The Bookseller

Going from selling oilfield equipment to owning a bookstore seems like a bit of a stretch,  but it was always Darrell Prins’ dream. Between sales calls he would often find time to poke around the shelves of his favourite bookstore, The Bookseller, hardly imagining  at the time that he would one day own it all.

Then, in 2006, his brother — a bookstore owner in Ontario, coincidentally — called and told him it was up for sale. “I thought, you know, I want to get out of this oilfield racket, so I bought it,” Darrell says. “The oilfield is much more lucrative, but money isn’t everything,  as you find out.”