Duthie's staff

When Carol Dale joined Duthie’s, she recalls, “The first question Bill asked me was, ‘How are your feet?’ I think he had someone working there at that time whose feet gave out at about three every afternoon. I told him that I thought my feet were fine. So then he asked, ‘How’s your handwriting?’ I’d expected him to ask if I had any experience, but feet and handwriting were on his mind. So that was that.”

Carol Dale, Jane Flick, Bob, Gloria Kavanagh, David Hutchinson and Paul Schussler; some of the many storied Duthies' staff from the early days.

Bill & Binky

"I don’t think that you can change the customer’s taste. What you can do is make the effort to stock good books. It sounds simple, doesn’t it?

We’re just trying to run good independent bookstores, that’s all. Is it worth it? Who knows? Do we make any money? No."
Bill Duthie

Uncle D

David Duthie, Bill’s brother, arrived in Vancouver in 1961. A few days later, he began working at the Robson store, with Bill, Binky, Jane Redpath, and Ivy Mickelson. He moved to the first Tenth Avenue store when it opened in 1962 and came to be known to everyone as Uncle D.

Bill, David, Binky, and Don MacKinnon celebrated Duthie’s fifth anniversary by attending Lenny Bruce’s first and only performance in Canada. David remembers Bruce reaching down and taking his G&T from the table “and the bastard never gave it back”. The police closed the show down later that night.

Paperback Cellar

"... running a paperback department is largely a matter of getting new titles on the shelves as quickly as possible, and keeping the stock of standard titles up to the demand...All this sounds simple enough, but is it? There is only one answer: try it and find out for yourself.

—Bill Duthie, “How to Plan a Paperback Department”, in Quill & Quire

Bill, Binky & Farley Mowat

When Bill decided to invite Binky Marks from the People’s Cooperative Bookstore on Pender to run his paperback department, the book community was startled, even Jim Douglas, a close friend and admirer of Binky’s: “For by now, Duthie’s was clearly the bookstore of choice for the clerisy and the moneyed Vancouverites. Bill always looked elegant and cool and poised. Binky, on the other hand, ran a communist bookstore, scurried about dropping and losing things, and he looked like hell.… But Bill knew, as most of us did, that Binky was a fine bookman and a lovable if eccentric character. Somehow Bill persuaded him to get his teeth fixed and to dress a bit smarter—not a lot, mind you—and the Paperback Cellar with Binky in charge became as fashionable as upstairs.” Jim Douglas

Bill Duthie

One of my dearest memories from the time I started writing books, back in the 1950s, was coming to Vancouver on my promotion tours and talking with Bill Duthie. He was not your average bookseller. Slightly gruff and more than a little overwhelming, he was unique. And what made him so was that he had always read my book before I arrived and that he inevitably had something constructive (which is not necessarily the same as kind) to say about it. This was—and I suspect still is—most unusual.

Peter C. Newman

Bookmarks

Tak Tanabe was a good friend of Bill's and over the years he designed bookmarks, invitations and other ephemera - (including the very handsomely produced Klanak Press books which were published by Duthie’s lawyer, William McConnell), and printed them in many colours on his own hand press.

Over the 53 years of book selling Duthies produced over 20 million bookmarks by many different artists, designers, typographers, and printers, from the fine hand presswork of Tak Tanabe and Barbarian Press to enormous runs of 200,000 at our sainted printer, Don Atkins.

A collection of them - 'Duthie's Bookmarks' - has been handsomely published by The Alcuin Society, designed and produced by Robert Reid.

First Christmas Catalogue

Bill Duthie appreciated fine design and typography. He employed and encouraged many visual artists over the years, to design bookmarks and catalogues. Bob Reid was the first serious book designer in Vancouver. He designed and cut the letters for Duthie's first letterhead in 1957 and designed his first Christmas catalogue.

It commended Bruce Hutchison’s Canada: Tomorrow’s Giant; a new edition of Donald Creighton’s Dominion of the North, and Marjorie Wilkins Campbell’s “exciting” chronicle of the North West Company; then added that “Mazo de la Roche, who is certainly one of Canada’s best-known authors, has written her autobiography, Ringing the Changes, $5.00, and very pleasantly too.”

Bookmark by Tak Tanabe, 1958

Original Duthie bookstore at 901 Robson

“Startlingly for Canada,” Quill & Quire noted, “[Duthie] had in architects, the firm of Watkins and
(GEOFF) Massey, and had the place designed specifically for selling books ..."



The original bookstore was at the corner of Robson and Hornby from 1957 till 1966.

Bill (WJ) Duthie

Bill Duthie opened the first Duthie Bookstore n 1957 at 901 Robson Street beside the newly opened Vancouver Public Library. "Early on in my publishing career, I decided that I would be better off running a bookstore. But then I had to decide where to do it. I came out here to live in ’53, to be a resident rep for Macmillan, but I had told John Gray that I intended to open my own store here. He said I should get one near the new library. He always believed that people who use libraries use bookstores."
—Bill Duthie

“There was a loud banging on the front door. I opened it to find the one individual who had given me even the slightest encouragement, a droll, book-loving travelling salesman for Macmillan and McClelland and Stewart He knew more about books than anyone I had ever met, and his advice was enormously helpful. A year later I was able to return the favour. Bill knew little about the business end of retailing, and I was able to to be of much assistance to him when he planned his first store in Vancouver. I convinced Bill that he must have a cash register, something he resisted strenuously.”
Mel Hurtig, bookseller, publisher & writer



Bill always said that it was 'a sign of intelligence to move west', meaning the coast, and in 1953 Bill, Macie, David (1949), and Celia (1950) packed up the old chevy and drove west across the prairies and badlands to Vancouver. The family settled, with baby Cathy (1954), in Caulfeild and Bill established himself as the first resident book rep in Vancouver. His agency later passed to Jim Douglas, Scott McIntyre, Nicholas Hunt, Mark Stanton , Allen McDougal and now Kate Walker.