While it was the only gay and lesbian bookstore in western Canada.
The customs seizures were an institutional assault. The bombings were something more visceral.
In December 1987, the first device was thrown into the stairwell between Little Sister's and the restaurant below. It went off in an empty hallway; no one was hurt, and the Vancouver Sun covered it in eighty-nine words. Two months later, in February 1988, it happened again — this time on a packed Saturday night, the bomb detonating just three feet from where Jim Deva and co-owner Gaston Nadeau were having dinner. Police told them they were lucky to be alive. A third bomb exploded in January 1992, during store hours, filling the building with smoke and tearing up walls and floors.
Three bombs in five years, against the only gay and lesbian bookstore in Western Canada. Death threats were phoned in to Little Sister's and other gay businesses nearby. Several staff members quit. The restaurant downstairs closed for good. The message behind the bombs was blunt: you are not welcome here.
Jim and Bruce refused to close. The morning after every bombing, they went in and opened the store — a defiance filmmaker Aerlyn Weissman later called “a real gut-level courage.” Each time, the community showed up with them.
By the time the third bomb went off, Little Sister's was already fighting Canada Customs in court. The store was under attack on two fronts at once — institutional and violent — and survived both. That it did is a testament to the people who kept showing up, day after day, to a place that mattered.
