I was in the ancient history section and noticed the books inscribed with an owner’s name and on the other side of the room, Forrest was looking through the collectible books and he noted the same name. Then he found Mineral Deposits of the Canadian Shield, authored by E. L. Bruce, the very man whose Virgil I was buying, and whose Edith Hamilton’s The Greek Way I had picked up and then decided against. (I have a copy at home. I also have the Virgil but in a different translation.) We spent time wondering about Dr. Bruce, as one does, or at least as a historian does. Mineral Deposits was inscribed to the geologist’s wife in 1933. A story there, how the books came to be in a school gym book sale in Rockcliffe Park, and we talked about it at length.
And how lucky, A. found a biography of Robert Laird Borden, whose name he’d been dreamily chanting for days.
