The Batner Bookstore

Nestled in a plaza on Steeles Avenue west of Yonge Street is Batner Bookstore, Thornhill’s only bookstore. It opened over 30 years ago when owner Yoram Batner’s mother, a chemist, decided she’d chosen the wrong career. Since then, the store has spent the past three decades evolving with the neighbourhood.

Not only has Batner Bookstore doubled in size since it first opened, but beginning in the mid-1980s, after taking a few requests from local private schools, it began its transition from a typical bookstore into an educational one — schoolbooks and workbooks, along with a sizable collection of children and young adult fiction, are stacked on tables throughout the store and line the packed shelves. Yoram estimates they now carry books for about 40 schools in the city, and it’s given the store a niche in the book industry, which, while booming, hasn’t always been good to the independent bookstore.