“… A town isn’t a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it has a good bookstore it knows it’s not fooling a soul”. – Neil Gaiman, British author.
If you even mildly agree, you may want to take a hard look around downtown Vancouver. Go ahead and try to find a street-level, general interest bookstore, selling new titles. You can’t, because as of this moment there are none. Ever since Chapters on Robson closed last June after 17 years (blaming high rent), there is not one new-title bookstore on any street in the entire downtown core, or the densely populated West End.
“It’s a scandal”, says Howard White, who has successfully steered the fiercely independent, BC-based Harbour Publishing for over 40 years. “There’s no other big Canadian city so poorly served, and this is the province with the highest rate of book-buyers in the country”.
Allow me a few qualifying points before we go any further: you may have noticed the phrases “street-level”, “general interest”, and “new-title”. It’s worth pointing out that if you’re willing to go subterranean, you’ll find a small and tidy Coles Books (owned by Indigo) selling new titles in the oft-forgotten mall underneath the Bentall Centre. The SFU Downtown Campus also has a bookstore catering mostly to students in the Harbour Centre Mall. And there’s specialty and used bookstores: Little Sisters on Davie has valiantly served the LGBT community since 1983. On the used front, the best bet downtown is The Paper Hound, an excellent, mostly used bookstore of another era, at 344 West Pender (at Homer). They will lovingly sell you gently used classics, and have a small and well-curated selection of new titles.
So where are Vancouver’s general interest, independent bookstores that specialize mostly in new books? Most survive (and some thrive) by choosing to root themselves outside of downtown, on the business strips of residential neighbourhoods, where a community of customers can be built up around the store. Hager Books has been a staple of Kerrisdale since 1974. Blackbond Books / Book Warehouse (now the same company) has been in operation in the Lower Mainland for more than 30 years, with a relatively new store at Main and King Edward. Pulp Fiction has three locations on the West and East side. People’s Co-op Bookstore on Commercial, since 1945, is Vancouver’s oldest book store, and could be the oldest bookstore in Canada. 32 Books continues to be a cornerstone of Edgemont Village.
Why won’t any of them brave downtown? Joe Stewart used to own the now-closed Blackberry Books on Granville Island, and currently manages 32 Books in North Van. “The past 10 years have been particularly hard on downtown bookstores, even before you factor in the high cost of business rents. Independent bookstores depend on their community to thrive. Maintaining a sense of community can be difficult when an area like downtown is growing and changing so quickly. I saw that in my own store as more and more of my regulars moved away.”
There’s a rumour that Book Warehouse might re-open a store in the West End, possibly on Denman, which is experiencing unusually high retail vacancy rates (which could mean negotiable leases). Black Bond owner Cathy Jesson confirms they’re interested, but “the key is the right spot at the right rent.”
Depending on your perspective, hope is on the horizon for new book lovers of downtown Vancouver: on Jan. 29, Indigo Spirit (essentially a boutique version of Chapters) will open its doors at 810 Granville (at Robson) where Aldo Shoes used to fit. The store will be one-tenth the size of its former Chapters cousin. It may not be enough to satisfy Neil Gaiman, but at least it’s something.
• Grant Lawrence is the author of Adventures in Solitude and The Lonely End of the Rink.
