I was sorry to see that Q&Q has drawn attention to the recent opinion piece in Calgary’s ffwd entertainment weekly on the departure of McNally Robinson from Calgary. I have recently sent the following letter to ffwd regarding the piece:

I have just caught up with Jeremy Klaszus’ Viewpoint article on
McNally Robinson and the lack of good bookstores in Calgary
(“Bookstore’s Loss Still Stings”—June 1-17). Much as I too lament
the demise of McNally Robinson, I think the thrust of the article is
entirely misplaced. Klaszus blames the owners for telling it like it
is—Calgary does indeed have a record of being unsupportive of
bookstores downtown. To me that is the simple truth. Calgarians in the
city centre tend to stick to the plus 15s when it’s cold and to leave
the downtown after work; that means that business at lunchtime when
it’s sunny has to be almost unbelievably good to support a store the
rest of the time. I’m not privy to McNally Robinson’s financials,
but I do know that the store was often very empty except during sunny
lunchtimes. And yet they stuck it out for six years; by comparison,
Bollum’s Books was able to survive for less than two years after they
opened a large (and also good) independent store downtown in the 1990s. Yes, McNally Robinson’s owners may have made money on the real estate they owned when they sold
(which was well over a year before they closed the store—they did
continue to try to make it work for some time after the sale, renting
the property from its new owner), but that is only tangentially
relevant to the bookstore issue itself. Plenty of people have made
money on Calgary real estate in recent years; if the suggestion is to
be made that making money in this way entails an obligation to lose
large amounts of money on some culturally valuable enterprise, then
that obligation should surely fall equally on all those who have
profited on real estate in the city. And it’s hardly relevant either
that wonderful-but-tiny Pages on Kensington is now thriving outside
the downtown as the only significant independent bookshop in town.
That confirms rather than refutes the suggestion that Calgarians are
not supportive of a good bookstore downtown.
Klaszus attempts to suggest that the warm reception that literary
publisher Freehand Books has received argues in the other direction.
Here I have first-hand knowledge, as the president of Freehand’s
parent, Broadview Press. It’s absolutely true that Freehand has been
warmly received both in Calgary and across Canada. But translating
that warmth into sales large enough to break even, let alone turn a
profit, is incredibly difficult; that’s the plain reality in the
Canadian book business, and Freehand (which lost a significant amount
of money last year) is no exception. Far from deserving vilification,
the McNallys should be thanked for remaining committed to downtown
Calgary for as long as they did. Notably, no local investor has since
been brave enough to make any attempt to start a good bookstore
downtown.
There’s a considerable irony about the way in which Klaszus
brings his argument to a close. A main theme of the article is the
suggestion that Calgarians have been unfairly characterized as
“rednecks” when it comes to things such as the level of support for
downtown bookshops. Not so, suggests Klaszus—but look at the tone in
which he does so: “So screw you, McNally Robinson!” Enough said.

Don LePan
President, Broadview Press / Freehand Books