McNally to fill book shelves in big-box suburban Toronto

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/04/2009 (6386 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A big week is coming up for Winnipeg’s first family of bookselling.

After more than two years of planning, not to mention, blood, sweat, toil and bank loans, Holly and Paul McNally and their daughter Tory are set to unveil their first big-box store in suburban Toronto.

McNally Robinson Booksellers opens Wednesday in the new Shops at Don Mills, located near the intersection of Lawrence Avenue and the Don Mills Parkway in the city’s northeast quadrant.

The 20,000-square-foot two-storey structure (the Grant Park store is now 24,000 square feet) is one of a handful of stand-alone buildings in what developer Cadillac Fairview calls Ontario’s first "outdoor lifestyle centre."

It will be fascinating to see if the McNallys can export their formula, which has succeeded so impressively in Winnipeg and Saskatoon, to a major metropolis.

Their community-based, event-driven strategy gives every author from Margaret Atwood, with her bestselling novel, to Aunt Margaret, with her self-published family history, a chance to appear in public and drive store traffic.

On top of that, their endowment of prizes at the Manitoba Book Awards, their founding of national aboriginal literary prizes, and their Sunday bestseller chart in the Free Press, have accorded them, a private business, the status of a public institution.

One can’t over-praise McNally Robinson’s contribution to the Prairie literary scene, indeed the Prairie arts community in general.

Like the major arts groups, like Corydon Avenue and The Forks, like the museums and art galleries, McNally Robinson has become a destination for the chattering classes.

It is doubtful they can have anywhere near the impact in the Big Smoke. For one, the city already has its own dominant bookseller, Chapters-Indigo, which not only controls the country but has a CEO, Heather Reisman, who is the personification of bookishness at its most glamorous.

(The McNallys have hired some glamour of their own, mind you. The Toronto store’s manager is Rachna Davidar, wife of Penguin Canada publisher and novelist David Davidar.)

The city is also geographically too large for any one store to overshadow. How many people will drive from, say, Mississauga to Don Mills for an author reading?

As much as a downtown location would have appealed to the Richard Florida crowd, the McNallys have learned that you need free parking and suburban proximity to draw traffic to evening book signings.

Witness, of course, the failure of their stores in downtown Winnipeg and even downtown Calgary.

A minor problem may be name recognition. Toronto already has a well-known independent bookseller named Ben McNally, who is no relation.

Between him and the natural tendency (even in Winnipeg after all these years) to confuse McNally Robinson with the American map publisher Rand McNally, thick Torontonians may need some time to figure out where they’re going.

The Toronto store, needless to say, will duplicate many successful features of the Winnipeg and Saskatoon stores, including the upstairs children’s section, a reading alcove and a restaurant (the latter with 80 indoor seats and another 24 on the "outdoor lifestyle" patio).

Amazingly, the restaurant is named Prairie Ink, just as it is here. As Tory explains, sushi has been done in Toronto, and so has Thai. But Prairie, not so much.

They’ve already got a lineup of author events. Toronto publishers are happy to oblige because of the McNallys’ track record here.

No doubt they’ll do just fine and a lot of curious Winnipeggers will check out the store when they’re in Toronto. But if you need a map to find your way, don’t ask Rand McNally.

morley.walker@freepress.mb.ca

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