In 1971 I borrowed, from the library bookmobile, a copy of Mrs. Mike by Benedict and Nancy Freedman. That summer my head was full of snow and huskies and the plucky and passionate Boston socialite who married the handsome Northwest Mounted Police officer and moved to the wilds of Canada’s north. One of my favourite childhood books, its discovery firmly planted a love of libraries in my readerly heart.
The new coffee table book by historian/journalist David Obee, The Library Book, is full of stories like that: his own, and the stories of plucky and passionate librarians and library champions. Folks up and listening to CBC’s arts program North by Northwest last Sunday likely caught host Sheryl McKay’s fascinating interview with Obee. It’s available as a downloadable podcast, but better, we have the book itself in the library.
It’s full of BC’s library history, from 1786 (!) through to present day. It chronicles the days when lending libraries were as much about keeping workers occupied and out of the saloons (a worker who’s been up late reading is in better shape to work than the one who’s been up late drinking) as they were about gaining knowledge. The Hudson’s Bay Company, for example, hoped to encourage its employees to make better choices.
The first formal library in BC — New Westminster — has a rocky past, especially when it came to funding, resulting in an on-again, off-again existence. Upon one closure in the 1800s the Herald newspaper’s editorial bemoaned the closure of the library over a $1,000 annual price tag “in a town which pays from $60,000 to $80,000 a year over the bars and saloons.” There’s that choice thing again.
Nelson’s first reading room was opened in 1890 by tobacconist and newsagent Gilbert Stanley; five years later the Nelson Public Reading and Amusement Rooms opened in the Victoria Hotel. And while the library here has always been embraced by many as an important community resource, there have always been some for whom its importance was underestimated.
In 1906 the City of Nelson was offered an opportunity by the famous philanthropist and library supporter Andrew Carnegie (responsible for Vancouver’s beautiful library building). As with any of his donations towards library infrastructure, Carnegie required that recipients commit to an ongoing annual investment of 10 per cent of his donation to cover salaries, maintenance, and book purchases.
The city council of the day chose to refuse Carnegie’s offer of $7,000 to $20,000, unwilling to commit an expenditure of even $700 a year on books and maintenance in perpetuity (they were already spending $960 on a year-to-year basis). It’s fair to say that things have improved considerably since then.
The Library Book’s photographs of bookmobiles — stuck in mud bogs, digging out of snowstorms, plucky and passionate in all weather — are among my favourites in Obee’s book. The Nelson Library doesn’t have a bookmobile (if we did, library staff could well come to passionate fisticuffs over the desire to drive the thing), but library materials are beginning to get wheels nonetheless.
Slocan Valley library members can now order books to be delivered to the Heritage Credit Union in Slocan Park for pick-up, and can drop off returns there as well (more information at www.nelsonlibrary.ca). And this fall, the outreach program to Winlaw returns, a rotating travelling collection that brings browsing to the browsers — almost like a bookmobile, but we don’t get to drive it.
I’m pleased to say that Mrs. Mike is still available to borrow, in print and downloadable e-book versions. It’s a wonderful thing to think that a book penned in 1946 could still be circulating today, and in formats unthinkable at the time, but then it should be clear by now that both books and libraries have more than a little pluck when it comes to staying power.
Anne DeGrace’s column is featured every second Friday