her own writing through Parasol Publishing on medium.com, and curates the writing of others. While Canby’s magazines have faded into history, her digital imprint is very much alive.
Metadata
Title
Canby Publications
Author
Canby Media Co., Ltd
Year
2000 – Today
Place of Publication
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Technical Requirements
Standard Browser
Live Version
Archived Version
Source
Interview with Deborah Groves Harman on November 24, 2024.
Interview with the office manager of Canby Publications, Phnom Penh, on October 15, 2024.
Groves Harman, Debra. Love and Loss in Cambodia: a memoir (English Edition) (S.192). Canby Media, Phnom Penh 2019. Kindle-Version.
Debra G. Harman: Considering Grief and My Feelings About My Ex On His 66th Birthday. He died at 59 and I’ve dealt with disenfranchised grief, The Wind Phone/Medium.com. Feb 26, 2023
Debra G. Harman: An Abortion Saved My Life in Cambodia. The knowledge of imminent death terrified me, The Narrative Arc/Medium.com, Nov 6, 2024
https://medium.com/the-narrative-arc/an-abortion-saved-my-life-in-cambodia-4dce4bec6627