The Literary Storefront: Vancouver's Literary Centre 1978-1985
By Trevor Carolan. Mother Tongue, 252 pp, softcover

The index to this engaging book is, well, an index to literally hundreds of local and visiting writers who took part in the noble experiment that was Vancouver’s Literary Storefront. This grassroots institution, which lasted from 1978 to 1985, was a combination meeting place, workspace, performance hall, library, conference centre, and cafeteria of gossip. It was located at 131 Water Street (where the Vancouver Public Library will soon unveil a commemorative plaque), and later moved to the top floor of 314 West Cordova. Its founder and ringmaster was the poet Mona Fertig.

In this mixture of oral history and scrapbook (there are 125 photos, including many of the photogenic Fertig), a wide variety of today’s senior authors express nostalgia for a time when writing and literary publishing were flourishing in the city as never before (or since?). The poet Sharon Thesen writes that whenever she recalls the Storefront she thinks “of Gastown and of the smell of patchouli and dope (a great fragrance combo I miss) and a great caring for poetry. It was where I did my first reading.”

Interspersed among such events as hers were appearances by an odd assortment of famous U.S. and British visitors, not to mention Canadians from Away—Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, and their peers. The juxtaposition of the local and the far-flung wasn’t accidental. Trevor Carolan has done a fine job of making a text from such a mountain of miscellaneous information. He points out that Fertig’s inspirations were Sylvia Beach’s famous bookshop in Paris and Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s in San Francisco. These two influences, when mixed, resulted in literary experimentation and a concern for social justice. The Storefront did much to help gay and lesbian writers, for instance, and worked closely with the Writers’ Union of Canada and other such organizations.

So what was the cause of death? One generation eventually grew exhausted and the next had different tastes. Carolan writes: “The university literature students, theatre fans and teachers who were drawn to the higher-calibre events were less likely to have time to dedicate themselves as volunteers…[while still other people] were alienated by what they felt was a more urban, autocratic direction.” The key word there is urban. Modern Vancouver has always struggled with courting urbanism while despising it. That’s why people go to the Orpheum to hear the VSO and applaud between movements.

A launch for The Literary Storefront will be held at the central branch of the Vancouver Public Library on November 30.