For all the promise of renewal in spring’s arrival, this year it’s also a season of not-so-happily-ever-after endings for Toronto book lovers.

This month, three landmark bookstores with a total of 101 years in business are closing their doors. For more than three decades, Book City’s flagship branch in the Annex, the World’s Biggest Bookstore in the heart of downtown and The Cookbook Store in Yorkville were centrepieces of their communities.

They endured through years of soaring urban rents and taxes, the arrival of book superstores, the dawn of the Amazon era. One survived a lightning strike, another a car crashing through its glass front windows.

But no longer.

“I sometimes wonder whether all bookstore stories must end badly,” mused American author Joe Queenan in his 2012 reading memoir One for the Books.

Too often nowadays the answer is as obvious as the closing sale signs in the windows.

By the end of March, Book City will be gone after 37 years, its owners announcing in January that renewing its lease didn’t make economic sense. Three other locations remain open.

The World’s Biggest Bookstore, an instant novelty and tourist attraction when it opened in 1980, closes March 30. The site, converted from a 64-lane bowling alley, is soon to become a row of restaurants.

And beneath its red awning, The Cookbook Store is already vacant. On Sunday, the staff bids an official farewell after 31 years by throwing — what else — a potluck lunch in the empty space.

Last year there were goodbyes for Nicholas Hoare and Steven Temple Books. Once-beloved destinations like Pages, Edwards Books and Art, This Ain’t the Rosedale Library and Britnell’s are distant memories.

“The last two months have been like a wake without the alcohol,” John Snyder, manager of the Annex Book City, said last week as loyal locals strolled in to browse the aisles and quietly pass on condolences.

He muttered that sentiment in earshot of a customer recently, who later returned bearing bottles of wine, one for each staff member. It reflects the depth of sorrow being delivered in person and all over online forums.

“They’re so important to me,” writer Kerry Clare says of her neighbourhood book shop and its employees, who had become part of her daily life. Clare, who writes the popular book blog Pickle Me This and for the 49th Shelf, a website devoted to Canadian writing, strolls in regularly to browse with Harriet, 4, and baby Iris.

It’s a ritual that enchants and rewards the way clicking an online link never could, says Clare, 34. “You get taken to places you don’t expect to go.”

Sadness hangs in the air above the signs declaring “All books 40% off.” Such bargains are cold comfort to bibliophiles like Clare who choose “hands-on” over “logging on,” and who value input from experienced staff over website algorithms that “suggest” what they might like to read next.

“You find things that weren’t even on your mind,” says Honorie Pasika, who has been stopping by for 25 years and rarely leaves without an unexpected delight. “You go home happy and you’ve learned something new.”

As Snyder says, bookstores are about relationships. If he wanted to, Snyder could write the book on Book City. He signed on for $2.75 an hour in January 1977, five months after it opened with a motorcycle shop out back.

Back then, there was no Sunday shopping or computers. Clerks memorized every title, jotting prices inside covers. There were four national book chains. Atwood and Ondaatje were hot new talents. The notion of an e-reader might as well have been science fiction.

As one of a few businesses open evenings, it became a hot spot for date nights, a place to go after supper at the local Hungarian restaurant or a film at Bloor Cinema. Even the personals at the back of the weeklies would occasionally seek “SWF who likes to hang out at Book City.” Legend has it half of literary Toronto has worked there at one time or another, and many were regular customers.

It’s hard to believe what’s transpired in less than a lifetime. Snyder, 60, was raised in a Mennonite family that had no television and few books. He made his way through the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen and then the World Book Encyclopedias. At his two-room schoolhouse, the Bookmobile visit was a monthly highlight. He discovered Hardy Boys and went to the Kitchener Public Library on Saturdays.

Today, it’s all about the double-edged sword of the Internet. Literary bloggers generate book buzz through reviews and author interviews. There’s endless online discourse among readers, access to titles all over the world. And all the while, the online retailers discount prices to levels independent shops can’t possibly match.

Snyder has seen people come in and tap the expertise of store staff, then pull out Smartphones to place their orders on websites. How do you compete with that?

The plot unfolded differently for The Cookbook Store, which rode the wave of revolutions in both food culture and technology, says Alison Fryer, the manager since the beginning.

Cookbooks are “a different sort of pleasure” that can bring people together. says Fryer, 53. Technology enhances the genre rather than replacing it.

But people still love the physical act of thumbing through recipes and photos, which is why renowned authors from the Barefoot Contessa to Jamie Oliver are still publishing on paper and online, she says.

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Fryer is optimistic the store’s legacy will continue in another yet-to-be-discovered format. Just as Book City attracted local literati, The Cookbook Store was at the centre of Toronto’s food community, connecting renowned chefs, food writers, recipe-testers and cooking school students. Over the years, celebrities from Nigella to Martha Stewart and Julia Child drew crowds.

“But we were equally thrilled and enthused when someone came in to buy their first cookbook,” says Fryer.

While she packed up the last boxes, several kilometres to the south bargain-hunters were rifling through the 16 kilometres of shelves inside World’s Biggest Bookstore, where a everything was going for half price. On a recent afternoon, the lineup stretched the length of the store and along the back wall.

The “New & Hot” section had been stripped bare. All that remained of the cooking and home sections was dust.

“It has been our pleasure . . . ” begins the sign by the escalator in the largest book shop Toronto will ever see.

And as always, at the exit, “Thank You for Shopping at the World’s Biggest Bookstore.”

Behind the Covers

Annex Book City, 1976-2014

The shop: Two floors, 14 staff

Known for: Canadian authors from Margaret Atwood to Joseph Boyden

Plot twist: Lightning hit a metal newspaper box outside the front door about 15 years ago, shot down the store’s centre aisle to the raised desk at the back where it fried the printer and crashed the computer system. No one was hurt. Customers still talk about “the orange ball of fire.”

World’s Biggest Bookstore: 1980-2014

The shop: A former bowling alley that boasted 67,000 square feet of space and 16 kilometres of shelving on two floors.

Top sellers: J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

Trivia: According to the website parkintoronto.com, the address is one of the top three most ticketed parking spots in the city over the past five years

The Cookbook Store, 1983-2014

The shop: 650 square feet with up to 45,000 titles in the database

Top sellers:Muffin Mania, The Joy of Cooking, Silver Palate Cookbook, Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking.

Popular guests: Martha Stewart, Julia Child, Emeril Lagasse

Plot twist: One December Saturday in the 1980s, a car plowed through the store’s front windows, narrowly missing Christmas shoppers. No one was hurt. Fryer says they were “a temporary drive-through cookbook store.”