Censorship? Sure looks like it!

I try to read stuff from all over the political spectrum. It's par for the course considering I can't be pigeonholed politically. Many have tried: I've been called a "neocon warmonger" and a "pinko pantywaist" for the same post.
I like to read people who put forth their points persuasively and with wit. Michael Moore used to do this well on the left; he has since degenerated into diatribe. A few TorStar journalists cut the mustard, in my view, most notably Richard Gwyn and Michele Landsberg. On the right, which is generally at least as strident, there are still some voices of (relative) reason. The best by far of these, I have found, is Mark Steyn. He makes no bones about his biases, but unlike many other pundits, he makes some effort at backing them up. And no matter the topic, he's funny.
He's written a book: America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It, a portion of which was excerpted in Macleans magazine recently. It made for a fascinating read. His basic argument is that Islam is in a militant expansionist phase and is, in the end, unstoppable. His reasons for asserting this are political, of course, but they are even more demographic. Again and again in the excerpt alone we are confronted with the reality of Muslim demographics as opposed to those in the West. Simply put, Muslims are having more babies. Many more. We whitebreads in the West are reproducing far below replacement rates. It's only a matter of time before balances begin to tip. All of this is written with Steyn's trademark humour, but underneath it all he's deadly serious. The demographic perspective is one I had not considered and I felt merited further attention. I've been on holidays over the past two weeks and have had lots of time to read. Ergo, I thought I'd buy this book.
I tried Chapters. No dice: not available. Nor Coles. Nor Indigo. Nor Smithbooks. No wonder, really: they're all the same company, the biggest retailer in Canada, pretty much the only bookseller in urban and suburban areas, where most of us live. Odd that they wouldn't have a bestseller by a Canadian of note. I've tried each store repeatedly. You can check for yourself online: as of this writing, at least, the book is still unavailable.
Amazon.ca stocks the title, but can't keep it in stock. According to its fluctuating lists, America Alone and Dawkins' The God Delusion are duking it out for number one on Canadian bestseller charts. As of 4:47 p.m., Friday, October 27, America Alone stands alone at the top of the list.
Imagine my amusement when I opened this week's issue of Macleans to find Steyn laughingly mocking the fact he's written one of the top-selling books in Canada without the benefit of sales in Canadian bookstores. I'd love to tell Mark the conspiracy deepens: if you check Chapters/Indigo's list of Canadian bestsellers--which is the one most often reported in daily newspapers--you'll find no sign of America Alone in the top FIFTY. (You will find several left-leaning lambastings of the Bush Administration.)
How is this possible? How can the same book be number one online and unheard of in Canada's bookopoly?
The only book, to my knowledge, that Heather Reisman has seen fit to ban from her book chains is Mein Kampf, by one Adolf Hitler. I don't recall too much of a foofarow at the time: surely, most Canadians argued, we don't need to read the spewings of such a vile monster. Had I a blog at the time, I would have railed against this act of censorship--partly, I'll admit, because I take a perverse satisfaction in rowing against currents, but mostly because I firmly believe the spewings of even the vilest of monsters should be public knowledge. The thing to do with a fool is to expose him and ridicule him. You can't do it if you aren't permitted to know how foolish he is.
Does Reisman accord Mark Steyn the status and motives of a Hitler? Boy, I for one hope not. But how else to interpret the facts? Is Chapters/Indigo content to let Amazon take their cut of the profits? Why?

We just bought a vacuum cleaner, something called the Dyson DC-14 Animal. It costs: the price is easily three times what you'd normally pay for an upright vacuum. But there's a reason: this vaccuum is good. I ran our old Dirt Devil over our living room carpet and filled the canister about a quarter of the way. I then let the Animal loose on the same carpet and had to dump its canister twice.
So I'm checking out Wikipedia on Dyson vaccuum cleaners and I discovered Hoover considered buying the patent to keep the technology off the market. Little wonder. This thing outperforms anything Hoover ever thought up.

I'm now bound and determined to get a copy of Mark Steyn's book, on the same principle. Somebody very influential has decided, by the evidence, that I shouldn't see it. No matter where you stand on Steyn or anything he writes about, this situation should scare you. It does me.