Gaspereau Press owner Keagan Hawthorne in front of the Sackville train station’s old ticket booth

Keagan Hawthorne, the new owner of the Gaspereau Press says he’s hoping to move his literary publishing company into the 119-year-old Sackville train station by Christmas where it will offer waiting room space and washrooms for VIA Rail passengers and also be open to members of the public.

“We’re really excited to be able to open our print shop to the public and to invite the community in and be able to show the community how we make books and why we make books the way we do,” Hawthorne told reporters today as he stood by the old ticket booth in the old station.

He said he had his eye on the Sackville train station after he decided to buy Gaspereau Press from Gary Dunfield and Andrew Steeves who had been operating out of a shop in Kentville, Nova Scotia.

“Visually, it’s a really appealing building. It has the space. It has a really skookum floor that can support our presses, that’s a consideration when you’re moving in large equipment,” Hawthorne says, “so the structure of the building made sense and works for our operation.”

Hawthorne is leasing the station from the town for $9,600 a year and will be responsible for paying the full cost of renovations.

He initially plans to occupy the northern third of the station where there will be space for an open-plan office, his printing workshop with its three presses, a small store that will sell Gaspereau books and other items such as stationery and pens as well as a space for VIA passengers.

“As the press expands, we will take up more of the building and the long-term goal is to have a portion of it be rentable to another small business,” he says, adding it could be a café, a repair shop, an artist’s studio or anything like that.

‘Taking care with language’

Hawthorne outside the historic station on the VIA platform

Gaspereau Press has been publishing poetry, fiction and non-fiction since it was founded in 1997.

Hawthorne, who moved to Sackville from B.C. in 2018, became its new owner in January after a two-year apprenticeship during which he learned how the presses ran, how the books were made, edited and designed.

“I was originally attracted to setting up a press and becoming a publisher, mostly because I was interested in being a printer first and foremost,” he says.

“I’m also a poet and I believe that taking care with language and being really deliberate about the language that we use is just as important and just as necessary in this moment in our culture,” he adds.

“And so, being a literary press combines both of those focuses. We publish amazing writers,” he says. “I’m always humbled and so grateful to get to work with the authors that publish with Gaspereau Press.”

To read a CHMA story about Gaspereau Press’s current location in the Sackville industrial park, click here.

To visit the Gaspereau Press website, click here.