Farewell to a great bookstore

The loss of Bryan Prince leaves a hole in the local literary landscape

The little shop was bustling with people — packed, in fact — but the mood was off.

I had stopped in to buy the new novel for our book club and was caught off guard by the crowd.

I knew the store was closing. I had heard about it online, but I thought it would be a slow wind-down over the next few weeks or even months.

I wanted to visit Bryan Prince Bookseller one more time and thank the folks who ran it and worked there.

Before I could open my mouth, Andrew, the irrepressibly cheerful and enthusiastic staffer, beat me to it.

“Hi,” he said. “Thank you for all your support over the years.”

“Are you kidding?” I said. “Thank you guys. Your support has been unbelievable this past year.”

If you are lucky enough to get a book published, you’re really lucky to have someone like Kerry Cranston-Reimer, who ran the bookstore, helping you along the way. The little shop in Westdale not only hosted a reading for me, but they did the book sales at my launch and staffed the book table at readings in Hamilton and Burlington. It’s hard to sell books in Canada, and it would be impossible without help from a shop like Bryan Prince.

But I wasn’t there just because of the past year. I’d been going to the shop for decades. I love books and I love good bookstores. Not big, shiny outlets in malls or sprawling operations that sell coffee and napkins and candles and knicknacks and, oh yeah, books. No, I mean real bookstores like the old Britnell’s in Toronto, Munro’s in Victoria, a Different Drummer in Burlington and, of course, Bryan Prince Bookseller. A place that is about one thing — books. Not a place where the clerks (though they are perfectly nice kids) really couldn’t give two hoots about books and wouldn’t know Tom Wolfe from Thomas Wolfe from Michael Wolff. No, I mean a shop where the people actually READ books and can talk about them and want to talk about them.

I like real bookstores because they are always a sea of quiet calm in an increasingly busy and buzzing world. And even more than that, like libraries, they are a treasure trove for the truly curious. In a good bookstore, like Bryan Prince, you can stop in on a sunny afternoon or a rainy morning and just browse the shelves, scanning book spines, not looking for anything in particular, just waiting for a title to pique your interest and open you up to a time or a world or a story you didn’t know existed. I’ve been doing that since the shop opened in 1989, whiling away an hour now and then just looking through the books. When internet shopping arrived, I purposely bought books there, preferring to spend my money at an independent bookstore instead of going online and clicking “Buy”. No matter how fast and convenient, searching online is no substitute for the serenity and serendipity you can find in a good bookstore. And, yes, I have an e-reader, but there’s really nothing like flipping through a real book, rifling its fresh-cut pages and inhaling the scent of paper, book glue and anticipation that emanates from them.

So, I did that one more time. I scanned the now half-empty shelves and a long table covered with books for sale. I found some gems, a biography of baseball great Ted Williams, a beautiful little volume by Diane Schoemperlen, a novel I thought I would take a chance on. I paid, with some guilt (the books were only a few dollars each), and said goodbye and thanks to Andrew.

On Thursday, the bookstore’s final day, I went back to see Kerry to thank her for the store and for her help and for fighting the good fight as long as she could.

She was standing by the front counter, greeting the throng of customers who came to say goodbye.

We chatted briefly about books and bookstores. I told her how sorry I was to see the shop close.

“Everything changes,” she said, with a resigned smile.

“I know,” I said. “And not always for the better.”