We are Cliff and Hilary Atleo, a Nuu-Chah-Nulth/Tsimsian academic and an Anishinaabe/Settler bookseller and the owners of Iron Dog Books. We moved to Vancouver in 2016 but before that we were a grad student and a bookshop clerk in a mid sized Canadian city. We were students and readers which meant that books were essential to our lives, but as Indigenous people we rarely saw ourselves reflected in the shops we visited. More often than not we struggled to source books we needed, or to convince the folks around us that Indigenous stories were important to the literary canon. Our experiences taught us that if we wanted our dream bookstore to exist, we would have to build it ourselves.
We founded Iron Dog Books in 2017 as Vancouver’s first modern-day mobile bookstore. We envisioned the moving shop as an affordable and accessible response to expensive leases and the large swaths of the lower mainland that weren’t served by independent bookstores. Our truck was truly a labour of love, with custom built shelving, dark stained wood, and a lot of creative problem solving to deal with the challenges of selling books year-round in a bookshop on wheels. Our first day of sales was in late November, and after a very hard winter and an exhilarating summer of events we were starting to understand the rhythm of operating a travelling store.
Of course, since opening we’ve been through all the trials and tribulations of owning a business, as well as the significant changes brought by the pandemic, social movements, political action and cultural change. Through it all we’ve returned again and again to our core bookshop values: community, empathy, intellectual engagement, and accessibility. It is our goal to create a place where folks feel welcome and books find the people who need them. Bookstores are more than just retail businesses, they are centres of community engagement and discourse. We hope to see you in the shop soon!
Owned In: British Columbia
Iron Dog Books Products:
- New Books
- Used Books
- Book Trade In Program
- Local Authors
- Picks Under $10
- Picks Under $15
- … and more
- Gift Cards
- Fiction
- Juvenile Fiction
- Biography & Autobiography
- Social Science
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Young Adult Fiction
- History
- Juvenile Nonfiction
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Last Updated April 14, 2022