The Toronto Women’s Bookstore is in danger of closing.  If that happens, the whole city loses. Not just women, not just the people who buy books or attend workshops and readings or are served by the TWB outreach programs. We all lose. In Toronto, outside Toronto, across the country. Because every institution, every facility and service, wherever it happens to be, creates a ripple effect—positive or negative—on both the immediate community and society in general. 

If the TWB closes we don’t just lose another book store, we lose one of society’s positive ripples and risk making (yet more) room for the less valuable, the innocuous, the downright toxic…

It’s up to us which way things go.

If, one by one, we let these tiny positive influences on our society disappear in favour of giant homogenized nothings that cajole us by slick marketing to fill our lives with indigestible dreck that only dulls our minds with the addiction of wanting more, we’ll have—if not what we need—certainly what we deserve.

And their pockets will be full.  Because that, of course, is their bottom—their only—line. 

The choices we make, where we choose to spend our money is what determines what stays and what goes. It’s we that build our neighbourhoods, cities and societies.

This isn’t just about a bookstore, it’s about creating the kind of world we want to live in and the power of individuals to influence that world. The TWB is simply the latest canary in the coal mine.

HOW TO HELP.