Lois Pollard
Published: 2011
Total Pages: 0
Get eBook
"In March 1981, The Toronto Star's Today Magazine asked its readers to nominate 100 praiseworthy things, the best in their category anywhere in Canada. Highway Book Shop was nominated as the Best Bookstore. Other writers have noted that from its small beginning in job printing, Highway Book Shop became one of the largest independent book stores in Canada, and a tourist attraction in its own right. It is also credited as a promoter and preserver of local history and culture, and for this and other reasons, its founder and proprietor Dr. Douglas C. Pollard was awarded membership in the Order of Canada, October 23, 2008.Unique in its character, with its policies grounded in service to the reading public, it attracted four generations of customers who returned year after year. This is the story from its beginnings told by Lois Pollard while the pieces of the story exist intact, undamaged by time. The Tri-Town area comprises the City of Temiskaming Shores (formerly New Liskeard, Haileybury and Dymond Township) and Cobalt. Its location is approximately 150 kilometers or about 95 miles north of North Bay on Highway 11. Highway Book Shop has been referred to jokingly as bearing the address 300,000 Yonge Street, because if you follow Toronto's Yonge Street straight north you will eventually find yourself on Highway 11.The book includes an extensive Appendix which includes a series of the floor plans depicting how the Book Shop expanded over the years, a listing of the over 300 individual authors published by HBS over the years, and a listing of the 460+ book titles they published. Many have asked how and why a small enterprise could have pursued its way steadily into the internet age, as though a strange phenomenon had occurred. We present some of the answers in this history of an unexpected, unique book shop and publishing house in northern Ontario."--Www.wmpub.ca/1033-HBS.htm.