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Mason is the last holdout of the now long-gone Booksellers Row, a stretch of Queen Street West near Spadina, just north of his current location, which once contained over two dozen bookstores. The break-up of the neighbourhood itself has been well-documented: steadily rising rents and the introduction of Internet bookselling have driven away the bookstores over the last 25 years. And while the loss of the used and antiquarian bookstores there and elsewhere in the city has been a blow, a new generation of booksellers has risen up to take on the challenge of peddling used books in the 21st century.

Mason, for his part, has much to say on the history of bookselling. He’s been in the business for 50 years and has become the voice of the Canadian antiquarian and used book trade, regularly contributing articles to Canadian Notes and Queries and other publications. He’s also written a memoir on bookselling, The Pope’s Bookbinder (Biblioasis), now in its second printing.

Mason has watched his colleagues disappear while his own shop has moved five times over the years. He speaks of the change to the neighbourhood with a resignation that all booksellers seem to have these days. “Booksellers move into a district, raise the tone of it, bring in other businesses,” he says, “then get kicked out again in ten years because you can’t pay the rent.” He points out that it’s not just a Toronto problem, and a similar cycle has played out in other book neighbourhood in major cities: London’s Charing Cross has lost most of its bookshops, as has 4th Avenue in New York City.