The younger generation is helping a longstanding St. Albert business start a new chapter.
Despite Bailey Books having been situated in the Riel neighbourhood for more than a decade, only recently did it start to open its doors regularly to the public.
Barry Bailey opened the shop in 2002 at the urging of his wife, who was tired of her husband’s side gig selling books taking over the family’s basement.
The new space allowed Barry’s passion to expand into the art of binding and repairing, leading him to learn from the American Academy of Bookbinding.
Even as his hobby became his full-time job, Barry rarely needed to open his doors on Rowland Crescent, dealing mainly online and in commission work.
Now, Bailey Books is on Instagram and TikTok.
“We went from I’m hardly open to — here we are — open five days a week. And we have regular customers. It’s thriving,” Barry said in a recent interview.
“We still sell online, but now here at Bailey Books, we have a very vibrant walk-in business and that’s thanks to our youngest daughter, Lisa.”
Lisa was in Grade 10 when her dad opened the store. A voracious reader, she’d often hang out at the shop. When she moved away, Barry mailed her books.
“I always kind of thought that I would take over the mantle,” she recalled.
But she was living in Vancouver when the owner of the building decided to sell it.
Toward the end of the six months Barry had been given to decide what to do, Lisa announced she was moving home and wanted to run the bookstore with her dad.
“I was literally this close to shutting it down,” he recalled, holding two fingers an inch apart.
They bought the space and have since worked to modernize the business.
The next chapter
“It’s funny because when I first came in, I wanted to change everything about the store. I was like, ‘We need to paint. We need to change this. It needs to look different,’” Lisa told CTV News Edmonton. “I realized that there is actually so much charm in the way the store is now. It kind of has the antique-store vibe. All of our shelves don’t match. There’s Dad’s weird memorabilia all over the place.”
She continued, “When you picture a bookstore in a fairy tale where they go into a bookstore and then something magical happens, it’s this kind of store.”
More than a makeover, she concluded the store needed some life breathed into it. Literal life. Shopping hours and customers. Themed book clubs several times a month. A social media presence.
“People love Dad’s book binding. It’s a bit of a blow to the ego that Dad’s videos do way better than mine on social media,” Lisa chuckled.
“It’s a good thing he can’t see the comments, or he would get a huge ego.”
Barry’s book binding and repair work is especially popular. Most of the projects he takes on have sentimental, rather than monetary, value: family Bibles, favourite childhood stories, cookbooks that have been passed down several generations.
“It’s very rewarding... We did a repair where there was an inscription in the book from her late father. We were so touched that we were able to preserve that memory for her and keep it alive,” Lisa said.
She plans to follow in her father’s footsteps and study book binding and repair, too.
“We live in a world where the mentality is just buy a new one when it breaks. I even get that comment on TikTok... But I think that there’s a beauty in repairing and preserving things,” she said.
Of the technical process, her dad noted, “It teaches you patience because if you forget a step, and you get down four or five steps later, you go, ‘Oh.’ Oftentimes, you have to go back and start again.”
He’s not retiring yet. Both dad and daughter enjoy working together.
“I love learning from him and I really love the community that we’re building,” Lisa said.
“It’s been awesome. I get to work with my daughter and I get to see the book store carry on for another generation,” Barry said.
“This is the perfect ending.”
With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Connor Hogg
