Blue Heron Books and Zines is a community bookstore and zine distributor dedicated to sharing anarchist, anti-authoritarian, and anti-colonial literature. By signing up for a Blue Heron membership ($5 or pay what you can) you can borrow any of the books in our collection.
Blue Heron operates the Free Store, which is basically a thrift store where clothing, household goods, tools, craft supplies, and other donated items are available for anyone to take at no cost.
We are also the happy hosts to The Herb Shelf, initiated and run by local herbalists. They provide (for free!) a variety of dried herbs (calendula, chamomile, elderflower, lemon balm, burdock root, etc.) and information on how to use them in teas, tinctures, steams, and more.
Land Acknowledgment
Blue Heron is a primarily settler-run project that operates within the traditional, overlapping, and unceded territories of the Anishinabeg, Algonquin, Haudenosaunee, and Huron-Wendat peoples. Katarokwi/Kingston is also home to Indigenous people from elsewhere on Turtle Island, including those who have been displaced: the survivors of forced adoption, human trafficking, and incarceration; those fleeing (un)natural disasters, environmental destruction, and systemic poverty on reserves; and those seeking health care that is unavailable at home.
It’s clear to us that the theft of Indigenous land and life is not a thing of the past. It is ongoing, motivated by capitalism and the state’s existential need to control the human and nonhuman communities within its borders. This violence is often reinforced by settler-citizens, the result of hatred at worst, ignorance at best. As a library project, we hope to help combat colonial attitudes by making accessible historical resources, anti-colonial analysis, and the works of Indigenous authors and artists.
Visit Us
- Address: 75 Queen St. Unit # 1 (up the ramp), Kingston, ON
- Hours: Mondays 3:00PM - 7:00PM & Thursdays 5:00PM - 7:00pm