Georgian Bay Reads 2015

Seven years ago, three Georgian Bay area libraries celebrated the end of Ontario Public Library Week with a gala literary event to promote Canadian literature. Called Georgian Bay Reads, because of its similarity to the CBC contest called Canada Reads, the event now includes five local libraries, who duke it out for the Georgian Bay Reads Trophy and the People’s Choice Award.

Here’s how it works. Libraries choose representatives to “defend” a Canadian book that they feel strongly about and believe should be read by all Canadians. A moderator gives the defenders set questions and time frames to impress the audience with their knowledge of and passion for their chosen book, as well as the ability to convey their thoughts in a timely manner (and bells start clanging if the allotted time is exceeded). With each round of questions, a defender is eliminated until the winner is determined.

This year, Georgian Bay Reads took place on Saturday, October 24 at the Station on the Green in Creemore. It included the following libraries, defenders, and books:

• Clearview Public Library: Beth Crawley defending Unless by Carol Shields
• Collingwood Public Library: Susie Saunderson defending Still Life by Louise Penny
• Meaford Public Library: Cindy Lou LeDrew defending The Virgin Cure by Ami McKay
• Springwater Public Library: Linda Collins defending Emancipation Day by Wayne Grady
• Wasaga Beach Public Library: Ian Adams defending No Relation by Terry Fallis
• 2014 Georgian Bay Reads winner and moderator:  Lorraine Gruzuk

Although they defended their books with well-reasoned explanations and spirited debate, Susie Saunderson and Beth Crawley were voted off in the first half, with Ian Adams succumbing in the third round. Linda Collins and Cindy Lou LeDrew were both passionate regarding the value and meaning of their books, but Cindy Lou LeDrew was the victor, winning both the Trophy and the People’s Choice Award.

Because of Cindy’s win, Meaford Public Library will host the 2016 Georgian Bay Reads event.

-- Dorothy Gebert

Left to right: Susie Saunderson, Linda Collins, Cindy Lou LeDrew, Ian Adams, Beth Crawley, Lorraine Gruzuk

Seed Library

On Saturday, October 17, we wrapped up our seed library for another year.  The seeds we saved will go into a cool dry place until next spring when we start thinking about gardening again.

We started the Seed Library in September 2013.  The idea originated with two local residents, Ivan and Shan, who were also members of Transition Collingwood.  We invited Jacob Kearey-Moreland to come and address a small group on the topic of saving garden seeds. Jacob had founded the Orillia Seed Library, which is housed in the Orillia Public Library. At the time, the Meaford Public Library was also starting a seed library, so the idea was in the zeitgeist.  The following April we organized a fundraiser, screening the film Revolution at the Gayety, and used the proceeds to purchase heirloom organic seeds to launch the seed library properly. In the spring of 2015, we decided to move the seed library from behind the desk to the public area and encouraged people to help themselves. Within a few weeks, all of the seeds were gone—out into the world to feed the families of the Collingwood area.

What is a Seed Library?

A seed library is a place where local gardeners can share seeds saved from their own gardens.  Public libraries are good repositories for these collections, because they are community spaces, their mandate is to facilitate the exchange of information and to create community cohesiveness, and libraries are open long hours, so they are accessible.

How Does a Seed Library Work?

In the spring, we put out bins of donated seeds.  The seeds are packaged in small envelopes and labeled.  The labeling can be minimal—e.g. “Red Sail Lettuce – 2015”—or more detailed, with planting instructions, etc.. Obviously, the more detail, the better, for the gardener who will plant them.  The seeds are free, but we ask that if you take some seeds home to plant then please harvest some of the seed and return it to the library in the fall.  If you are unsure about how to save garden seeds, help yourself to one of our brochures or check our website for some helpful advice.  You are welcome to donate any extra seed you have to the library.  We have launched the seed library with heirloom seed varieties, which we purchased with generous financial donations from the Collingwood community.  Heirloom seeds breed true to type, which is to say, when you plant these seeds, they will grow plants just like their parents.  This can’t be said of commercially grown hybrid varieties.

Why Start a Seed Library?

The idea is to develop a stock of seed over time that is well-suited to the Collingwood environment. Seed sharing builds community resiliency and fosters healthy eating habits.  As seed saving has fallen out of fashion, and as we turn more and more to large commercial operations for our seed stock, many heirloom varieties have disappeared, contributing to a loss of diversity.  Local varieties are often very well adapted to local conditions and generally taste better and are healthier than something you might buy in a supermarket that has had to travel a long way to reach your dinner table.

Also, it’s just fun.

Seven Wonders

People like best-of lists.  It’s fun to argue over what was included and what should have been included.  So in the spirit of fun, I am going to create a best-of list for the Collingwood Public Library.  Here are my nominations (in no particular order) for:

The Seven Wonders of the Collingwood Public Library

       1.  Our Local History and Genealogical Collection – For a library of our size the collection is really quite remarkable, and is the result of many years of careful collection development.  Of particular interest to researchers is our copy of the Jesuit Relations, all 73 volumes of it.  The Relations are letters home from Jesuit missionaries in New France in the seventeenth century to their supporters back in Europe. It is from these documents that we know so much about the First Nations people who lived in the Collingwood area.  The Relations are also the only volumes to be rescued when our old Carnegie library burned down in 1963. If you open them, you can still see the water and smoke damage.

      2.  Our Stained Glass Windows – these were made by Gary Wilkinson,

and each window depicts a Collingwood scene in a different season of the year.  Beautiful.

       3.  Our Living Roof – The new library is housed in a LEED certified building, which is more energy

efficient than traditional commercial buildings.  The living roof absorbs heat in summer, reducing the “heat island” effect created by conventional black-tarred flat roofs, acts as a layer of insulation, creates a habitat for birds and insects, and collects water, which can be returned to the environment through evaporation instead of being directed down storm sewers.  Some of the water is also collected in a cistern and used to water the green roof in times of drought.  Tours of the roof can be arranged, but we can’t let people go up on their own at this time, because the parapet is not high enough to insure visitor safety.

       4.  Our DVD Collection – You might think, in these days of video streaming, that no one uses DVDs anymore, but you would be wrong.  Our large and varied collection is heavily-used.  In fact, DVDs are the most frequently circulated items in our library collection—perhaps because DVDs can be consumed much quicker than novels, so they are in and out of the library faster than books, but perhaps also because we have such a large collection with something for every taste.

       5.  Our Children’s Area – Walking into the children’s area of the library is like entering an enchanted forest.  The architects hit exactly the right note here.

      6.  Our ArtWalk – The main entrance of the library is the perfect place to display art work.  We have new displays of work by local artists every two months.

        7.  Our Donor Pillars – The brick pillars in the interior of the library are graced with the names of local donors who helped to furnish the new library, and are a great tribute to the spirit of generosity found in Collingwood.  What many people don’t know, however, is that the pillars are constructed of recycled brick.  Some of the bricks came from the old livery stable that once stood on this site.  Other bricks were rescued from the old Carnegie library when it was pulled down after the fire.  Something old incorporated into something new. 

Also:

      8.  Our Wonderful Staff and Volunteers – Of course nothing happens without people, and we are blessed with a talented crew of staff and volunteers whose passion for library work makes the library a special place to be each and every day.

Culture and Belonging

The Province of Ontario is currently holding a series of “Culture Talks.” These are town hall-style meetings across the province designed to help shape Ontario’s first culture strategy.  The goals are: (1) to establish what Ontarians value about culture, (2) to identify opportunities to better meet the needs of the arts and culture sector, and (3) to ensure that the government’s policies and programs reflect Ontario’s diverse populations and communities.  Much of the discussion, I’m sure, will revolve around the issue of why culture matters.

There are many reasons to promote culture, but I am going to suggest one that doesn’t often occur to people.  I think artists—and I’m thinking primarily of writers and painters here—create a sense of place.  Wallace Stegner, who memorialized the southwest corner of Saskatchewan in Wolf Willow, wrote: “No place is a place until things that have happened in it are remembered in history, ballads, yarns, legends, or monuments.”  He went even further: “[N]o place is a place until it has had a poet.”

Bruce Feiler, writing in Walking the Bible, wonders why, as an American, the landscape of the Holy Land feels so familiar to him, almost like a homecoming, even though he has never visited before.  At the end of his long journey, having travelled through Turkey, Israel, Egypt and Jordan, he is resting on Mount Nebo, sharing the same view of the Promised Land as Moses once did, and he asks his guide, Avner, if this feeling of “coming home” is rooted in his DNA. No, says Avner, it’s your cultural DNA—your Bible. In other words, it is the stories Feiler was raised on that link him to Holy Land. It is the stories in the Bible that create the feeling of coming home.

By contrast, many Canadians do not feel at home in their own country.  Writers and critics as diverse as Susanna Moody, Douglas LePan, Northrop Frye, and Earle Birney have complained of Canada’s newness and our lack of ghosts.  Canadians from our First Nations and from Quebec have stories and myths which root them in the landscape, but many of us still look elsewhere for home. Yann Martel famously (or infamously) compared Canada to a large motel, and he was chided for it, but he had a valid point.  

Diarist and diplomat Charles Ritchie wrote that he thought of “this country not as young but as old as nature—antedating Athens and Rome—always these hidden lakes and waiting woods.” I’ve always felt the same way about the Canadian Shield country.  It feels ancient. Men feel insignificant, as if our ascendency is also insignificant, a blip, a ripple on the stream of time.  We have yet to fully inhabit the landscape.  Northrop Frye accused us of having a “garrison mentality” and felt that there was some part of the Canadian identity that fears the emptiness of Canada and builds a psychological barrier against it.  I would argue that this is where artists and writers can help. They can give us images and stories that help us to imaginatively inhabit the landscape and allow us to begin to feel at home.

The importance of this sense of belonging goes beyond mere comfort.  If we don’t feel we belong in a place, we will not value it.  We will allow terrible things to happen to that place, like strip mining, clear cutting, or farming the soil to the point of exhaustion and using our water as a source of income or as a place to dump mining sludge or industrial effluent.  There is a difference between a place we simply live in and a place we call home. We protect our homes, we don’t see them as things to be used, but as places we inhabit and value.

Canada has a number of writers and painters who have helped to define us.  They are often, by necessity, regional writers, but that is not a bad thing.  Lucy Maude Montgomery has shaped the way we think of Prince Edward Island.  Orillia will always be the “little town” of Stephen Leacock’s invention.  The Yukon has been claimed by Robert Service’s “men who moil for gold.”  Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven have given us a vision of northern Ontario that has become iconic.  Whenever I see a twisted tree on the shore of Georgian Bay, I think of Thomson’s painting “The West Wind” and the world I see is beautiful and familiar.  It feels like home.

Have a great Thanksgiving weekend.

--Ken Haigh

Libraries and Privacy II

I’ve been following an interesting item in the news over the past few weeks.  A small public library in Lebanon, New Hampshire has decided to become the first library in the United States to run a TOR server.

The TOR browser was designed to assure user anonymity while on the Internet.  It was developed to protect users (according to Tor's website) from “traffic analysis, a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security.”  TOR is used extensively by journalists, human rights’ groups and citizen activists.  It is also used by criminals, like the peddlers of child pornography.

The TOR browser “protects you by bouncing your communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world: it prevents somebody watching your Internet connection from learning what sites you visit, and it prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location.” In order to work, TOR needs organizations to volunteer some bandwidth on existing servers.   The Lebanon library felt that protecting online privacy was a worthwhile goal and decided to become the pilot project for the Boston-based Library Freedom Project.   But it almost didn’t happen.

When the Department of Homeland Security caught wind of the move, they alerted local law enforcement, who asked for permission to address the Library Board.   The project was put on hold until a public meeting could be held.  In the end, after hearing from all sides, the Board decided to go ahead with the project.  They felt that the right to privacy trumped the risk of criminal activity.

How would you have voted, had you been on the Library Board? Is our online privacy sacrosanct? Or should we give it up for the greater good, on the principle that if we are doing nothing wrong, we have nothing to hide? Personally, I find it creepy that someone is tracking my online activity, that every click of my mouse is being studied and analyzed, even if it is only to sell me something.

If you want to learn more about TOR, you can visit their website here.  Here is a good article on the New Hampshire library story.

--Ken Haigh