While an announcement regarding the future of Nicholas Hoare’s retail empire is expected Friday, the venerable bookseller (who lends his name to a three-store mini-chain) has confirmed that his Ottawa location will indeed close.

On Wednesday, Metro reported that, according to an unnamed employee, the Ottawa store, located in an historic property on Sussex Drive, would be forced to close due to a 72 per cent rent hike imposed by the building’s owner, the National Capital Commission.

Today, Hoare confirmed that report in an understandably indignant email to the National Post. Reporter Matthew Wright quotes from the email:

Any landlord that has the temerity, in this day and age, to levy a 72% increase in rent on a bookshop (let alone anyone else) is not only unenlightened, ill-informed and blinkered to reality, but can only be employed by an equally unenlightened, ill-informed and blinkered government, wrote Hoare.

Typical Harper, he continued. The National Capital Commission may well be entrenched in their ivory tower, but they are so out of touch with reality (we’ve never even met them) they should all be summarily fired.

Hoare is expected to confirm the fate of his two other locations, in Montreal and Toronto, following a staff meeting this evening in Montreal.