So copyright law in Canada is designed to screw the little guys? It's highly unfair to give one author life+50 because she's well known and give another publication+50 because he's not and "there's [some] chance [his name] is a pseudonym". Anyway, I have a hard time believing that the Paul French novels are going to be in the public-domain in Canada in a decade because Isaac Asimov used a pseudonym when writing them.

Exactly. A pseudonymous work is only pub+50 while the author's actual identity is not publicly known: 6.1 Except as provided in section 6.2, where the identity of the author of a work is unknown, copyright in the work shall subsist for whichever of the following terms ends earlier: (a) a term consisting of the remainder of the calendar year of the first publication of the work and a period of fifty years following the end of that calendar year, and (b) a term consisting of the remainder of the calendar year of the making of the work and a period of seventy-five years following the end of that calendar year, but where, during that term, the author's identity becomes commonly known, the term provided in section 6 applies. -- RS