Sad Day in Bookland

When I was a kid and in my teen years I loved going to Toronto.  This small town Orillia girl always had a hankering for the big bustle of the city and it was inevitable I would eventually move here.  My minister father would sometimes have to come to Toronto to visit ill parishioners at one of the city's major hospitals.  I would tag a long and sometimes would find hours to myself betwixt the shelves of the World's Biggest Bookstore.  I loved it.  As a book lover who had just started collecting books, I was in heaven and remember buying my very first copy of "Tender is the Night" and "Little Women" from its fiction section.   I was at the point where I was no longer re-signing favourites out from the library; I was starting to collect.

Reading about X-Wing pilots on a  WBB visit 2 summers ago

Indubitably, the first thing I did when I started as a student at the University of Toronto was apply for a job there.  For 4.5 years as I completed my degree, I spent my after school hours working ( if you can call it that).  To work there you needed to know about books, be passionate about books, have diverse interests and tastes: interests and tastes I honed and developed spending hours between the bookshelves and speaking on a myriad of subjects with regulars and tourists, people from all over the world.

I also met some of my closest friends there ( including KAT twitter handle:@bitwhizzle) : students like me working part time who loved books like a disease.  They are some of my best friends to this day......

This place is more than just bricks and mortar; this place is part of my spirit, part of who I am.....

As we draw closer towards its inevitable demise, I will continue to traipse down memory lane.  This place built me as a reader and that is the most important thing to a biblophile.....