All about the bookstore “they” don’t want you to know about.
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They can be seen on any given Tuesday afternoon in Toronto’s Parkdale district: men skulking along Queen Street with an uncertain gait, then surreptitiously checking every direction—for a zoom lens? for a boom mic? for assassins?—before ducking into a store that treats their paranoid nightmares with the respect they deserve.
Since 2006 the Conspiracy Culture bookstore has established itself as a one-stop shop for those convinced that “the truth is out there.” It carries thousands of books, magazines, and DVDs that mainstream booksellers won’t, on topics ranging from UFOs to the Illuminati to the Kennedy assassination, as well as T-shirts that read “One Nation Under Surveillance” and “Sodium Fluoride: Poisoning Our Water Since 1945.” It also hosts lectures like “The CIA and Military Mind Control,” and “The New World Order: A Second Look at the United Nations.”
SOMEBODY’S WATCHING
Conspiracy Culture is the brainchild of Patrick Whyte and Kadina Yu, who were stirred by the 9/11 attacks to move beyond their childhood fascinations with Bigfoot and the Bermuda Triangle and consider the vast sea of “alternative narratives” that defy conventional wisdom. Whyte, a former disc jockey, and Yu, a high-school math teacher, decided to open a space where they could sell the publications they were discovering, and offer fellow “free thinkers” a place to share their concerns.
Despite what they call frequent snooping into their affairs by both the Canadian and U.S. governments—including, they claim, routine examinations of imported books by customs officials—they have remained vigilant about providing access to unusual perspectives on the events of the day. “There’s the official story, and there’s the unofficial story,” Whyte told the Toronto Standard in 2012. “Once you step into that rabbit hole, watch out, because it just goes and goes and goes.”
The actor who played “Scotty” on Star Trek, James Doohan, was shot six times on D-Day.