Cargill: North America's First Book Town
Cargill, a Bruce County village of a few hundred, has joined the International Organisation of Book Towns — the first designated book town in the Americas.
by Kevin McKague
Originally published in The Owen Sounder magazine
The idea came, as the best ideas often do, from a conversation with a fellow book lover. A couple of years ago, Maryann Thomas — owner of The Ginger Press and publisher of the Owen Sounder — mentioned something I’d never heard of: book towns.
Small rural communities (especially in Europe, but also in Australia and New Zealand) where bookshops, literary culture, and a shared love of the written word had become the foundation for a new kind of local economic development.
The idea stuck with me. I had been a professor of community economic development for 10 years and was intrigued to know more.
When we opened the Bruce County Bookstore in Cargill in 2021, the vision was to help bring the town back to life by creating a cluster of destination tourism enterprises that would bring people into town and generate revenue to restore some of its beautiful old buildings.
Today the Bookstore focuses exclusively on Bruce County titles and local authors and publishers. Learning about the Book Town movement planted a seed. Could Cargill, a village of a few hundred people on the back roads of Bruce County, become part of this global movement?
This year, we found out the answer is yes! Cargill has been accepted into the International Organisation of Book Towns, making us the first designated book town in the Western Hemisphere!
The Book Town movement began in 1961 in Hay-on-Wye, Wales; it has since grown to include member towns in Belgium, Bulgaria, Ireland, Spain, Sweden, New Zealand and Australia. Book Towns are working to prove a unique literary-driven model of sustainable rural tourism. Visitors come for the books and stay for the community and other discoveries. And now, Canada is on the map.
Our designation is a wonderful recognition of our broader community economic development efforts in Cargill.
Alongside the Bruce County Bookstore, the Mill Pond Gallery and Café features the work of talented artists, locally roasted coffee, fresh baked goods and Mennonite preserves. The Dam Ice Cream Bar brings people through the door with some of the best local ice cream from the family-owned Central Smith Creamery. The Cargill Museum tells the story of a community that was once a centre of pioneering industry in the late 1800s, when Henry Cargill harvested old-growth timber from the Greenock Swamp and established the enterprises that built this corner of Bruce County.
Books have become a thread tying it all together — heritage, the arts, local economy, and a reason for people to visit and stay a while.
The Bruce County Bookstore has also published works of local history including a biography of Henry Cargill and a series of 27 books on the early business histories of Bruce County towns and villages. Every summer we host book launches, author talks, poetry readings, and literary workshops, including authors such as Jennifer Frankum and Cindy Matthews and publishers such as Maryann Thomas.
This international designation gives us a platform to build on that programming and connect with other book towns around the world who have been doing this work for decades.
The Bruce County Bookstore is open at 203 Cargill Road in Cargill from the May long weekend to the Labour Day weekend, Thursdays to Sundays, 11:00 to 4:00. Follow us on facebook and Instagram and learn more about the international book town movement at internationalbooktowns.org.
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