If you're still looking for a holiday season miracle, try this on for size: Michael Gibson has been running an art gallery in downtown London for 20 years, and he's more successful no than he's ever been.

There were times when it looked like his dream would die. He's in his fourth location, seven years past the nadir of his career when he walked away from nearly everything he was doing and operated his business for several months in borrowed space using little more than a cellphone.

Today, however, he operates in a beautifully designed, open space on Carling Street, far enough around the corner from Richmond Street to maintain some mystery, but close enough to attract customers.

"We took a huge risk in 1997, moving to this location and focusing entirely on original art," he says. "I walked away from probably 85 per cent of what we were doing on King Street, immediately prior to coming here. But we were doing so many things there, and I wanted to spend 100 per cent of our time devoted to doing one thing exceptionally well."

On King Street, the Gibson Gallery was modeled after an art gallery gift shop, with cappucino, art-related giftware, Internet connections and, of course, art.

"We had five divisions and wew weren't focused on any one thing the way we needed to be."

It's quite a leap from recognizing a problem to taking the bold steps needed to correct it, and Gibson thought about what to do for at least a year. He had survived other moves and changes in the economy all around him.

The 1980s were very successful. The business was called Roth Art, the name it had when he bought it, and it did very well framing and selling prints. The early 1990s pushed him to domore for less money, prompting the move to King Street and the diversified approach. When the future of that concept clouded, he did a lot of soul searching and reache dout to some friends and colleagues for ideas and support.

"When you do something like this, deciding to concentrate on the high end of the market, original works of art, it's sort of like a religion. You have to believe."

"I owe a lot to some people who helped me then and continue to help me. The Copp family had some space in Lambeth they let me use during the transition to this place.

"All I had for a while was my cellphone as I worked to open up here. The Wolf family, and ICORR, are my landlords here, and they are very supportive. And John Nicholson designed this space, which won a National Design Exchange Award for Architecture in 1997."

Today, at age 46, Gibson employs two full-time staff and some part-time. He stages a dozen or so full-fledged exhibits a year, as well as numerous smaller shows, parties and events -- whatever it takes to keep the 25 or so artists he represents in the consciousness of potential buyers.

He arranges for exhibits and shows that take place in other cities and in other countries.

He works the phone tirelessly, and is respected across Canada both for the work he does and for his gallery's longevity.

"Twenty years is remarkable," he says, as though observing someone other than himself.

"I'm proud of the relationships I've established over that time, both with artists and with clients.

"It's a great business in that way because it really is about people, and that's what I love the most."