Village Squire, 1974-06, Page 41Love
and knowledge
of books
go together
to make
Fanfare Books
an exciting
bookstore
Ellen Stafford leans against a railing overlooking trees in blossom and the Avon
If your ideal book store' is a brightly lit,
supermarket -like store with row on row of
books sold like canned goods, then don't
expect to enjoy Fanfare Books in Stratford.
That's NOT Ellen Stafford's idea of a
bookstore.
When Mrs. Stafford opened her book store
in a tiny sliver of a shop (9 feet by 25 feet) in
Stratford seven years ago she -wanted to have
a "personal bookshop", the kind of bookstore
that reflects the interests and tastes of the
owner while still catering to the varied tastes
of the public.
"The problem is that there are so few book
shops as such, or certainly very few personal
bookshops outside of the large cities." Mrs.
Stafford calls herself a book pusher not a
businesswoman who decided to start a
bookstore. She is in Stratford, she says, not
because she saw a good business opportunity
but because she decided she wanted to live in
that city.
She admits there have been times when she
wondered about the wisdom of living
Stratford such as when "they ran a truck
route past my door." In fact some people in
S*' tford probably know more of Mrs.
Stafford as the lady who takes on city hall
rather than the quiet book pusher. First there
was the issue of the truck traffic through the
centre of town, then she helped organize the
opposition to the plan to tear down the old city
hall and now she and the city don't see eye to
eye over the need for additional parking to
serve her new location in a former duplex
overlooking the Avon River. City officials
want her to give more offstreet parking, a
move she resisted because it would destroy a
lovely garden where she wants to serve tea to
guests during the summer months.
Mrs. Stafford confesses she has had a life
long love affair...with books, starting with
liking books as a very small child and through
reading all her life. Then she "drifted" into
editorial work, with book publishers and then
into a job as public relations officer for the
Book Publisher's Association of Canada. That
was the job that led her into her second love
affair, a love for Stratford. As part of her job
she came to Stratford every summer to put on
an' exhibit that the publishers used to have
every summer of books on the arts,
Shakespeare, etc.
"From my visits here every summer I
found I was more and more reluctant every
time I went back to Toronto and I thought
'what can I do to support myself in Stratford?'
because I was a writer and editor and so on
and there aren't too many opportunities for
that sort of think in Stratford. And then I
realized they had no book store in Stratford."
So, with her experience with books, she
decided to start a bookstore, and since then
she says she has been happy because she got
away from Toronto and to Stratford which is
"delightful in summer and only intolerable in
the worst of the winter months when I can go
away and do some writing."
When the snow becomes unbearable shy•
heads for Mexico where she recuperates and
writes. She has already published one book
from these winter stints called "Stratford,
Around and About" which is a guide to
Stratford visitors to the history of the
community, the Festival, interesting shops,
places to stay and eat and interesting places
to visit in the city and the surrounding
countryside This winter she will spend her
VILLAGE SQUIRE/JUNE 1974, 3