Every year a Toronto blog looks at the heroes of the past year. For 2010 they have a great collection of people both individuals and groups that made Toronto a better place in 2010.
This year has been cruel to independent booksellers, and for much of 2010, it looked as though the Toronto Women’s Bookstore was doomed to the same bleak fate as its comrade in biblio-cool, This Ain’t the Rosedale Library, which closed its doors in July. After a desperate community request for support in December 2009 was followed by a “so close, but so far away†update in February, it seemed as though the store might be gone for good when it closed “for renovations†in May.
But, as it turned out, the renovation notice wasn’t a stall. The TWB had been sold, and its new owner—former staffer Victoria Moreno—came equipped with visions of reinvention and repair, including the addition of an in-store cafe (with Wi-Fi!), a nice outdoor garden space with seating, a revamped website to increase online sales, and the establishment of community-building social nights and customer purchase tracking to aid in personalized recommendations. Under its new management, the former not-for-profit would also start operations as a traditional for-profit business.