culture
Lost Words
With news this week that three bookstores—The Book Mark, Glad Day, and Dragon Lady Comics—are to be sold or closed, we look back at some beloved bookshops from Toronto's past.
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- <strong>Albert Britnell Book Shop</strong><br /> <br /> “Count yourself a Torontonian if Grandfather shopped here,” proclaimed <em>Toronto Life</em> in its November 1970 guide to local bookstores. This was no exaggeration, as <a href="http://toronto.openfile.ca/toronto/text/past-pieces-toronto-albert-britnell-book-shop">the Britnell family</a> had been involved in the city’s book trade since Albert arrived from England during the 1880s. Initially known for its selection of collectible Canadiana, the store later built its reputation on the special order system developed by Albert’s spats-wearing son Roy. Though the shop closed in 1999, its name still sits above the Starbucks that currently occupies the building.<br /> <br /> <em>Advertisement, the </em>Globe and Mail<em>, December 15, 1979.</em>
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- <strong>Hyman’s Book & Art Shop</strong><br /> <br /> “The shop was open from 8:30 a.m. to 1:00 a.m. every day except Saturday and had a mimeograph machine, pop cooler, newspapers and a bar mitzvah registry. It sold Yiddish and Hebrew books, Judaica, tickets for the Standard Theatre, stationery and school supplies.”—Rosemary Donegan, <em>Spadina Avenue</em> (Toronto: Douglas & McIntyre, 1985).<br /> <br /> Located at 371 Spadina Avenue, Hyman’s (later known as Hyman and Son) operated for nearly 50 years.<br /> <br /> <em>Ben-Zion Hyman in front of Hyman’s Book & Art Shop, 1925. City of Toronto Archives, Series 1465, File 119, Item 78.</em>
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- <strong>North Toronto Book-Store</strong><br /> <br /> Either the woman mailing the morning headline from the <em>Globe</em> is thrilled to be in front of the camera, or she’s frustrated with the photographer’s numerous requests to centre the poster. <br /> <br /> <em>North Toronto Book-Store, July 1922. City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 1244, Item 296. </em>
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- <strong>Lichtman’s News Stand</strong><br /> <br /> From the moment he arrived in Toronto from the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the age of 14, <a href="http://www.billgladstone.ca/?p=4245">Sammy Lichtman</a> was in the newspaper business. One account indicates that shortly after stepping off the train that brought him here, Lichtman was hawking papers on downtown streets. He eventually entered the distribution and newsstand business that evolved into a chain of book and magazine shops. As the big box stores cut into Lichtman’s business, debt mounted until ownership called it a day in 2000.<br /> <br /> <em>Lichtman’s News Stand, sometime between 1945 and 1966. Photo by Ellis Wiley. City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 124, File 1, Item 130.</em>
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- <strong>Eaton's</strong><br /> <br /> Before chains like Coles, Classic Book Shops, and WH Smith, department stores were among the biggest booksellers in Toronto. There were even attempts, as this ad from Eaton’s shows, to promote Canadian authors. <br /> <br /> <em>Advertisement, the </em>Globe<em>, November 3, 1934.</em>
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- <strong>SCM Book Room</strong><br /> <br /> Given the chaos surrounding Rochdale College during its dying days, it’s tempting to believe that some of the craziness made its way to one of the building’s most well-respected tenants, the SCM Book Room. But by the end of 1974, disputes between executives of the Student Christian Movement and store manager Bob Miller over the mission of the store had grown nasty. Should, as some SCM members argued, the store take a stronger stand on social issues and better reflect the ideals of the organization? Or, as Miller believed, should the store continue to manage its own affairs as it had for years?<br /> <br /> For nearly 20 years Miller, a reverend in the United Church, built the business’s reputation as the go-to place in Toronto for academic and religious works. Forget bestsellers: as Miller told the <em>Globe and Mail</em> in April 1968, "we’re interested in the scholarly type of books less accessible elsewhere, books for which there’s a market, but not a mass market." According to historian Ramsay Cook, "it would be impossible to estimate the contribution that Bob Miller’s SCM Book Room has made to the intellectual and cultural life not only of Toronto, but of the country at large."<br /> <br /> Despite mediation by poet Dennis Lee, personality clashes worsened. Miller and nine of the SCM Book Room’s 15 employees left the business in the spring of 1975. Later that year Miller established his own book room further east on Bloor Street, which continues to operate. A store under the SCM banner carried on until at least the late 1980s.<br /> <br /> <em>Rochdale College, March 1971. Photo by Leo Harrison. York University Archives, Toronto Telegram Photo Collection, Citation 1974-002/168.</em>
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- <strong>Times Square Book Store</strong><br /> <br /> As Yonge Street slid toward <a href="http://www.thegridto.com/city/sexuality/yonge-street-seedy-past/">the seedy reputation</a> it earned during the 1970s, adult book stores began filling its storefronts. Frequently raided by the morality squad, who quietly asked customers to leave while arresting the clerks, shops like the Times Square (which appears to have dropped the “s” by the time this photo was taken) serviced patrons looking for thrills in the pages of titles like <em>French Spice</em>, <em>Mr. Cool</em>, and <em>Sizzle</em>. Browsers who didn’t find the selection titillating enough could always watch burlesque dancers elsewhere on the Yonge strip.<br /> <br /> Times Square’s penchant for skirting Sunday shopping laws earned it a profile in the September 19, 1970 edition of the <em>Star</em>, which depicted a typical Lord’s Day afternoon at the store:<br /> <br /> "A young man with shoulder-length blond hair perches on a stool by the cash register. He takes a $5 bill from an older man with nervous eyes and slips a plastic-wrapped magazine called <em>Swappers</em> into a plain brown bag. 'Every adult person should have the right to decide what he can do and what he can buy, any day of the week,' the young man says after the customer leaves the store. 'Sure we’re open Sundays, but we’re not keeping anyone away from church. We cater to a different crowd.'”<br /> <br /> <em>A later incarnation of the Time(s) Square Book Store, circa 1970s. Photo by Ellis Wiley. City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 124, File 3, Item 198.</em>
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- (Unknown name)<br /> <br /> During the 1970s, Queen West filled with used bookstores. The business offering “new books” at number 280 in this photo was later occupied by About Books. Co-owner Larry Wallrich had been around: during the 1960s, he ran a shop in New York’s Greenwich Village that became a poet’s hangout then spent a few years selling books around Europe. Based on advice from a bookseller in Cleveland, Wallrich came to Queen West in 1976 and quickly fell in love with Toronto. In an interview with Books in Canada seven years later, Wallrich noted that the city had “more good, general second-hand book shops than there are in New York and London—and that’s of course totally economic because rents are still reasonable enough here that you can have good general book shops in the centre of town.” He also felt “more socially useful in Toronto as a bookseller than I’ve ever felt in my life before.”
- Queen Street West, sometime between 1966 and 1972. Photo by Ellis Wiley. City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 124, File 2, Item 124.
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- Queen Street West, sometime between 1966 and 1972. Photo by Ellis Wiley. City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 124, File 2, Item 124.
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- <strong>Edwards Books & Art</strong><br /> <br /> Edward Borins learned how to buy and sell high quality remainders at low prices while managing David Mirvish Books during the 1970s. Borins and his wife Eva established their own store at 356 Queen Street West in 1979, which eventually grew into a small chain. As <em>NOW</em> noted in a March 1989 profile, the original location “opened just at the time when the area was being revitalized by a new wave of artists and businesses.”<br /> <br /> The chain fought a lengthy battle with the provincial government over Sunday shopping laws that led to around 300 charges. Edwards ran into troubles with its suppliers that played a role into the chain’s demise in 1997 and, thanks to tighter credit limits publishers had imposed in the aftermath, negatively affected other local booksellers. The Borinses moved to Santa Fe and ran <a href="http://www.santafenewmexican.com/localnews/Garcia-Street-books-Indie-shop-changes-hands">Garcia Street Books</a> for a decade before selling it last year.<br /> <br /> <em>Advertisement, the <em>Globe and Mail</em>, October 31, 1987.</em>
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- <strong>The Book Cellar</strong><br /> <br /> Despite its name, The Book Cellar only spent one year operating below street level when it opened in 1961. The store quickly gained a reputation for carrying the largest selection of magazines in the city, with titles ranging from <em><a href="http://www.tvguide.com/">TV Guide</a></em> (one of their poorest sellers in the early 1960s) to the <em>Journal of the Institute for Sewage Purification</em>. Store alumni included writers like Barbara Amiel and Paul Quarrington. Though there were several locations, the main one was 142 Yorkville Avenue, where browsers congregated between 1968 and 1997. The store’s final owner felt its demise was due to troubles receiving stock after publishers tightened credit limits following the end of Edwards Books & Art, and on declining street traffic in Yorkville. <br /> <br /> <em>Advertisement, </em>Books in Canada<em>, May 1971.</em>
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- And a few more...<br /> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jbcurio/6646738845/sizes/o/in/photostream/">Larger version</a>.<br /> <br /> <em>Source: </em>Quill and Quire<em>, May 1974.</em>
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Ballenford Books. David Mirvish Books. Pages. This Ain’t The Rosedale Library. All established book stores that have closed within the past four years. With The Book Mark joining that list, Dragon Lady Comics shutting its physical store, and Glad Day Bookshop up for sale, it feels as if Toronto is experiencing a cycle of closures similar to the late 1990s.
Back then, blame initially fell upon big box stores like Chapters and Indigo; now it’s online retailers and e-books. In both cases these big bads were only part of the problem: increased rent appears to be a critical element of the current closure cycle, the exact opposite of the low-priced leases that aided the high number of bookstore openings during the 1970s. Cold commentators might say that technology is making bookstores obsolete, or that owners should only blame themselves when their business ends, but whenever any long-running store closes, it feels as if a reassuring piece of the local landscape has gone with it.
In the gallery above, a tiny sample of past bookstores that left their mark on Toronto and its readers.
