Tori:
I've purchased games usually at the Compusmart on Merivale, but more when it was in the Emerald Plaza location. They had a larger Mac games section then. But even at their new location they often will get in a few copies of the new titles when they come out. I was just in there, and they had some. Sorry, I don't remember the titles, but they do bring them in. I think the Rideau Centre location also gets them too. I'm sure you could special order them thru either location, or thru their website. I've never gone to the Mac Group for games, personally, but that's just a location thing for me. I believe Best Buy also has Mac titles in or close to their Mac section. The few other places that had at least some Mac titles seem to have dried up: both Toys R Us locations had some titles (hey, if you want Quake I, I think the St.Laurent location still has a copy, 9.99 I think), and the Compucentre in St.Laurent also had titles.
If you are looking for Blizzard games (ie.Warcraft, Diablo, and Starcraft series), most of their titles are cross-platform, containing both Mac and PC versions on the same CDs, so you can find them in almost any place that sells those titles: Staples, Walmart, Future Shop, Best Buy, Electronics Boutique. I think all of their series are now available as "Battlechests", probably the cheapest way to get them - with the expansions and bonus hintbooks. The caveat of not buying them from a "Mac store", is that the sale of the title may not go down as a "Mac sale". (though all of these titles have pretty much had their main runs by now, except WC 3).
But you are right, there is not much in the way of Mac gaming retail locally, as far as I am aware.
I subscribe to the MacPlay newsletter, as well as the Aspyr Games newsletter, and check out Macgamer.com regularly. Often you can get notified of special sales of Mac games directly from the distributor. MacPlay has some really nice ones for their products. And of course, their are the other web vendors which you are trying to avoid.
Oh, yeah, you could try calling the Tech store/computer stores at the 2 universities and Algonquin to see if they have anything in stock.
Hope this helps.
If you like gaming online, and you're playing a game that doesn't allow you to play against PC opponents, get GameRanger, and that will connect you to a couple hundred Mac gamers online. Combo of chat room and game launcher. It looked like a good product - I just didn't have the titles that ppl were playing at the moment (at least not the new ones).
-Mike