One of my favourite bookstores in Vancouver is Banyen Books & Sound on the southwest corner of W 4th Avenue and Dunbar. So, whenever I go back to my home town to visit family and friends, I stop there to linger amid the shelves of wonder and erudite adventure. Then I usually cross Dunbar to Aphrodite’s Organic Pie Shop for a delicious fresh pie—usually peach, if it is available. So good! Two things I love: books and pie!
During my recent visit this year to Vancouver, my friends and I had a fulfilling walk one morning through the big tree forest of Pacific Spirit Park near UBC. Margaret suggested we go to Aphrodite’s Organic Café for lunch, located across 4th Avenue from Banyen Books (the sister restaurant to the pie shop). After a delicious lunch, we wandered into Banyen, like desert nomads looking for water, and lost ourselves in a treasure of books, magazines, crystals, cards, singing bowls and other spiritual/healing items. Like a braided river, we dispersed according to our wayward interests.
Then friend Anne soon found me and pulled my sleeve. “Your book is here!” She led me to where my book Water Is… stood, face out, on the top shelf marked ‘Water: Life Force & Resource.’ In truth, I already knew through Pixl Press that the book was selling there. But here it was, showcased so nicely! It sat rather stately amid Emoto’s Secret Life of Water and Ryrie’s Healing Energies of Water.
One of the perks of Banyen Books are the comfortable seats for easy browsing. When I teasingly asked one of the clerks if they noticed people lingering for the day, they said, “yeah! They might leave for lunch then come back for the afternoon!” I can see why; Banyen is an entire world to discover. It is called Canada’s most comprehensive Body-Mind-Spirit bookstore, “offering a broad spectrum of resources from humanity’s spiritual, healing, and earth wisdom traditions…Our service is to offer life-giving nourishment for the body (resilient, vital), the mind (trained, open), and the soul (resonant, connected, in-formed). Think of us as your open source bookstore for the ‘University of Life’.”
“Banyen is an oasis, a crossroads, a meeting place…for East and West, the ‘old ways’ and current discoveries and syntheses.”
This is how Banyen describes its birth in 1970:
“The Golden Lotus Restaurant and Natural Food Store on Fourth Avenue at Bayswater was a hothouse for spiritual seekers, new vegetarians and spaced-out hippies grounding through good work. Banyen was born in a tiny book corner of the Golden Lotus. That lovely place was a connection to India, meditation and spiritual growth from 1967 to 1970. As its sun set, what was to become the Naam restaurant, Lifestream, Woodlands, Nature’s Path, and Banyen Books arose.”
Along with Water Is… Banyen is also selling my latest eco-fiction novel A Diary in the Age of Water.
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
Nina Munteanu Writing Coach 