The Intrepid Tales of a Blond China Doll: The finale in a two part profile of Hannelore Headley

As published on Retirement News Weekly/Niagara on July 2, 2010.

During last week’s interview with 74-year-old bookseller Hannelore Headley, I asked her if she could narrow down her love of books to a favourite novel or author. It took her a moment to mentally go through decades of reading before she finally concluded, “I enjoy reading the stories of intrepid women whose sense of curiosity and adventure drove them to want to travel to places that were not open to women.” This week I have returned to Hannah’s bookshop on Queen St. to discuss with her how she ended up in St. Catharines. Living as a refugee in Shanghai, travelling to Canada, and living across the country makes Hannah one of the women she so enjoys reading about, at least in my books.

Hannah begins her story with a date; her birthday. She was born a leap-year baby on February 29, 1936 to Heinz Egon and Paula Kato in Berlin, Germany. It was a tumultuous time for this Jewish family at the brink of World War II. At the age of three, Hannah became a refugee as she and her family fled the country to Shanghai, China.

Always a book seller, her father opened a bookstore in Shanghai during the war. While Hannah doesn’t remember this store, after the war he opened a second on the bottom floor of their two-story home. Hannah spent hours in this store reading everything she could get her hands on, including a book that her father considered unsuitable. She laughs as she tells me that when she was 13, “I picked up a book called Forever Amber, which was a really steamy, steamy book back then. My father took the book out of my hands very gently and said, ‘My darling, this isn’t the book for you.’”

When the communists took over China, her father once again had to close his store and the family realized that they could economically no longer stay in the country. They applied for an exit visa to Canada, where Paula had relatives, and after two years their papers came through; however the problems in Hannah’s story never have simple resolutions.

Two days before leaving, their exit visa was revoked and two days later her father was arrested as a suspected German spy. Her father remained in police custody for fourteen months. The Chinese police eventually realized that he couldn’t be a spy, but punished him with deportation, which worked for the family. They boarded a boat in Shangai heading to Hong Kong. When they hit international waters, the captain entered the cabin where her father was still being detained. Hannah tears up even today as she speaks the captain’s words, “Mr. Heinemann, you’re now a free man.”

The journey to their final destination was long, but filled with exhilarating moments. She recalls her father being reunited with his Aryan step-mother who was his only living relative remaining in Germany. She excitedly describes to me how she saw Pope Pius XII in Vatican City on a cloudy Easter morning and how when he blessed the crowd, the sun shown down for a brief and miraculous moment. She fondly remembers her father searching through a book store behind the Spanish Steps in Rome and finding a first edition of Jacques Cartier’s Voyages in Canada, which they later sold and the family lived off the profits for three months.

Hannah arrived in Canada on June 2, 1953 after travelling by boat for six days across the Atlantic. Her mind is sharp and she explains that it was 1:30 in the afternoon when the ship’s passengers were let out at Pier 21 in Halifax and immediately herded into cages in a concrete shed. The family was processed after ten hours and boarded a sealed train heading west. For three days they travelled, being offered a few sandwiches a day. Her brother, Stephen Heinemann, then six, was the only one who could get comfortable. When the train stopped, Hannah’s mother told them they were getting off. She didn’t know where they were, but after three days without sleep and seeing nothing but Canadian bush passing by her window, Paula had enough.

The family found a small apartment and Heinz managed to talk a local bookstore owner, Mr. Lovely, into letting him run Mansfield Book Mart after only a month of working in the small basement shop that Hannah describes as being as “large as my front room.” It was at this store that Hannah got her first real taste of selling books. “My father didn’t volunteer much information,” she recalls, “but if you were curious and you asked him, he would very carefully and patiently instruct you and answer your inquiries. So I learned a lot. I picked up a good deal of knowledge there.”

Montreal was a literary and cultural centre at the time and Hannah met poets and authors including Irving Layton, Leonard Cohen, and Alfred Purdy. It was Mr. Purdy’s roommate Douglas Kaye that Hannah met and married. The two moved to Vancouver in September 1957 and she immediately started looking for an adequate location to open her own bookstore. She found a narrow, but long, shop and Douglas built a wall dividing the space into a store and primitive home where they lived a “bohemian” lifestyle without a kitchen for two years. Running H. Kaye’s Books made Hannah the youngest independent bookseller in the country at the time.

It was in Vancouver that Hannah had her two children; Paula, named after her mother, and Michael. She and Douglas divorced in 1963. She then met Velmer Headley who was studying at the University of British Columbia, while she worked in the library. The two soon wed and, as destiny would have it, moved to St. Catharine’s, Ontario. Their story in this city is where my first interview with Hannah began.

It takes a moment to absorb Hannah’s life’s narrative. I’ve asked few questions as she’s delved into her past offering anecdotes and tidbits about her fascinating life. Even after hashing out her entire story, Hannah doesn’t make the direct connection that her life parallels the stories of the heroines she enjoys reading about. But I can say without doubt, that Hannah is the most curious and intrepid adventurer that I’ve met.

The Blind Bookseller: The first in a two part profile of Hannelore Headley

As published on Retirement News Weekly/Niagara on July 2, 2010.

Admittedly, I feel nervous as I peer past the books on display in the window of Hannelore Headley Old & Fine Books on Queen Street. I have spent the day reading about my interviewee and was enthralled by her story. Born to a Jewish family in Berlin in 1936, Hannah, as she prefers to be called, became a refugee at the age of 3. She and her family escaped through Italy to Shanghai, China where she lived until the age of 17. Today, however, I will be asking her about her more recent adventures and accomplishments, mainly on how she came to be the proud owner of two used book stores in St. Catharines; Hannelore's Downtown Fine Books and the store I am currently entering.

The shop is filled to bursting with 90,000 books, all neatly stacked or shelved along the walls. I spot Hannah sitting patiently behind her desk in the middle of the store where, at the age of 74, she spends much of her time. I ask her if she’ll ever retire and leave her post behind the desk and she pauses for a second as if contemplating for the first time that there was any other choice. Finally, she responds, “Well, yes,” and then laughs, before adding, “when they carry me out feet first. Any day I’m vertical I’m certainly coming here. I would miss the everyday things… you know, the people coming in and just walking up with a handful of mysteries. I’ve now been here long enough, 38 years, that people who used to come in as children are coming in with their kids.”

Hannah’s dedication to her bookstores is understandable. After all, book selling is in her blood. Her father was a life-long book dealer who owned stores in Berlin, Shanghai, and Montreal. Before him, her Great-grandfather’s brother William Heinemann was the famous founder of the Windmill Press in London. Her brother Stephen Heinemann owned a bookstore in Kingston before joining her in St. Catharines.

“I decided at a young age to carry on the family tradition of book selling,” she recalls. Indeed she did. At age 21, she was the youngest bookstore owner in Canada when she opened her first in Vancouver. She closed the Vancouver shop in 1962 to raise her two children, Paula, now 50, and Michal, 48. It was during this time that she became a professional collector of illustrated children’s books. By the time she sold it to a gentleman from New England, she had a collection of over 5,000 books. It wasn’t until moving to St. Catharines for her husband, Dr. Velmer Headley’s job as a mathematics professor at Brock University that Hannah once again became a bookseller. In a store on the corner of Duke and Wellington, the couple rented two rooms on the street level for what would be one of St. Catharines’ first used book shop.

Her first day of business was quiet, as she recalls, “I opened on September 11, 1972. It was my first day of business. And of course, obviously, I didn’t see anybody. I hadn’t advertised and there wasn’t a grand opening or anything like that. But at the end of the day, a man walked in. He was tall with white short hair trimmed in a crew cut. And my first impression was, ‘The RCMP already?’ Of course he was not. He turned out to be my first and very generous customer. He’d come every week and would leave with a handful of books.”

For stock, Hannah began collecting anywhere she could find books. She searched through yard sales, antique bookstores, and even at the Salvation Army. Before long people heard she was purchasing books and started to bring them in by the box load. As she tells me this she gestures around the room as if to suggest that finding stock has never been much of a problem. It’s for this reason that within two years, Hannah had grown out of her two room shop and the couple purchased the house on Queen St where the store remains to this day. It was only when this house was filled that they decided to open the second store on St. Paul St. in 2002.

Hannah has been reading since the age of three. However she claims she hasn’t read a book in its entirety for a very long time. The irony of Hannah’s story is that as a result of her diabetes, Hannah is losing her vision and has to read even prices with a magnifying glass. Laughing, she comments, “I think being a blind book seller is not a good combination.”

However this impairment has only left her appreciating books all the more. While people suggest that she try audio books, she rejects the idea. “The joy of reading; you hold a book in your hand and the paper… it’s a tactile thing. It’s a sensual thing. The book has a feeling to it. The smell of the paper. The fact you’re turning your own pages.” And, if there’s any consolation, she at least is surrounded by books every day, which she appreciates. She also has her daily intake of stories, no longer trapped between two covers, but now told to her by her customers. “The people who you encounter,” she tells me excitedly, when I ask her what the best part about owning her own bookstore is. “I mean, the door opens, people come in and sit in that chair and invite you into their lives. They want to share with you their experiences.”

I feel the same sentiment as I wrap up my interview with Hannah. Her willingness to share her experiences with me is the best part of my day.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Check back next week for the conclusion of our profile on Hannelore Headley where we explore how she went from a German refugee during World War II to Canada’s youngest bookseller.