The store relocates to its current location at 1238 Davie Street.
1996 was a big year for Little Sister's twice over. In January, the B.C. Supreme Court confirmed the store had been unfairly targeted by Canada Customs. In June, the store made a move of a different kind — a physical one.
After thirteen years in the upstairs walk-up on Thurlow Street, Little Sister's relocated to its current premises at Unit 1, 1238 Davie Street, right on the main artery of Davie Village — the neighbourhood the store had helped build. The new location was larger, though it sat at the end of a twenty-foot hallway, still without a proper street frontage.
The move coincided with a period of growth. The store expanded well beyond books, adding LGBTQ+ and Pride merchandise, gifts, and a growing selection of adult products. It became what Bruce Smyth liked to call Vancouver's “grown-up general store” for proud people of every community — a place you could bring a nervous first-timer or a seasoned regular and serve both without blinking.
Davie Street in 1996 was coming into its own as the heart of Vancouver's queer life, and Little Sister's planted itself squarely in the middle of it. The store has been at 1238 Davie ever since: same street, same job, the same open door to whoever walks in.
Thirty years on, there's talk of one more move — to a street-level home in the new Fuller-findlay building — which would give Little Sister's a real storefront window for the first time in its history. But 1238 Davie is where it made its home, and where generations found it.
