I haven't been to many Vancouver bookstores, but there was a very good chance of finding what you wanted in Toronto bookstores if it was in print recently. Of course, the situation was different if something was out of print for a while or specialized. (Examples: I had to order books on parallel computing and quantum physics, and I had to go to a specialized bookstore for teaching resources.) Yet even then you could usually go through the store's catalogue and order it in, much like you can with places like Amazon.