Best indie bookstores in Canada?

Oh, there was a nice small one in Regina. Don't remember the name. But it was nice, if small. I'm pretty sure that's where I picked up Eunoia, or perhaps Crystallography.

Finding independent bookstores in Canada is like looking for a needle in a giant purple haystack. And actually the only one I've found that wasn't a secondhand bookstore was Wendell Holmes, of which there are three or four in London (Ontario).

pages in toronto is pretty good
paragraphe in montreal
nicholas hoare?

What about the store with a spinoff in NYC, McNally-Robinson? Is the Great White Northern version a big chain?

Yes it is.

Pages was nice. But it's kind of all about used books for me.

You're not a germophobe, I presume.

Uh, nope.

mcnaly is not quite a chain

there are some really nice ones in vancouver.

-bibliotheque(4th and commercial, where huk lived briefly): nice, very clean, but very picked over and new, i.e. low stock. lots of recent canlit. i stop by here everytime i'm up on the drive to find a cheap margaret atwood; just yesterday i got 'life before man' for two bucks.
-macleod's(richards and pender): old and very, very dense. i go here for western canadian history and old general fiction. they're in the process of moving 1/3 of their collection to a new location just around the corner, and for the moment you have to ask a staffperson for access, which really cramps my browsing style. unfortunately their canlit is now located there :(
-albion (also richards and pender): i go here when macleod's doesn't have what i want. again, a good selection of western canadian stuff + general. classic for the time that the proprietor suspected a customer of trying to fob off a stolen book on him and chased the guy outside with a baseball bat.
-companion books (hastings and gilmore, in burnaby): clean, new, really great SF selection.
-a bunch more that i don;t go to. there's a map + listing avaliable: "a guide to second hand and antiquarian bookstores in greater vancouver"

for new books, i go to book warehouse!

casuistry, have you read any sharon butala? she lives in s/w saskatchewan (eastend), and writes about it. i also have "unnamed country: the struggle for a canadian prairie fiction" but have not read it yet.

I haven't. My secret shame is that Huk has sent me a few books of Saskian fiction that I have gotten really excited about and then failed to read. Unless Butala writes nonfiction?

Yeah, McNally-Robinson is definitely not a chain. Just a "big indie", I guess. Either way, it's the best bookstore in Winnipeg.

I second Pages in Toronto, and I'll add Wordsworth in uptown Waterloo to the list.

I also spend a lot of time at BMV in Toronto, but that's just because I'm broke and they have a huge selection of remaindered and overstock stuff (I have a kind of OCD/dirt thing about used books), which is all I can really afford.

Canada is really a disaster.

Having decided never to go to Indigo/Chapters/Coles again unless absolutely necessary, I have started going to Book City (the downtown one) in Toronto and they're not bad.

But yes, Canada is a total disaster.

Chain: "Multiple retail units under common ownership that engage in some level of centralized (or coordinated) purchasing and decision making."

The one in NYC is independent but I seem to recall that the ones in Canada share a website at the very least, as well as branding etc.

Anyway hopefully I will be in Vancouver in March by hook or by crook and will be able to see bookstores there.