Things I Learned In Barrie

[robin_d_laws]

Went up to Valerie’s hometown last Sunday for a meet the baby party for one of her cousins. (NB: Family political considerations prevented it from being labeled as a baby shower. Definitely not a baby shower

Comments

[doc_mystery]

I grew up in Barrie and went to HS there in the early 1980s when the population was about 35,000. It appears to have ballooned into 125,000+ as it has been transformed from a factory town to become essentially a bedroom community an hour's drive north of Toronto.

Ironically, despite this growth, there is little there for today's fans and gamers. While I remember being able to buy RPGs from at least three stores (Huronia Hobbies, Beaver Comics, Blue Beetle Comics), I think that there is only one place to busy this stuff, from Gamer's Lair in a strip mall in the south end of the city (near the Molson Park complex).

There's a good used bookstore for genre paperbacks right downtown. Kerry's Bookstore (formerly Mike's Bookstore) has been in the same family for almost 30 years now. I got my first reading copies of H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Doc Savage, Michael Moorcock and Robert E. Howard from books traded in from soldiers from the nearby CFB Borden.

They have a surprisingly large collection of SF and Fantasy both upstairs and with a ton of hardbacks in the basement at bargain prices, and they often have used RPG materials. The son of the original owner still runs the place (and he looks exactly the same now as when I first met him in 1981; thin with a wispy moustache). The place is well worth a browse before heading north to the beach or the cottage.

::B::