[URBAN NOTE] "Francophone bookstore aims to fill ‘void' in Toronto’s literary landscape"

[rfmcdonald]

Jillian Kestler-D’Amours at the Toronto Star shares the exciting news that a Québec chain hopes to open up a French-language bookstore in collaboration with the Alliance Française.

Christophe Gagnon-Lavoie, co-owner of La Librairie du Quartier in Quebec City, told the Star that Toronto is an ideal place to open the shop, which would be the only exclusively French-language bookstore in the city.

The GTA, he said, is home to a sizeable francophone community (numbering almost 125,000 in 2011) and many Francophiles and French-language students.

“There is certainly a place, we think, for a small bookstore of French books in Toronto,” he said.

The project is being facilitated by the Alliance Française de Toronto, executive director Thierry Lasserre told the Star, and the future library will be housed at the group’s downtown building at 24 Spadina Rd.

“The francophone bookstore project at the Alliance is a project that I’ve been working on for the past six or eight months,” Lasserre said.