Despite clearly being an essential service, bookstores have needed to close during the current plague, but many of them deliver or offer curbside pickup! And if you want these stores to still be around when things get back to normal, order from them, not from Amazon.
Penguin Random House Canada offers a handy list of independent bookstores across Canada that you can order from. I’ve pasted in the list for Ontario’s cottage country below. To see the list for all of Canada, see here.
Indigo/Chapters also delivers books. Classy lady that she is, CEO Heather Reisman is continuing to pay employees during the shutdown. “Reading is fundamental to the soul,” she added in a March 23 with The Toronto Star. Regarding Indigo, she said: “When we close 200 stores it has a very significant impact on the company.”
“If you want these stores to still be around when things get back to normal, order from them!”
Reisman expects stores will have to stay closed longer than initially planned, and is also expecting a need for substantial government assistance: “If it did go on for a couple of months the only response is a massive injection of cash into the system by the federal and provincial governments. When you do make those decisions, the key is to make decisions that work, so if you do too little you dissipate the funds and you don’t advance the economy.”
Independent book stores in Ontario’s Cottage Country that deliver or provide curbside pickup:
BRACEBRIDGE: The Owl Pen Books
ELORA: Magic Pebble
GANANOQUE: Beggars Banquet Books
GODERICH: Fincher’s
HALIBURTON: Master’s Bookstore
LAKEFIELD: Happenstance Books and Yarns
NORTH BAY: Allison The Bookman
ORANGEVILLE: BookLore
ORILLIA: Manticore Books
PARRY SOUND:Parry Sound Books
PETEROROUGH: Hunter Street Books
PORT HOPE: Furby House Books Inc.
Brian Henry has been a book editor, writer, and creative writing instructor for more than 25 years. He edits the Quick Brown Fox blog for writers, and teaches creative writing at Ryerson University. Brian also leads weekly creative writing courses. See Brian Henry’s schedule here, including writing workshops, weekly online writing classes, and weekend retreats.
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Letters from Lake Joe by Mary E. Hughes is a charming account of summers spent on Lake Joseph, Muskoka during the first decade of the 20th century. At that time, going to an island cottage meant a long and arduous journey by train and steamboat. Island life was often rustic, but eminently leisurely and peaceful. The imagined letters in this book chronicle the day-to-day happenings and hazards, the boats and the bugs, of a gentler, quieter Muskoka. It will appeal to Muskoka region cottagers with an interest in the early days of summers on the lake. These letters originally appeared in the three volumes of Mary’s The Violet Trilogy.
In addition to the Letters, Hughes has included reminiscences of Lake Joe in the middle of the 20th century in a series of brief anecdotes combined into the Muskoka Suite.
Letters from Lake Joe will be available in various retail outlets including Muskoka Books in Bracebridge, Shaw’s at Footes Bay and Lake Living in Port Sandfield as well as directly from Amazon.ca.