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Westmount Book Fair celebrates 20 years

This Sunday, the Westmount Book Fair turns 20.

Since 1992, Wilfrid de Freitas has brought together fellow antiquarian booksellers from Quebec and Ontario at Westmount’s Selwyn House School to show off a number of gems from their stock of rare books, collectible prints, and maps. In an interview with the Westmount Examiner‘s Wayne Larsen, de Freitas points out that the Westmount Book Fair is one of just two rare book fairs in Montreal, which makes the event’s 20th anniversary all the more momentous:

“The year 2012 is notable for many things: the tercentenary of the birth of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Dickens, the centenary of the sinking of the Titanic, the semi-centenary of the Beatles’ first single, ‘Love me Do,’” he quipped. “And, more pertinently for Montreal book lovers, the 20th anniversary of the Westmount Antiquarian Book Fair.”

This year’s fair, which de Freitas has dubbed “Canada’s smallest book fair,” will feature the first detailed printed map of Montreal, circa 1879, as well as first editions of books by authors such as Dickens, Leonard Cohen, Stephen Leacock and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

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