The Silver Snail at 323 Queen Street West, a little History.

I was twenty years old, living in Birmingham, England and making plans to visit relatives in Toronto, Ontario, for the very first time.  I was already a comic book junkie and had been for at least seven years but I had never been to North America, the Promised Land of Comic Collecting!

It was the summer of 1977 and in the pages of the Overstreet Price Guide for that year, I found a full page advertisement for the Silver Snail.  I knew that, once in Toronto, I had to visit the store and discover the untold treasures awaited me there.

As it happened, in the twenty or so days that I was in Canada, I visited the store three or four times and came away with priceless things like the missing issues of Charlton's/John Byrne's Doomsday Plus One... amongst other things.

More to the point, looking back, it was the first time that I met Ron Van Leeuwen, the owner and his girlfriend/wife Uli Havermann.  It was also the first address of the Silver Snail,

321 Queen Street West, Toronto.

Being young and stupid, I neglected to take a photograph of the store and I really wish that I had done because it would be wonderful to look at it today. 

Although I didn't have any plans to emigrate to Canada at the time, within two years I was doing just that.  I landed in Toronto on the last day of January in 1980 and very soon thereafter made my way downtown to visit "The Snail".

That first visit was a trifle confusing and I thought, at first, that the store had been renovated.  For a start, I was sure that the check-out counter had been on the left, as one came through the door and yet, here it was, on the right.  Of course, once I spoke to Ron, it became clear that he had moved his business into the store next door,

we were standing in

323 Queen Street West, Toronto

the second home of the store.

It took me another two years to get around to actually photographing the new address but in the winter of 1982 into 1983, I was about to return to England for a visit and I wanted to show

 my old collecting buddies where I got my books from.

Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to show you this :

and here is the beautiful business card, for this incarnation of the store, painted by the talented and at the time, very young, Paul Rivoche :

It may not seem like very much to be excited about but to a lot of people, this store was Mecca and we all visited it regularly; new comic books or not, just to hang out.

I don't think that I ever told Ron, at least not in so many words, how much he and his store meant to me.  I'm sorry that I didn't because I should have but I was young and thoughtless.

With that in mind,

THANK YOU RON

for all the good years

and the good memories.

This one is dedicated to Mike Bothelho

of Toronto's Comic Book Lounge

and his enthusiasm for the history

of the comic book shops of our city.