Coles Notes Existed Before CliffsNotes

During this morning's episode of Toronto Mike'd, my guest Ebonnie Rowe started a story with "I'll give you the CliffsNotes version..." I chimed in that we Canadians would have used Coles Notes, not CliffsNotes, and that we only knew CliffsNotes from American films and television.

I did a little digging, and have learned Coles Notes were created by Jack Cole and Carl Cole, founders of Coles, back in 1948. In 1958 they sold the U.S. rights to Coles Notes to Cliff Hillegass who then published the books under CliffsNotes.

So here in Canada we had Coles Notes, and in the United States they had CliffsNotes.

Coles, by the way, was sold to Chapters which was then bought by Indigo, but you'll still find a few Coles book stores in the GTA. Just don't go looking in Cloverdale Mall, that location closed earlier this year.