With her sister and a love of books, Carol Jamieson took the plunge in the early ‘90s and bought a bookstore. From meager beginnings, said bookstore eventually became Book ‘Em Comics and Books and was for eight years a solid fixture in the Sawridge Plaza Shopping Centre. Fifteen years later, Carol looks back as she prepares to close this chapter of her life. Book ‘Em will close its doors forever on Mar. 31.
“We started out by buying a used book and comic book store that was sharing a space over by the Royal Bank, Jamieson says. “This lady had a bunch of used books for sale and we looked at it. I always wanted to be involved in books so my sister and I thought, at the very least, we would be buying a whole bunch of reading material if things didn’t work out.”
“We were subletting a little space from what was then a pet store and trophy place. We did that for about a year then we moved into the mall and started to (bring in) new books. We learned as we went. After a while, we went across the hall in the mall into a bigger space.”
Clearly, things were going well for Book ‘Em in the early years. What happened for Jamieson to move out of the mall and sell the business? Basically, it came down to her making a choice. “My son is autistic. He needed more attention than I could give him and run a business at the same time. So, you want to pick one thing to do well, so I chose to be the parent.”
With that, she approached Ray Stern with an offer to sell Book ‘Em to him and to operate it jointly with Lakeside Office Supplies and Cartridge World.
“When I first spoke to Ray about having this kind of thing in his store, I told him that it is not a stand alone business in Slave Lake. Not just because of Slave Lake, it’s rather cultural at this point. People are buying (fewer) books. There are just too many other forms of entertainment out there completing with books today.”
For the last while, Jamieson has been working part-time for Book ‘Em when they needed help and her duties as a mom permitted. She still enjoys working there and admits she has some mixed feelings about seeing the store close. She also agrees that it was inevitable.
“If you look across Canada, the number of independent bookstores is diminishing while online buying through Chapters and Amazon has increased considerably. But that’s not the same for me. You can’t feel the book online. All you see is a picture of the cover. To me, that takes away from the experience of buying a book but that’s the way it is.”
Jamieson will miss the interaction she had with customers and book lovers. To pass a few minutes happily discussing a popular work or piece of classic literature was the highlight of her time in the book business.
“I will miss the tree planters. When I was in the mall, the tree planters would come visit me and they are such cool people. They’re from all over the place, so full of life, and they read such a wide range of things.”
If there is one thing that Jamieson would like to impress upon readers is that bookstores and libraries don’t have to be for intellectuals. Stores and libraries have a veritable rainbow of choice. There is bound to be something for everyone.
“If you enjoy it, read it! An English teacher gave me trouble because I was reading the entire Tarzan series by Edgar Rice Burrows. He thought I should read something more uplifting. Maybe it wasn’t uplifting, but I sure did enjoy it!”

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