Ten Bookish Haunts for the Holidays
Winter Solstice is a place of restoration. We understand that in the coming months, daylight hours will grow longer, and we can hope to feel our vital energies replenished. Yet in certain places we enter—physical spaces defined by shelves bearing physical books with spines and covers and words that open into worlds—we also understand that in any season of the year, the light of imagination has the power to restore us, too. There’s nothing passive about reading a book. It’s a co-creative act. At any time, in any conditions, but perhaps especially now during these long nights, reading is the light of minds meeting in the jewel-black darkness. Imagination, a bright star.
This post was sparked by detours on a recent holiday visit to family, when twice my husband and I decided to depart from our usual routine and, having made our goodbyes, linger a while in my old home city of books.
1. Humber Bay Library
A couple of Sundays ago, after saying goodbye to my daughter in Toronto’s west end, the GPS guided us south to leave the city by the Gardiner Expressway. But we needed gas before heading to Owen Sound, and so we turned onto the Queensway and stopped. That’s when I found myself telling Hugh how much I’d love a quick visit to my old Etobicoke neighbourhood. How long had it been since I’d last walked through the front door of Humber Bay Library? In my imagination, only recently. But in ordinary reality? About forty-five years.
Going back there again, I was reminded that our church had stood (and still stands) beside this local branch. I remember the Christmas season at St. James Humber Bay with its colourful ‘50s glass panels and pageantry—Sunday School crayons, cut-outs for evergreen boughs, stories of miracles, and shy, warm handshakes. In this vastly imperfect world of contradictions and flawed human structures, I’m still grateful I grew up with rituals and messages of love, forgiveness, faith, and hope. Mine is a seeker’s journey. While I’ve sat in great cathedrals, church basement recovery groups, Buddhist halls, women’s gatherings, forests, and shamanic circles (to name but a few of the many places I’ve found spiritual connection), those core elements of love, forgiveness, faith, and hope have remained vital—along with a reverence for mystery and wonder. Across the church parking lot, intrigue and amazement met me at the library. And independence and freedom, too—since I could walk there on my own from home, and along the way, think for myself.
As a young person at the library, I was cultivating a love of writers and their work. It didn’t matter that ours may have been the smallest branch in the Borough of Etobicoke. Humber Bay was a gateway to other worlds. I could go anywhere with my library card—and a little patience, since often the books had to be ordered from faraway shelves. Elizabeth George Speare’s The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Joan Aiken’s The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, and Irene Hunt’s Up a Road Slowly were a few titles easily found in house. As I grew older, Shirley Jackson’s novels were almost always available. But I had to wait for certain works by F. Scott Fitzgerald—for This Side of Paradise and his short stories. For Zelda Fitzgerald’s Save Me the Waltz. And Sheilah Graham’s Beloved Infidel. Maybe Humber Bay Library was the Tree of Knowledge where I didn’t hesitate to eat the fruit. It was also the Tree of Life.
2. Book City
Go into any Book City in Toronto and you’ll smell paper. I don’t know why each of the four remaining stores has the same scent, or why (to me, anyway) it’s distinct from that of other bookshops. I’m simply grateful that our olfactory sense can trigger distant memories. The process has to do with the close proximity of three brain centres: the olfactory cortex (which identifies smell), the amygdala (which generates emotion), and the hippocampus (which retrieves memories). Borrowing from literature, scientists have named that three-way connection “the Proust effect,” since in Remembrance of Things Past (a title that also translates as In Search of Lost Time) the author famously describes the taste and smell of lime-blossom tea and madeleine cake crumbs transporting him to scenes from his childhood.
After spending a week with loved ones in Owen Sound and Stratford, and deciding to extend our trip by a day in order to visit Toronto bookstores, our first stop was Bloor West Village’s Book City where one deep breath took me back to 1985. That year, after moving out of my mother’s house to Toronto’s Annex neighbourhood, the original Book City (now gone) became my sanctuary. To linger there all morning on a Saturday, drinking from a bottomless coffee cup and browsing fiction, art books, world religions, and the occult section—bliss. (And yes, on Saturday mornings in ‘85 they offered free coffee.) Last weekend in Bloor West Village, I couldn’t leave without asking if they still had an occult section (see picture #2) and buying the first of 2025’s Seth’s Christmas Ghost Stories series (Biblioasis), Lucky’s Grove.
3. TYPE Books
Our next stop was in an area known as the Junction, so-named for the criss-crossed rail tracks newly laid here in the 1880s, and also for the intersecting paths of Indigenous peoples who, prior to European settlement, lived on this unceded land for millennia.
Inspired by the Junction Reads series I’ve seen promoted on social media, I set out to visit their west-end home: TYPE Books. On the way, I found myself appreciating how so many of the building blocks still exist as they did in the late 19th century. In the ungentrified quaint old Junction, it’s not hard to imagine the far and not-so-distant past. A 1987 audition in a Victorian church basement near this now-trendy (and quite wonderful) bookstore earned me a role in a touring production of Dracula directed by an actor who would eventually become my first husband and the father of my daughter. Today, she lives not far from here.
At TYPE, I picked up my second of Seth’s Christmas Ghost Stories, Lady Ferry. I wanted Aggie and the Ghost, but had to restrain myself.
4. Another Story Bookshop
Established in the mid-1980s when I lived a few blocks south of this store’s Roncesvalles Avenue home, Another Story stands on the border between Parkdale Village with its Victorian row houses (to the east), and High Park (to the west)—once considered by early settlers the edge of the wilderness. As you might recall from a previous post, last winter I discovered that Anne of Green Gables author Lucy Maud Montgomery lived her final years on nearby Parkside Drive.
I love Another Story for its emphasis on serving social causes. Founded by book lover and social activist Sheila Kaufman, for nearly forty years it’s remained an independent bookshop committed to equality and diversity, social justice, and anti-oppression for children and adults. Do you have a bookstore like this one in your area? I hope so. We need more of them.
At Another Story, not only did I succumb to buying the third of this year’s Seth’s Christmas Ghost Stories, The Mistress in Black (which I devoured the same evening), but I discovered Patrick Tarr’s The Guest Children, a haunting full-length work of historical fiction set in Toronto and northern Ontario during the 1940s. At this point I’m halfway through it, and if you like eerie tales at Winter Solstice (or any time), I recommend Tarr’s page-turner.
5. Book People on Queen
Aptly named, this cozy bookshop was our first stop along Queen Street. It faces Triller Avenue which winds down to the edge of the bluff above Lake Ontario and a ghostly old walk-up apartment building where I lived briefly, long ago. Book People is a new store, its owner Kai an aficionado who curates the reads here, arranging them imaginatively rather than conventionally. She’s typed certain authors’ bios and fastened them to the shelves beneath their works. Smitten as I was by page one, I couldn’t stop myself from picking up The Complete Stories of Leonora Carrington. How did I find this book? Kai had placed it on a little stand—simple. Irresistible. What I love about this shop is its sense of community. In Parkdale, Queen Street can feel haunted, as it did forty years ago. But stores like Book People bring light and love to areas that might otherwise remain in the shadows.
6. Hopeless Romantic Books
Did you know that throughout the world, romance fiction stores have become “a thing”? Travelling along Queen West brought us to Toronto’s first and only example of one—Hopeless Romantic Books, a shop packed with loyal customers. It was fun to stay a while in this warm, inviting place, as people stepped in from the beyond-freezing night to find works by their favourite authors and new reads. Next question: Do you read romance novels? Earlier this year, I spoke with a fellow poet and author who told me she’d started reading the genre recently for the comfort these books bring her. Of course, as a literary writer, she also reads a wide array of other forms and genres. But what she said about including romance stayed with me.
While I was inside Hopeless Romantic, a shop run by a couple devoted to this heart-led enterprise, I discovered an illustration by a young artist named Serene and decided to bring it home with me. The picture reminds me of how I felt as a girl at the library. Even now, I can feel this way. What about you?
Okay, I don’t usually take selfies. But outside under the old storefronts on Queen West, I took this picture to celebrate finally being back at a location I couldn’t get to while writing fiction during the pandemic. It’s a place I’ve recreated in my mind a thousand times, a significant setting in my forthcoming novel, River of Dreams (2026). Have I mentioned that I love Queen Street?
7. BMV
Sunday’s stop in Toronto’s Annex was brief and would have been incomplete without a Future Bakery brunch at Brunswick and Bloor Streets. (In a previous life and parallel universe, this establishment is called The Other Café, and I’m still waitressing here between acting gigs.) Crossing Brunswick after our meal, we walked into BMV—a two-storey bargain store selling new and used books where Hugh bought a vintage work on French photography. We didn’t stay long. Though I imagine if I lived in this neighbourhood again, as I did in three separate chapters of my life, now and again I’d take a stroll through BMV.
Do bookstores have ghosts? Here in the Annex, I’m still haunted by Book City.
8. Bakka-Phoenix Books
A few blocks away, near the University of Toronto campus, Harbord Street used to be dotted with bookshops. For years, Wonderworks was a place of restoration for many, as was the Toronto Women’s Bookstore. And more. Now, only Bakka-Phoenix remains. It’s a lovely shop, and while I don’t usually read science fiction and fantasy, when a certain book fell open to a passage that spoke to me, I couldn’t refrain from picking up my own copy of Ottawa writer Amal El-Mohtar’s highly acclaimed new fairy tale, The River Has Roots.
“When Arcadia overlaps with the lands we know, it takes years to journey into it; when Arcadia is some distance away, it is possible to conceive of it as contemporary. It is always both at a remove and always immediate; always near to hand and very far away.”
Might that last line also describe the places we come from?
9. Little Ghosts Books
Visiting this new-to-me shop on Dundas Street West was a must. While I’m not so much of a horror reader these days, as you may have guessed, I do enjoy a fine ghost story. And this place has them—from classics such as Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, to contemporary tales by local authors including writer and podcaster Motzie Dapul whom I met while in the store. Lovingly tended, Little Ghosts pulses with a sense of joy in community. And there’s coffee.
10. Queen Books
With the sun setting before our long drive back to Ottawa-Gatineau, even though I wanted to, we didn’t dare make one more bookish stop. But then, heading east along the Gardiner Expressway, my husband turned to me and said, “You know, it wouldn’t take much to get up to Queen Books.”
Sometimes the smallest of wonders can make a big difference.
For miles east of the Don River, Queen Street continues, a grand old sprawling thoroughfare. When Hugh and I lived together in the city before and after we were married, we rented a place in the east end, not far from this stretch of Queen in Riverdale. How many times did we take our weekend meanderings for granted? Walking these well travelled paving stones ignited memories of our early years together. Walking into Queen Books was magic.
Because people love reading books, the store was packed. Even those of us who’d run through our budgets and were no longer buying could enjoy browsing. And dreaming.
Where is your nearest local indie bookstore? Do you live in a place with more than one? If you’ve enjoyed this little tour, I hope you’ll do one of your own and repeat it often. Cherish your local library, too. Take nothing for granted.
From my heart, I thank you for being here and reading. May your holidays bring moments of wonder. I wish you a beautiful New Year in 2026.
With love,
Robin
