Starting in the 1980s, Canada Customs seized shipment after shipment of queer literature at the border, deeming it obscene. Little Sister's fought back, through years of court battles that ended in a Supreme Court decision still shaping freedom of expression in this country today.

Why one artist gets his own corner of the store, and what his work has meant to queer visual culture for decades. 

Walk far enough into the store and you'll hit a corner that's all his. Touko Laaksonen — better known as Tom of Finland — spent five decades drawing unapologetically muscular, joyful, hyper-masculine men at a time when that kind of desire was something you were supposed to hide. His work wasn't just erotica. It was an argument, drawn in pencil: that queer desire could be proud, powerful, and out in the open.

Jim Deva, Bruce Smyth, and Janine Fullers built more than a store. Their courage and advocacy helped shape Vancouver's queer history, and still inspire it today.

For more than four decades, Little Sister's has remained a cornerstone of this community, a place people have found chosen family, attended their first event, or simply felt seen for the first time. 

New owners and new decades haven't changed that. 
It's still the place people come back to.