Munro's Books: Six Decades of Canadian Literature Inside a 1909 Royal Bank
How a former Eaton's bookseller, a future Nobel laureate, and a vacant Edwardian temple bank on Government Street produced what one journalist called "the most magnificent bookstore in Canada."
May 2, 2026 · By Justin Plosz · Victoria, British Columbia · Community · 12 min read
The Quick Picture
Government Street runs north from Victoria's Inner Harbour past the Empress Hotel and along the edge of the city's historic commercial district. About a block in from the water, on the east side of the street, a one-storey granite façade interrupts the rhythm of brick storefronts and souvenir shops. Two giant-order Doric columns flank a recessed entry. Above them sits a heavy projecting cornice, and behind the doors waits a banking hall whose cast-plaster coffered ceiling rises 7.3 metres from the floor.
The building was completed in 1910. The Royal Bank of Canada used it as its main downtown Victoria branch for decades. Since 1984, it has been a bookstore.
The address — 1108 Government Street, Victoria, BC V8W 1Y2 — is one of the few in Canada where the architectural envelope of an early-20th-century temple bank survives essentially intact and is open to the public, every day, with no admission charge. You walk in to buy a paperback, and you stand in a room that was originally built to project the moral seriousness of an Edwardian financial institution. That juxtaposition is most of what makes Munro's Books one of the most photographed independent bookstores in the world.
It is also, on its own merits, a working bookstore. Six decades after its founding, it remains a serious bookseller with a deep stock and a long memory. The cultural significance is the building. The reason it has survived is the books.
September 1963: A Long, Narrow Room on Yates Street
Munro's Books opened in September 1963 on Yates Street in downtown Victoria, in a long, narrow space near the city's movie theatres. The founders were Jim Munro and his then-wife Alice Munro. The store grew out of two complementary backgrounds. Jim Munro brought twelve years of bookselling experience from Eaton's, the Canadian department store that for much of the twentieth century operated some of the most-used book counters in the country. Alice Munro was a writer at the start of her career, with a reading life that ran far ahead of what most independent Canadian retailers of the period stocked.
The early store reflected both. Jim Munro understood inventory, traffic, and the operating discipline required to run a retail floor. Alice Munro shaped what was on the shelves. She championed Canadian writers at a moment when most of the country's bookshops were importing the same British and American titles. She brought in Leonard Cohen's poetry. She stocked City Lights Books out of San Francisco, making Munro's one of the first Canadian stores to carry the press's distinctive line. Those choices mattered. Independent booksellers do most of their cultural work at the level of the buy: the decision to put a particular title face-out on a particular shelf in a particular city.
That curatorial sensibility is part of what carried Munro's through its first decade and a half on Yates. By the late 1970s, the store had outgrown its original space, and in 1979 it moved to larger premises on Fort Street. The Fort Street location was a respectable independent bookstore in a city that already loved its bookshops. What came next was something else entirely.
1984: "Nobody Wanted a Used Bank Building"
By the early 1980s, the building at 1108 Government Street had been a bank for most of its existence. The Royal Bank of Canada had built it in 1909 and 1910 as its main downtown Victoria branch and used it for decades in that role. By the time Jim Munro started looking at it, it was vacant. There was, at the time, no obvious second life for an Edwardian temple bank in a tourist-facing block of Government Street. The room was too tall for most retailers, too historically specific for most office tenants, and too expensive to subdivide without destroying its character.
Jim Munro's own explanation of why he was able to buy it has been quoted many times since. The building was inexpensive, he said, because "nobody wanted a used bank building."
That sentence is doing a lot of work. It is partly a piece of dry Canadian wit. It is also a precise summary of how heritage buildings get saved in this country. They survive because someone with a use case that happens to fit the room — a bookstore needs height, depth, dignity, and quiet, all of which a former banking hall happens to have in abundance — decides to take the building on. Without that kind of fit, a great many heritage commercial buildings in Canada have not survived at all.
Munro's moved into 1108 Government Street in 1984. The relocation was, in retrospect, the single most consequential decision in the store's history. It transformed Munro's from a well-regarded regional bookseller into a destination — a bookstore that people travel to Victoria specifically to see.
The Building Itself: Thomas Hooper's 1909 Temple Bank
The architect of 1108 Government Street was Thomas Hooper, one of the more prolific commercial and institutional architects working in British Columbia at the turn of the twentieth century. The building permit recorded a construction cost of C$45,000 in 1909, a substantial figure for a single-storey commercial building of the period and a fair indication of the Royal Bank's ambitions for its Victoria presence.
The style is Classical Revival, a vocabulary that turn-of-the-century bankers used almost everywhere in North America to communicate permanence and seriousness. Heritage assessments often classify the typology more specifically as an Edwardian temple bank: a freestanding or end-of-block commercial building whose façade is composed as a miniature classical temple, with columns, entablature, and pediment-like cornice doing most of the symbolic work.
The specifics at 1108 Government Street are unusually intact. The Government Street façade is one storey, clad in granite block, with two giant-order Doric columns flanking the recessed entry, engaged pilasters along the wall plane, and a projecting cornice with block modillions running across the top. The arched entry has a stone keystone and a multi-paned metal transom above it. Central granite stairs lead up to the doors. The rear façade, facing Langley Street, is three storeys and built in red brick, where the budget for ornament was visibly lower.
Inside, the banking hall survives as a single voluminous room, with cast-plaster coffered ceilings that rise 7.3 metres above the floor. That ceiling is the room's defining feature. Coffered ceilings of this scale are uncommon in surviving commercial buildings in Canada, and they are almost never accessible to the general public on a daily basis. Inside Munro's, that ceiling sits above the new releases.
The building was recognized in 1975 and formally listed on the Canadian Register of Historic Places in 2010. It has won two heritage awards. In a country where many comparable Edwardian commercial buildings have been demolished, altered beyond recognition, or sealed off behind locked office doors, this one is operating, daily, as a bookstore.
The Alice Munro Connection
Any profile of Munro's Books eventually arrives at the question of Alice Munro. She was a co-founder. She helped shape the store's early voice. She left the partnership and the marriage years before the move to 1108 Government Street, and her subsequent literary career belongs to her, not to the bookstore. But the connection is real, and it is part of why the store occupies the cultural position it does.
In October 2013, the Swedish Academy awarded Alice Munro the Nobel Prize in Literature, citing her as a "master of the contemporary short story." She was the first Canadian-born writer to win the prize and remains so. The award capped a career spent largely with the short-story form — a form in which she is often described as without peer in English-language fiction.
For Munro's the bookstore, the 2013 Nobel did not change the operation. The store had been a serious independent bookseller for half a century by that point, and it did not need a Nobel to prove anything. What it changed was the way the rest of the world understood the store's origin. A great many independent bookstores have illustrious customers, distinguished founders, and famous neighbours. Very few were co-founded by a writer who would later win the Nobel Prize.
The store's posture about that connection has, by all available accounts, been editorially restrained. Munro's continues to operate as a general independent bookstore — not as a museum to one of its founders. That restraint is itself a Canadian literary value, and it is part of what visitors absorb when they walk through the door.
Recognition: "The Most Magnificent Bookstore in Canada"
The two recognitions most often cited in connection with Munro's both speak to the building as much as to the bookselling.
The journalist Allan Fotheringham, one of the most widely read Canadian columnists of the late twentieth century, once described Munro's as "the most magnificent bookstore in Canada, possibly in North America." The line has been quoted in tourism guides, architectural surveys, and bookselling features for decades. It functions, in part, as a piece of Canadian literary folklore. It also captures something real about the experience of walking into 1108 Government Street for the first time. The room is unusually beautiful, and beauty in a working bookstore is not a small thing.
National Geographic has separately named Munro's one of the world's top ten bookstores. That kind of list circulates widely in international travel media, and it has placed Munro's on a small global circuit of independent stores — Shakespeare and Company in Paris, Livraria Lello in Porto, El Ateneo Grand Splendid in Buenos Aires — that draw visitors specifically for the architecture as much as for the books.
Munro's is regularly included on similar "world's most beautiful bookstores" lists in other publications. Those lists tend to feature buildings that were not originally bookstores at all: opera houses, churches, palaces, and, in Munro's case, an Edwardian temple bank. The pattern matters. It suggests that some of the most loved bookstores in the world are loved precisely because their rooms were built for something else, and because the act of filling them with books is a form of cultural reuse that resonates with readers.
The Contemporary Store
Inside the heritage envelope, Munro's operates as a fully modern independent bookseller. The shop's own organization, as represented on its website, runs across the categories you would expect from a serious general store and several you might not.
Front-of-store sections include Bestsellers, Staff Picks, Bargain Books, and Events. The children's department is unusually structured. It is divided by reading level — Picture Books for ages 0 to 5, Primary for ages 6 to 8, Middle Grade for ages 9 to 12, and Young Adult for ages 12 and up — which reflects the way working children's booksellers actually think about recommending titles to parents and teachers. Beyond the kids' room, the shop carries Puzzles and Gifts, Stationery, Cards and Wrap, and Gift Cards. There is a dedicated French Books section, a notable inclusion for a store in a province where the francophone community is small but historically present.
A Teachers and Schools area assembles material that working educators ask for: Curriculum, Indigenous, French, Hot Topics, Virtual Book Fairs, and STA Pro-D Books. That kind of dedicated educator-facing section is increasingly rare in independent bookstores and is one of the small operational details that distinguishes a serious community bookseller from a tourist-facing souvenir shop.
The store also runs a Rewards programme, a Newsletter, a Consignment programme, and a Plan Your Visit page on its website. A current homepage promotion offers "20% Off Selected New Titles & Pre-Orders." None of these are remarkable individually. Together, they are evidence of a sixty-year-old independent that has invested in the operational machinery a contemporary bookshop needs to keep working in an Amazon-shaped retail environment.
The PRC Editorial View
The reason Munro's matters, editorially, is not that it is a beautiful bookstore. There are many beautiful bookstores. It matters because it is one of the clearest examples in the country of how heritage commercial buildings actually get saved.
The building was built in 1909 as a bank because banks of that era could afford to commission architects of Thomas Hooper's calibre and to specify granite façades, Doric columns, and 7.3-metre coffered ceilings. The building stopped being a bank because the economics of branch banking changed. The building survived, with its character intact, because in 1984 a bookseller with twenty-one years of independent retail experience under his belt looked at a vacant temple bank in a city that loves its bookstores and saw a room he could fill with books.
That is the model. Heritage buildings do not survive because they are admired. They survive because their next use happens to fit their rooms, and because someone with the patience to operate them at modest commercial returns is willing to take them on. Munro's has done that, every day, for more than four decades.
The Alice Munro / Nobel connection is the part of the story that tends to lead in international coverage. The Allan Fotheringham line is the part that lives on in Canadian tourism literature. The National Geographic recognition is the part that drives international visitors to the front door. All three are real. None of them are why the store has survived. The store has survived because it is a working bookshop, in a working downtown, in a city whose readers continue to walk through the door and buy books.
How to Visit
Munro's Books is at 1108 Government Street, Victoria, BC V8W 1Y2, near the Inner Harbour and a short walk from the Empress Hotel and the British Columbia Parliament Buildings. The phone number is (250) 382-2464.
Hours are Monday to Wednesday 9:30am to 6:00pm, Thursday to Saturday 9:30am to 7:30pm, and Sunday 9:30am to 6:00pm. Those hours run year-round, with the longer Thursday-to-Saturday evenings reflecting downtown Victoria's busier weekend foot traffic.
Visitors looking to plan a stop can use the Plan Your Visit page on the store's website, https://www.munrobooks.com, which is also the most reliable source for current promotions, event listings, and the Rewards and Newsletter programmes. Teachers and schools can find dedicated curriculum, Indigenous, French, and Pro-D resources through the Teachers and Schools section. Authors and publishers interested in the store's Consignment programme can find the relevant contact details on the same site.
The building is open to the public during all posted store hours. There is no admission charge. The 7.3-metre coffered ceiling, the Doric columns, the granite stairs, and the cast-plaster cornice are all free to walk in, look at, and stand quietly under for as long as you want, the way they have been for the past four decades.
Key takeaways
- Founded in September 1963 on Yates Street in Victoria by Jim Munro, a former Eaton's bookseller, and Alice Munro, who would later win the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature.
- Moved to larger Fort Street premises in 1979, then to its current home at 1108 Government Street in 1984.
- The building is a 1909 Royal Bank of Canada branch designed by architect Thomas Hooper in the Classical Revival or Edwardian temple-bank style; original 1909 build cost was C$45,000.
- Heritage features include two giant-order Doric columns, a granite façade, central granite stairs, a projecting cornice with block modillions, and a 7.3-metre cast-plaster coffered ceiling in the original banking hall.
- Listed on the Canadian Register of Historic Places (recognized 1975, listed 2010), with two heritage awards.
- Described by journalist Allan Fotheringham as "the most magnificent bookstore in Canada, possibly in North America" and named one of the world's top ten bookstores by National Geographic.
- Operates as a full-service independent with sections for Bestsellers, Staff Picks, French Books, a structured kids' department, and a dedicated Teachers and Schools area, plus Rewards, Newsletter, and Consignment programmes.
Frequently asked questions
- What is Munro's Books?
- Munro's Books is an independent bookstore in Victoria, British Columbia, founded in September 1963 by Jim Munro and his then-wife Alice Munro. Since 1984 it has occupied a 1909 Royal Bank of Canada building at 1108 Government Street, near the Inner Harbour.
- Where is Munro's Books located?
- Munro's Books is at 1108 Government Street, Victoria, BC V8W 1Y2, a short walk from the Inner Harbour, the Empress Hotel, and the British Columbia Parliament Buildings.
- What are the store's hours?
- Monday to Wednesday: 9:30am to 6:00pm. Thursday to Saturday: 9:30am to 7:30pm. Sunday: 9:30am to 6:00pm. The phone number is (250) 382-2464.
- When was the building built, and by whom?
- The building at 1108 Government Street was built in 1909 and 1910 by architect Thomas Hooper as the main downtown Victoria branch of the Royal Bank of Canada. The original 1909 build cost was C$45,000. It is designed in the Classical Revival or Edwardian temple-bank style and is listed on the Canadian Register of Historic Places.
- What are the building's most distinctive features?
- The Government Street façade is granite-clad and one storey, with two giant-order Doric columns flanking a recessed arched entry, engaged pilasters, a projecting cornice with block modillions, and central granite stairs. Inside, the original banking hall survives as a single voluminous room with cast-plaster coffered ceilings that rise 7.3 metres above the floor. The rear façade on Langley Street is three storeys in red brick.
- What is the Alice Munro connection?
- Alice Munro was a co-founder of the bookstore in 1963 alongside her then-husband Jim Munro. She helped shape the store's early book selection, championing Canadian writers, Leonard Cohen's poetry, and City Lights Books. In 2013, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, becoming the only Canadian-born writer to win the prize.
- How did Munro's end up in a former bank?
- Jim Munro purchased the vacant 1909 Royal Bank building in 1984 and moved the store there from its previous Fort Street location. He has said that the building was inexpensive at the time because, in his words, "nobody wanted a used bank building."
- What recognitions has Munro's received?
- Journalist Allan Fotheringham described Munro's as "the most magnificent bookstore in Canada, possibly in North America." National Geographic has named it one of the world's top ten bookstores, and it is regularly included on international lists of the world's most beautiful bookstores. The building has also won two heritage awards.
- What does Munro's sell beyond general books?
- Beyond Bestsellers, Staff Picks, and Bargain Books, the store carries Puzzles and Gifts, Stationery, Cards and Wrap, Gift Cards, and French Books. The children's department is divided by age range from Picture Books to Young Adult. There is a dedicated Teachers and Schools section covering Curriculum, Indigenous, French, Hot Topics, Virtual Book Fairs, and STA Pro-D Books, plus Rewards, Newsletter, and Consignment programmes.
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