A Small Fan, A Small Shop, and a Small Utopia

Summer has arrived in Montreal once again.

Heat wave after heat wave has settled over the city.

In my little print shop, ACCO PHOTO, I've noticed a small detail that says a lot about life today.

Many young parents who come to photograph their baby's very first passport picture now carry a tiny handheld fan.

The babies are often only a few weeks or a few months old.

The fan isn't a luxury.

It's simply another way of protecting someone who has only just entered the world.

A few days ago, three generations of one family came into my shop.

A grandmother.

A young mother.

And a one-month-old baby.

We finished taking the passport photo without any problem.

Then they discovered that the little fan had run out of battery.

Outside, the heat was overwhelming.

So the grandmother stayed inside my air-conditioned shop with the baby while the mother hurried back home to fetch another fan.

Nothing dramatic happened.

Nobody was in a hurry.

For a while, my little shop simply became a cool place to wait.

When the mother returned with a fully charged fan, the three generations quietly left together.

As I watched them walk away, I realized that what I had witnessed wasn't really about a fan.

It was about trust.

About patience.

About a tiny moment of everyday kindness.

Sometimes I wonder whether places like small neighborhood shops still have a role to play.

We print photographs.

Passport pictures.

Wedding signs.

Canvas prints.

Old family albums.

But perhaps, without realizing it, we also offer something else.

A place where people can pause for a few minutes.

Where strangers feel comfortable waiting.

Where everyday life slows down just enough for small acts of care to happen naturally.

There is something almost utopian about these moments.

Not because life is perfect.

But because, for a brief moment, people quietly take care of one another without even thinking about it.

Curiously, there isn't a neighborhood print shop in my novel Nonimportantech.

Instead, there is a small grocery store where people meet, talk, and become part of one another's lives.

For a long time, I wondered why I had never written a print shop into the story.

Perhaps now I finally understand.

My own little shop has always been too modest to stand at the center of the novel.

It prefers to remain quietly on a street corner.

Meanwhile, Nonimportantech has been doing something remarkably similar all along.

Like a print shop preserves photographs, perhaps novels preserve lives.

Not by stopping time.

But by quietly keeping human stories from disappearing.