Literary Toronto

Stepping out of the St. Lawrence Market, I stumbled as Toronto’s trademark wind gusts hurled around a freezing rain. The 200-year-old market tipped into the edge of a shabby former warehouse district obviously in the embryo period of gentrification. Through the drizzle, a modest sign on an old brick building proclaimed it to be the headquarters of the Toronto Opera Company.
There, I almost turned back. I was cold. My feet were wet. And in my backpack was a fat new Wayne Johnston novel, a Newfoundland author made for rainy afternoons. I wanted a cushy seat and something hot to drink. Besides, the area touted as the Old Distillery Historic District was probably just a bland collection of tired shops. Why bother? I grumbled. But I was on a mission.
Faced with driving sleet and biting wind that morning, I’d looked outside and thought, “Today is a day that requires coffee shops. Coffee shops with great mochas and no hurry.” But for the coffee shop to be complete, it needed a book. Not the novel I’d brought with me. No. Coffee shops in places away from home cry for books that had been sniffed out from a city’s very own bookstores, with their very regional selection of books.
And juicy book shops, luckily, abound in Toronto, enough to make travelers forget about their numb hands and wet shoes. The prospect of a new book followed by a hot, comforting beverage made being wet and cold almost bearable.

Sniffing around the Northern End
Elliot’s is the kind of second-hand bookstore that makes readers greedy. Three stories of narrow aisles with tall bookshelves hold a minimum of dust among a maximum of tidiness. Mouthwatering leather-bound editions of classics fill floor-to-ceiling shelves by the door, giving way reassuringly to compressed rows of trade paperbacks. This is the place to find old travel guides, modern bestsellers, and a mix of Canadian classics.
Closer to downtown, This Aint’ the Rosedale Library lives up to its name: eclectic. With awards lining its ceiling advertising “Toronto’s Best Independent Bookstore,” it really smelled of books. That fresh paper smell, a slight hint of glue and its promise of literary adventures.
Narrow, sagging shelves, books everywhere, books stacked on the floor in piles, on chairs, but in a strangely organized fashion. Not a store where you couldn’t find anything. A store where you could find anything, including a great selection of lesser-known children’s books and a large transgender and gay section. A store where you could discover a collection of children’s fables by Margaret Atwood and trot with it down to the nearest drinkable chocolate outlet, which I’d passed on the way.
Second Cup, a warm Starbucks-type chain all over the city, has some of the frothiest, delectable mochas I’ve ever tasted outside of France. Inside information informs me that Second Cup also participates in the worldwide Cup of Excellence, a Fair-Trade-type organization that focuses on paying independent farmers a premium for growing the highest quality Arabica beans. The do-gooder participation just lent extra warmth as my jeans began to dry.
Lettieri, also dotting the city, is more chic, more hip than Second Cup. Its hot chocolates are just as good, and its espresso comes in tiny glass cups that just beg to be sipped out of. Sit down with a mug of this, a sparkling water, and a book, and you can stay happily snowed- or rained-in for hours.


Gorging in Old Town
Nicholas Hoare’s bookshop is a feast. An independent seller of new books, its shop is wide and spacious, with appropriately resounding hardwood floors. It’s described as a great place to get coffee table books, but that doesn’t detract from its collections of others, especially nonfiction.
Nicholas Hoare sets up a literary smorgasbord by facing books outward, shamelessly flashing readers with the cover of nearly every book they carry.
The practice brought a new meaning to browsing. I don’t think I’ve ever browsed a bookstore more thoroughly in my life. Even books I’d already read looked different facing out among others on the polished wood shelves, orchestrated with a Vivaldi concerto. I roamed among the menu items until I finally picked up Wayne Johnston’s The Custodian of Paradise, which hadn’t yet been published in the States, and moved back into the rain, to find the much-touted Distillery Historic District.

Chocolate Salvation
Derelict buildings cornered the historic area’s main intersection. Huge green shutters sagged closed under old brick archways. Deciding that the historic area was also in the embryo stage of tourist development, I almost turned away when I saw a shy iron gate and guardhouse across the road. The gray drizzle almost obscured the sign that pointed out the pedestrian entrance to the Distillery district.
There is something tremendously romantic about old brick warehouse areas. Cities that take their renovation in hand carefully—highlighting the history as well as the warm beauty of the buildings while making them modernly accessible—deserve an award.
Toronto is such a city. The stumpy buildings were renovated with a minimum of interference, the old brick maintained, the signs for galleries and cafes small and attractive. The brick streets, even in the rain, felt almost cozy. And it came up trumps. In my halfhearted search for a cup of tea, a polite arrow pointed the way to freezing drizzle salvation: Soma, chocolate maker.
This was not just hot chocolate, not just a mocha. The spicy cup of Mayan hot cocoa on a cold day was an exploration. The scent of chili and cinnamon pervaded Soma’s open space with proudly exposed brick walls. Behind huge glass windows, in the ‘chocolate laboratory,’ two young women poured sauce, cut bars, and coated orange peels with the slow movements and laughing exchanges of people who love their job.
The chocolate drove away cold and a drudgerious walk with a relaxing warmth that was a nod to its Huxley namesake. It restored better spirits for exploring the walkways in the unending rain.
In sprawling Toronto, perseverance is well rewarded: among the galleries touting local artists and craftsmen, the Distillery’s developers had added a slosh of whimsy. Lesser-known quotes from famous names ran along outer walls, brightening the chocolate-lightened day still further: “Nobody has ever walked into a store intending to buy bread and coming out with just that,” Erma Bombeck. “People who live within their means lack imagination,” Oscar Wilde. Temptingly true.
Toronto is for lingering, for warming, for getting you through wretched afternoons full of freezing drizzle and wind. Find your appetizer at a bookstore and hide on a cushy seat with a hot drink while the weather does its worst.