In the course of my research on Betty Lambert’s novel Crossings I learned about Gloria Greenfield, here’s a link to a profile about her work, activism and legacy.
Gloria Greenfield arrived in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1972, near the beginning of the second wave of feminism. She shared little of her past with anyone, but threw herself into the present. One of Gloria’s first activities was to found, with actor Nora D. Randall, the Vancouver Women’s Bookstore, only the second or third one in all of North America. Many people doubted that the bookstore could survive: the view at the time was that men wrote all the good books and women had little of value to say anyway. But survive it did, often with Gloria running it alone, believing that the store could make it, never taking any pay