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Book Marks: Ben McNally Books
Every Thursday, Torontoist Books is taking a look at another one of the city’s fine bookstores and reading series, in a feature we call Book Marks.
Photo by Erin Balser/Torontoist.
You may not know it, but there’s a book-lovers’ mecca nestled on Bay Street, one encouraging you to “read the fine print.” The print inside the store is fine indeed, as are the light fixtures, dark wood bookshelves, archways, and the clerk’s sweater. Ben McNally Books is breath-taking and it means business.
A life-long bookseller, owner Ben McNally was intrigued by the possibility of a “neighbourless” bookstore, that is, one that serviced people where they work, not where they live. He chose Bay Street for the industries it serviced—legal, political, financial—because he loves those kinds of books. “If I opened it in a place where the people who worked around me are affluent, intelligent, sophisticated, then I knew I’d be able to have a bookstore that cheered me every time I came through the door,” Ben explains. “Then I would be able to take on things that were intellectually demanding, that were expensive and that were unusual, like me!”
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