By Oumou Diakité
The bookstore Librairie La Liberté is first and foremost a family story. Its roots are in Granby, where it opened in 1945. The grandfather, Lucius Laliberté, owned a tobacco store with his wife Denise. His son, with business training, decided to add a few shelves of books, and in the 1950s ended up buying out his parents.
At that point, a remarkable event: the arrival of a new employee who would become much more than a work colleague, Denise Poirier-Laliberté. A meeting of hearts and ideas who would determine the bookstore’s direction.
Moving the store to Quebec City in 1965 wasn’t a minor thing. At that point Granby just didn’t have any high school artistic instruction. “My father was looking for a place where culture could durably take root, where the bookstore could be a place of knowledge and of importance,” explains Christian Laliberté. Quebec City was the obvious choice, with its intellectual effervescence and its openness to European publishers that promoted French.
Implanted in the education section of town, the bookstore became just such a meeting place. The family chose to bet on it being an intellectual bookstore, reaching beyond the bestsellers of the day to become a diverse editorial space.
“This model required a sufficient surface area, a specialized clientele, and a long-term vision. It was a commitment.”
The Librairie La Liberté has since steadfastly refused to simply be a regular business, going after profit at all costs. “A book is a cultural product. We can’t work from a standpoint of profitability like we would for a normal consumer product. A bookstore is also a commitment within a society.”
Loyal to this ideal, the team juggles between its local roots and openness to the international. The objective: propose what is not easily accessible elsewhere, all the while giving the reader a chance to discover, to think, to grow.
This type of bookstore becomes an intellectual meeting place as well as a social one. Personal relations and advice win out over the cold, cruel algorithm.
If this story continues, it will not be without some adaptation. The transmission between generations is also at the heart of this bookstore’s identity: “We must listen to new ideas. The new generation has much to teach us.”
Éléna, Christian’s daughter, is part of this new wave of the impassioned who want to make this place continue to thrive.
In short: Neighborhood bookstores are not about to disappear. Their ways will change in order to adapt to the new era, but you will always run into them in Quebec’s regions.
Photo: Christian and Éléna Laliberté. Photo by Marie-Anne Gendron
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