The owners of this family-run bookshop on Galiano Island (population 1,258) talk about getting bitten by the ‘bookstore bug’ and surreal customer exchanges
- Interview with a Bookstore from Literary Hub is part of the Guardian Books Network
- Scroll down for the staff recommendations shelf
Husband and wife team Lee Trentadue and Jim Schmidt opened Galiano Island Books in 1997, the first ever bookstore on the island. The venture was inspired by one of their daughters, who had decided to open a bookstore of her own and brought them along to the Canadian Booksellers Convention and trade show in Vancouver where they found themselves bitten by the “bookstore bug.” Shortly thereafter, the bookstore their daughter had been in the process of buying fell through when its owner decided to keep it. Lee and James proposed a solution: they would start a store on Galiano Island that she could run for a few years until they were ready to take it over. After they had begun this process, however, the original bookstore owner decided again to sell, and their daughter decided to buy. Lee and James went forward with their plan regardless, and the rest is history: Galiano Island Books has been open seven days a week ever since, with the exception of Christmas and New Year’s.
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