50 years later, The Word Bookstore has outlived every prediction

Big box bookstores promised on-trend coffee and comfy chairs. Amazon promised two-day delivery. The Word promised… books. Half a century later, it’s pretty clear who kept their promise.

It's a place where people come to lose time, not save it: Tucked inside a slouching, teal-green building on Milton Street, with no sign and a rotary phone still stubbornly clanging away, The Word didn’t survive the death of bookstores by reinventing itself. It survived by remembering what it was supposed to be.

It’s not so much a store as it is a living, breathing archive curated by those who run it. It's also a small act of defiance against everything that says faster is better to others. If you walk down Milton today, you’ll still find its crooked awning, book-lined windows, slightly too-crowded aisles that slow even the most frantic shopper to a crawl. Next to nothing digital, no glossy merchandise wall—just the quiet creak of floors, the scent of ink and old pages, and 20,000 titles shelved with intuitive precision.

Cheap, bohemian, rough around the edges

When Adrian King-Edwards and this then-partner Luci Friesen opened The Word in 1975, they just loved books. First operating out of their apartment next door, then in the old Chinese laundromat at 469 Milton where they're still found today, they became a small hub: They were hosting poetry readings, selling a few titles off the side. Somehow, that turned into a business, a business that never got bigger than it needed to be, and never drifted from its reason for existing.

Milton-Parc was a different place back then. Cheap, bohemian, a bit rough around the edges, hippies once wandered around barefoot and students lived in ramshackle apartments for $100 a month. Rents have since climbed and the hippies have traded in for condo ownership, but The Word hasn’t budged. Just an old wooden sign to announce itself and word of mouth among a rotating cast of students, professors, artists, and locals who’ve kept the door swinging open for fifty years.

And what a fifty years: The Word has survived the rise (and some would say fall) of big box chains, the brief panic e-readers brought to the industry, the dominance of Amazon, a pandemic, and the kind of cultural shift that has made bookstores feel almost exotic. But where other stores have pivoted if not scrambled to keep up by adding coffee bars, lifestyle merch, and loyalty apps, The Word kept doing what it had always done.

“Serve the community,” says Brendan King-Edwards, who now helps his father steward the shop into its next chapter. “We just kept paying attention to what people were looking for.”

The Word today is still a family operation at its core. Adrian remains deeply involved, though much of the day-to-day rhythm now falls to Brendan. They’re joined by Donna Jean-Louis—Adrian’s second wife—whose expertise in art books, collectible children’s literature, and event organizing has quietly expanded the shop’s reach. Longtime bookseller Scott Moodie, a fixture behind the counter and the eye behind the store’s window displays, has worked at The Word since 1991.

If you ask Brendan why they outlasted the doom-and-gloom predictions that physical books would vanish, he doesn’t mince words: “We never took it all that seriously. Every new generation—every twenty-year-old—kept coming in and buying books. It never really made sense to us that paper books were going to die out.”

In fact, if anything, the opposite has happened.

There's resilience in people

“People twenty years ago would’ve said independent bookstores wouldn’t exist today,” Brendan says. “And now, they’re popping up everywhere. It’s actually a great time for independent bookstores.”

That doesn’t mean running a secondhand shop has gotten any easier. In a city where rents climb fast, and even the price of a used paperback can seem suspect, staying alive has meant being nimble without being flashy. “It’s a niche thing,” Brendan admits. “But secondhand stores—whether it’s books or vintage clothes—they’re booming right now. Younger people are way more interested in buying secondhand than ever before.”

Part of The Word’s resilience comes from its collaboration with its customers, a feedback loop that’s been in place since the very beginning. “Many of the books we get come from our customers,” Brendan says. “If you’re a professor clearing out your office, for example, you want the books you loved to find another life. People are very conscious of that. They’re not just trying to make a few bucks. They want to see these books keep going.”

It’s a slow, analogue ecosystem that feels almost radical now: people selling their own libraries back into circulation, buyers picking up volumes worn with history, a kind of unspoken community stitched together through spines and margins. “Every book has a story,” Brendan says. “And even if it’s not a rare edition, there’s still provenance. There’s still a life behind it.”

Of course, rare books do pass through their hands, and Brendan lights up when asked about standouts. “The first thing I think of? A signed first edition of Leonard Cohen’s first poetry collection. He was still a student at McGill when he published it. When you hold something like that — knowing there’s maybe five hundred or a thousand copies in existence — it’s special. It’s a historical document.”

A landmark of 50 years looking 50 years ahead

Talk to Brendan long enough, and it becomes clear that the atmosphere has become the greatest things of value, even more so than a signed first edition in pristine condition. “People walk through the doors and immediately move slower,” he says. “I think we all really need that, a third space where you’re not being sold to. Where you’re not being rushed along to the next thing.”

That atmosphere is built on an almost stubborn refusal to over-modernize. Yes, there’s now a website, an Instagram account, even limited e-commerce for loyal customers who’ve moved away. But inside the store, cash still rules. The rotary phone still rings. There’s still no Interac machine at the counter.

“It’s part of the ecosystem,” Brendan explains. “We’re buying and selling books all day long. Cash makes that a lot easier. And people get it—they understand it helps us keep the prices reasonable.”

Speaking of ecosystems, managing the shop seems more like tending a living organism as Brendan continues. “It’s a collaborative project. We’ve shaped the space, sure, but the space is constantly changing too—based on the community.”

It’s paradoxical: a place that seems like it’s never changed, but is in fact quietly evolving all the time.

If the 50th anniversary bash in mid-April of 2025 proved anything, it’s that the store’s gravitational pull is only getting stronger. A crowd spilled out onto Milton Street—readers, neighbours, old friends and new faces—celebrating not just a business but a refuge.

“At times,” Brendan admits, “it strikes me that we’re actually a landmark. And people develop a strong emotional attachment to landmarks.”