Tag: Bookstores

A Misty Halifax Morning @ Trident Booksellers and Café

Interior of a bookstore featuring wooden bookshelves filled with various books, an antique clock stand, and a small reading area with chairs and tables.

Photo: Author

It’s a misty, coolish Monday morning, and I am sipping a cappuccino at a table in the Trident Café, technically Trident Booksellers and Café, on Hollis Street, Halifax, NS. We are just a block or so away from the harbour and its spectacular four-kilometre boardwalk. A soft cantata breaks the silence along with muted keyboard tapping from several people, including me, studiously staring at their laptops. I am surrounded by shelves of books, most of them well-read. There could not be a more conducive atmosphere for creativity. The barista working the espresso machine, herself a published author she tells me as she pulls one of her works from a shelf, explains how it all works. Someone arrives early to do the baking (there is a full kitchen at the back of the store) so the offerings, both gluten-free and “regular”, are always fresh. As I glance around the two rooms, one with a few tables hidden in the stacks, the other more café-like, I take in the posters for upcoming activities; a book club, an improv night, a musical duo and, naturally, a book launch. What a great place to do it.

Trident has been in business for over 30 years and seems to fit in perfectly with the neighbourhood, which is a mix of old wooden homes, aging brick buildings and some new chichi residential blocks that nevertheless fit into the streetscape. The Westin Nova Scotian, built in the style of the grand old Canadian railway hotels by Canadian National Railways (CN) in 1928, is within sight as is the Halifax Railway Station. This is the end of the line for VIA Rail’s transcontinental service, remarkably still running to this day from Vancouver to Halifax, via Toronto and Montreal. The hotel, which served as a casino and then university dorm in the 1980s after CN offloaded it, was almost demolished but saved when Westin took it over. Nearby is the beginning of the harbour boardwalk, and the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21, Canada’s equivalent to Ellis Island. While Halifax is still a terminal for passenger ships (I can catch a glimpse of a Norwegian Cruise Line colossus towering over the waterside buildings), immigrants today arrive by plane.

Back at Trident, I browse the eclectic collection of used books; cooking, Buddhism, travel, fiction and non-fiction. Trident offers a few new books in partnership with the University of King’s College bookstore. Kings, which dates back to 1789, is the oldest chartered university in Canada and the oldest English language university in the Commonwealth outside the UK. (Laval University in Quebec City predates it by about 130 years but did not get a charter until fifty years after Kings). King’s is now affiliated with Dalhousie University, est 1818, the largest and most intensive research-oriented university in Atlantic Canada.

The presence of Dalhousie, along with three other universities in addition to King’s, cement Halifax’s reputation as a centre of learning. Along with its New England-style architecture, this is another similarity it shares with its southern cousin, Boston, MA. It was from Boston that a fleet of 170 ships evacuated British troops and Loyalist civilians to Halifax in March 1776 after a prolonged siege by George Washington’s Continental Army. The Halifax Citadel, originally built in 1749 to protect against a French attack was subsequently rebuilt and strengthened in light of ongoing tensions with the new republic to the south. Halifax is also linked indirectly to the expulsion of the Acadians from the nearby Annapolis Valley, an event I wrote about last year. Governor Cornwallis, based in Halifax, ordered their deportation because of suspicions regarding their loyalty and their unwillingness to swear allegiance to the British Crown. At least that is one interpretation of “the facts”. The wounds are still raw.

That’s the general background to the establishment of Halifax, where Trident Book Café is located. It seems to perfectly reflect this historic city and its neighbourhood, offering food for the body and food for thought. The next time you are visiting Halifax, as I was, why not drop in? I have written about how iconic bookstores have become tourist destinations in their own right. The Trident is one more good reason to visit this fascinating city.

© Hugh Stephens, 2026. All Rights Reserved.

Bespoke Bookstore Tourism? Why Not? People Visit Gardens, Museums and Battlefields

Interior view of an ornate library with high wooden archways, numerous bookshelves, and visitors milling about. Busts line the walls, highlighting the historical significance of the space.

The Old Library: Trinity College, Dublin (Photo: Author)

Last month I published a guest column (Literary Pilgrimages: How Iconic Independent Bookstores are Becoming Travel Destinations) volunteered by reader Jennifer Mark who discussed how independent bookstores (or “bookshops” if you are from the other side of the Pond) are adding to their offerings to attract customers and survive. The enticements include offering a range of refreshments from coffee and tea with scones, to wine and beer, as well as providing interesting venues that are destinations in themselves. The writer’s interest had been piqued by my recent blog post highlighting the “Harry Potter” bookstore in Porto, Portugal, Livraria Lello, which my wife and I visited earlier this year. Lello, aided by a somewhat tenuous connection to the Boy Wizard given that JK Rowling lived in Porto for a short time while writing the first of the Potter books, has become a tourist attraction in its own right. It is even able to charge admission, a welcome new revenue stream. Jennifer took this a step further and wrote about the culinary attractions of some of the most interesting bookstores in the US, UK and Australia, and referenced booktowns in Japan and Argentina. It made me realize that bookstore tourism is definitely a “thing”. If you Google it, a cornucopia of information will spill forth. Not surprisingly, (since there is not much that is “new” these days), this concept has been around for a while.

It seems the idea of arranging customized tours to select bookstores for booklovers was first commercialized by Pennsylvania-based writer Larry Portzline, who wrote a book about it back in 2004. (Bookstore Tourism: The Book Addict’s Guide To Planning & Promoting Bookstore Road Trips For Bibliophiles & Other Bookshop Junkies). According to Portzline’s website;

“I first began leading “bookstore road trips” to New York City in 2003. I’d load 50 people on a chartered bus in Harrisburg, PA, and we’d spend the day visiting the 20 or so indie bookshops in and around Greenwich Village…I promoted the concept with a website, a blog, podcasts, and even a how-to book….Bookstore Tourism eventually grew into a grassroots effort in various locations around the U.S. It was never huge, but there was a nice ripple of interest and support.… I think Bookstore Tourism could rise again…It offers nothing but benefits: to the organizations that sponsor them, to the bookselling and travel industries, to literacy and reading efforts…”

Well said, Larry.

It looks as if Bookstore Tourism is back, whether it means visits to famous bookstores around the world or trips to “booktowns”, where no one bookstore is the destination but rather the collection of browsing options available, usually in a smaller but quaint and well situated (i.e. not too far from major population centres) town. The “book town” concept appears to have been first conceived in the 1970’s in Hay-on-Wye, Wales. It all started with a bookseller named Richard Booth in 1962, who opened his first bookstore in Hay-on-Wye’s old fire station. He subsequently opened six bookstores in the town, one in a ramshackle Norman castle, others in old warehouses. This critical mass led to others to open their own bookshops, over 30 in all. After becoming known as the world’s first booktown, Hay-on-Wye’s role as the place for literary mavens to gather was further cemented by the launch of its well known annual Literary Festival, which began in the late 1980s and continues to this day. It has provided new economic life for a small Welsh village of just 1500 residents. The idea has caught on as a means of revitalizing small towns that may have previously had an industrial base (one industry towns where the industry is long gone) but are now looking for new ways to attract tourists and visitors. In fact, there is even an association of booktowns, which, interestingly, does not seem to include Hay-on-Wye although it attributes the idea to Booth.

While there are all kinds of innovative ideas out there to attract patrons to bookstores and booktowns, it is still a challenging environment for many in the industry. A recent blog reported that there are now about 20 bookstores in Hay-on-Wye; at one point there were as many as 38. There was the onslaught of online booksellers, led by Amazon, that was supposed to kill the industry. It didn’t, and the innovation and entrepreneurialism of independent booksellers helps explain why, but it is still a struggle with many ups and downs. In the UK, the Bookseller.com reports that the number of independent bookshops slightly declined in 2024, continuing the previous year’s downward trend but still well above the 2016 low. Despite the small decline, almost 50 new independent bookshops opened in 2024 in Britain. In the US, the story is slightly different. According to this AP article, the number of members of the  American Booksellers Association has doubled since 2016, to almost 3000 members, but as Jennifer Mark pointed out in her blog on Literary Pilgrimages, store owners have had to be creative to survive.

In Canada, it appears that indies are hanging on but face a tough market, including potential new challenges from threatened Canadian tariff retaliation against Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canadian goods. The idea of creating a booktown in Canada has also been tried. At one point, Sidney, BC, just north of Victoria, had a dozen book outlets, several of them owned by the same couple, Clive and Christine Tanner. Sidney was also marketed as a book town. Those days are past, and there are now just a couple, although Sidney continues to be a great place to visit for other reasons.

But what about bespoke bookstore tourism for well-heeled book lovers who have already been on safari, visited Antarctica and done all those Viking river cruises? After all, there are specialized garden tours, museum tours, art gallery tours, history and battlefield tours, culinary (foodie) tours, wine tours (of course), but apparently no bookstore tours.  I tried to find a travel agency that offers tailored tours for booklovers but couldn’t identify any. Larry Portzline’s idea has never really taken off. Now there is a travel niche to be exploited! For now, booklovers may have to settle for a virtual tour. A good one can be obtained from “1000 Libraries”, a publisher that is marketing a glossy coffee table took featuring “The Most Beautiful Book Places in the World”. (The book looks pretty good on the website but I have not actually seen one; this is not a paid announcement).

Maybe virtual bookstore tourism is not such a bad alternative. After all, much of the pleasure of a book is to be able to visit places and enjoy stories from the comfort of your armchair/deckchair/chaise longue or wherever you choose to read. However, buying that book in an interesting place and having a memorable experience doing so adds to the enjoyment. A book can be forever and if you have the added benefit of a sight, sound, taste or smell sensation when buying it, I can guarantee that it will mean even more to you.

© Hugh Stephens, 2025. All Rights Reserved.