Inside the new-look Yellowknife Book Cellar

“Don’t open any boxes!”

If you’ve ever moved house, you know how it goes. Everything has its rightful place in a box, somewhere. The question is where.

On Tuesday morning, before the doors opened for the day, a staff member at the Yellowknife Book Cellar gently shooed a colleague away from box-opening, keen instead to retain full control over exactly what comes out of which box – and when.

There were 400 boxes. You can forgive everyone being a little wired about it.

Moving a business across a downtown Yellowknife might not sound like an epic voyage, but book stores carry a lot of heft, especially ones with a 45-year heritage.

The bulk of that move is now complete, and the Book Cellar reopened in its new 49 Street location on Monday.

Even if it was arduous, the task has expanded some horizons (a whole new space, a chance to design a bookstore from scratch) and closed some chapters (they’ll never see that horrible old carpet again).

Jennifer Baerg Steyn, who has owned the Book Cellar since 2022, talked us through the move – why it happened, what she hopes to achieve at the new location, and which sections of the store are her favourite.

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This interview was recorded on March 5, 2024. The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Ollie Williams: How are you feeling this morning, the day after you reopened?

Jennifer Baerg Steyn: Relieved, I think. Today felt less like a blur and more that we had actually settled into this space. We have a long way to go to actually settle in – like, the art’s not hung, there are a lot of things we know aren’t done – but there is definitely an element of relief that we actually managed to pull it off.

What made you want to move?

There was a variety of factors. I think the biggest one for us was – while this is technically smaller, square footage-wise, than the previous location – anyone who walks in here sees that it’s a different layout of the available space. We were finding we couldn’t do book signings or any event without having to move shelves and make the space feel really not welcoming for everyone else, or we had to do book signings off-site, which, while beneficial for those businesses, obviously are not beneficial for us.

When did you first hit upon this as your space?

Pat, the landlord here, reached out to us and made us aware that the space was available. This space has always been sort-of a dream space for me, but it was never on the radar to be like, “Let’s move a business to a space that I don’t know is available or not.” But when we came back from evacuation, unfortunately for Miniso, the space had become available.

What are you going for as an aesthetic?

We want it to feel welcoming.

One of the big complaints we got from tourists is we had one solitary chair in the previous space. There was no room to put any more chairs, unless we gave up bookshelves and space, which wasn’t an option. Our priority here was to make it such that if folks wanted to have, like, a book club after hours, it was already naturally set up, or that it would encourage conversation.

There aren’t a lot of third spaces in this town, especially not in the downtown core, open the hours that we are open. Javaroma is open and there are the restaurants, but there really isn’t anywhere for people to just hang out. That was part of it.

One of our philosophies in laying out the store – and what took so long in the move – is that we have integrated all of our northern and Indigenous sections to be alongside their counterparts, so that when folks are browsing, it’s immediately there rather than being sort-of set aside.

We did that with our kids’ books before we moved and we found that folks were more inclined to buy the northern and Indigenous books because they were right next to, you know, the standard kids’ books, the Gruffalo and such like.

What were the hardest parts of the move?

Lifting books was a part of it. We had almost 400 boxes in total. The biggest labour part was actually the fact that when we took over the bookstore from Judith [Drinnan, the founder and former owner], I had done a little bit of purging, but there was a lot of stuff in the basement that had been left over from previous event planning. There was just a lot of extra stuff that we wouldn’t have moved. It’s just like moving house: you collect all the things you don’t think you’re going to collect, and yet they’re there when you have to pack.

And this is a store that’s been going for 45 years, so that’s quite a large amount of time for stuff to accumulate.

I think that was probably the biggest challenge. Then the unpacking and trying to – as much as I’m sure it will frustrate people – rethink how we laid out sections. Putting all the kids’ stuff together, that was another feedback point from parents wanting to have to do that C-shaped layout that we had before with the kids’ stuff, to put it all together.

It’s all on one side, it’s clear visual sight, like the short bookcases, so you can let your child be over there and see them from the other side of the bookstore. That was a huge planning thought that had to happen.

What kind of a platform does the new space give you? Do you have ideas percolating away?

I think the most prominent idea that has already started conversations is with NorthWords [the NWT literary festival], to be a space that they can use for events in the daytime or in the evening. We have the capacity to now actually move shelves aside, they can have an open mic, they can feature our local writers, we can do more events. Our hope is that we will become more of a space to support the arts than we were capable of doing before.

Nice, solid laminate floor here. You must miss that carpet.

No. No, Ollie. I spent an hour and a half – my very last hour and a half in the old bookstore – vacuuming, and I don’t think you could tell that I had vacuumed. I’m so glad to never see that carpet again.

Before we go, let’s take a moment to thank some people.

First and foremost, staff. So, Peter because he’s in my line of sight. Jess, Christina, Bianca, my part-time staff, Gina, Jessie. Catherine, they all came in and helped. They were amazing. Myranda also. Dylan at Silver Linings Construction was absolutely amazing. He came in at a pinch because my previous contractor couldn’t help us out. They assembled all the Ikea, so I’m sure there was much consternation from his staff. Trevor Squires, who did all of our dump runs and cardboard, was amazing. I should thank my partner, Brad, for putting up with me.

Which is your favourite section of the store? If you’re going to relax next to a particular shelf, which one are you going to pick?

Actually, my card section. It’s the one place that we didn’t have enough space for in the previous store, and I absolutely love buying the cards and having people give me feedback on what they want. As much as I love reading, don’t get me wrong, if I go into a store anywhere in the world, I go to buy notecards, and that is my favourite section.