 The bookstore was started by Adrian King-Edwards and Luci Friesen of McGill University in 1973 in their own apartment living room as an "underground" bookstore, with a photo of George Bernard Shaw to their front window.The couple, who had first met at McGill University, had spent the previous summer hawking paperbacks out of their VW van in Northern British Columbia, prior to the opening of the store in their apartment.They moved their store next door into its current location on 469 Milton Street in 1975, which was the site of the former neighborhood Chinese laundry for 70 years.