Little Sisters Bookstore

Little Sister's Book and Art Emporium, also known as Little Sister's Bookstore, but usually called "Little Sister's", is an independent bookstore in the Davie Village/ West End neighbourhood of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The bookstore was opened in 1983 by Jim Deva and Bruce Smyth, and its current manager is Don Wilson.

The bookstore is famous for being embroiled in a legal battle with the Canada Border Services Agency over the importation of what the agency has labeled " obscene materials"."A tale of two bookstores"
. ''Xtra!'', January 19, 2006. These materials, nearly all dealing with male-male or female-female sexuality, were routinely seized at the border. The same publications, when destined for mainstream booksellers in the country, had often been delivered without delay or question. Glad Day Bookshop, an LGBT bookstore in Toronto, has faced similar difficulties.

Little Sister's filed their claim against the federal government in 1990, but the case stalled and was not heard until October 1994. The trial concluded in January 1996 with a judgment for the plaintiffs. The court found that Little Sister's shipments had been wrongly delayed or withheld due to the "systemic targeting of Little Sisters' importations in the Customs Mail Center."

In 2000, the case was heard in the Supreme Court of Canada. The court found that the customs has targeted shipments to the bookstore and attempted to prevent them from getting in. Consequently, the government was found to have violated section 2 of the Charter. However, the violation was justified under section 1. The case established that the onus of proving that expressive material is obscene lies with Canadian Customs.

The bookstore's travails were fictionalized as a subplot of the film '' Better Than Chocolate''. A feature-length documentary film by Aerlyn Weissman, ''Little Sister's vs. Big Brother'' (2002), has also been released about the bookstore. Former manager Janine Fuller