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Bruce Smyth, a cofounder of Little Sister's Book & Art Emporium, has died.

Friend Bruce Hillier told the Georgia Straight that Smyth died today (December 23).

"He passed this morning at St. John Hospice at UBC," Hillier said.

He added that he and Smyth had been in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico ("his favourite place in the world"), for about a week before returning to Vancouver. "He had polycystic kidney disease; he suffered from macular degeneration as a result of it," Hillier noted.

Smyth opened Little Sister's in Vancouver's West End in 1983 with life partner Jim Deva, who died after an accident in 2014.

The two opened the bookstore—initially on the second floor of a house on Thurlow Street, just metres from Davie Street and in the centre of what would come to be known as the Davie Village "gaybourhood"—because of frustration at not being able to find gay and lesbian reading material. The store moved to a larger location on Davie Street in 1996.

Little Sister's soon became a target of the Canada Border Services Agency, which deemed much of its imported printed matter as "obscene materials". The CBSA routinely seized Little Sister's shipments at the border, leading to a decade-long legal battle that ended with Smyth and Deva emerging victorious with a Supreme Court of Canada ruling in 2000.

Smyth sold his share in Little Sister's—which had become a gathering place for Vancouver's queer community—in 2016, two years after Deva's death and the year after long-time manager and activist Janine Fuller took medical leave after 25 years spent helping to run the store and deal with its legal troubles.

Hillier said he didn't know yet if there would be a public memorial service or celebration of life for Smyth. "We don't know what this will hold—Bruce wasn't one for much of that."

The Straight will update its readers if this situation changes.

Smyth died the same morning as did long-time Vancouver sex workers'- and LGBT-rights advocate Jamie Lee Hamilton.