Alice on the West Coast

Munro’s Books was a kind of paradise to a young reader when I was growing up. It still exists, a lovely space with soaring ceilings, gilded crown mouldings and period details set on a charming street near Victoria B.C.’s inner harbour. A spot as lovely as anyone could imagine.

I remember choosing books by Dante, Bashevis-Singer, Margaret Atwood and Alice Munro from the shelves where colorful book covers beckoned like bits of fantastic jewelry to my eye. These books shaped me. They shaped my view of life. I was, and remain, grateful to them for guiding me beyond the life my family expected of me into something better.

Jim Munro, by contrast, was an ordinary, corpulent, insensitive Victorian gentleman. I never knew why he wanted to own a bookstore, it seemed as though it was all commerce to him. I had a few friends who worked there and were proud to work there, I even helped with their annual inventory once and was invited to the company dinner, a Chinese feast, as a result. But Jim Munro was a blank. He was not an interesting man. He knew what would appeal to people enough to grow his business. He had connections in the publishing industry. He had been to university, which, at the time, was somewhat rare and decidedly a class marker in Victoria.

He was old. He was cynical. Jim Munro was not what you would expect to find behind a bookstore as fine as…