Richard Landon and Martin Ahvenus
When Richard Landon first came to Toronto from British Columbia to take a job in the Rare Books and Special Collections department at the University of Toronto, one of his first stops in the city was the then-famed area known as Gerrard Street Village. Gerrard was Toronto's version of Greenwich Village, full of bohemian life. The street was populated by artists, intellectuals and poets - as well as booksellers, including Village Books, owned by Martin Ahvenus. Village Books became a hub for writers and readers - regulars included Al Purdy and bp Nichol, along with Margaret Atwood (who, according to Richard, Marty called "the great one"), Gwen MacEwen and Joe Rosenblatt.
Richard soon found himself visiting Marty's store, both for the social aspects as well as to purchase materials for the library. They cultivated a deep friendship that lasted until this past autumn when both died within weeks of each other.
To hear a short audio clip of Richard talking about Marty and the shop, please click here.
In 2008, Marty donated his papers to the Fisher. The finding aid to the collection can be accessed by clicking here.
The photo above also includes the writer George Fetherling, whose papers are also held at the Fisher, examing a book table at the Village Book Store booth at an antiquarian book fair. As he writes, about both the photo and Marty's collection:
"The image was taken at the one of the early book fairs when they were held in hotel basements. After looking at the photo, I took a read of Marty’s finding aid. What a trip back in time. It’s been decades since I’d thought of Padraig O'Brian, a presumed Irish playwright who was a regular at the Thursday evenings in Marty’s back room, or Harry Howath, a loud and loudly dressed businessman who believed, mistakenly, that poetry was his calling ... Everybody seems to turn up in that fonds except Marty’s friend and neighbour Tommy Tate, who ran a tiny framing shop called, wait for it, the Tate Gallery. He looked like a tennis pro who hadn’t been sober since 1957, as may well have been the case. The only decent piece of writing about the Gerrard Street Village I’m aware of is Harold Town’s text to a book of Albert Franck’s paintings, published in the 1980s, I believe."
The George Fetherling finding aids can be accessed here.
