40 A Good Read 1906

Across Canada, these workers answer 350,000 questions weekly. That is about 18 million questions per year. The questions are asked by some of the 150 million people who visit these community buildings every year. These buildings are the most visited public places in Canada. They are libraries and those questions are answered by the librarians who work there.

The Ottawa Public Library in Ontario, Canada, is the largest English and French library in North America. It was opened in 1906 with money from the Andrew Carnegie Foundation. At that library people can borrow books to read; DVDs to watch movies;CDs to listen to a French lesson; music to listen to their favourite singers or even seeds to grow flowers in their garden. Visitors to the library can get help with their homework; learn how to dance; make something on the 3D printer or surf the internet. The Ottawa Public Library is more than just a building full of books.

The earliest libraries in Canada were private ones. Books owned by European immigrants were kept in reading rooms in people's houses. Religions like the Jesuit Society collected books about their faith, and kept them at their churches in the 1600's. Public libraries did not start in Canada until the 18th century.

Then, fur trade centres and military forts began to keep books for traders and settlers to read. Lord Selkirk sent several books to the Red River Colony, in Manitoba, which he hoped the settlers would borrow to read. They were books about agriculture, history, and the law. He thought they would help the settlers as they built their homes in their new province. Later, the settlers were given the library of books that belonged to Peter Fidler of the Hudson's Bay Company(see 1881).Peter had maps and books that showed settlers how to find their way around the area. He also had story books. He had over 500 books on many different subjects, and they helped to start the Red River Colony library.

The library grew to more than 2,500 books. People who came to visit or live at the settlement gave their books to the collection. For example, British military soldiers sent to keep the settlers safe gave the books they brought with them from the UK. The library helped entertain the settlers who did not have many fun things to do. It also helped the settlers and their children with their reading and writing. Some of the books from that original library are still kept in a Canadian museum today.

Of course, those books from the first library that are still around today, are looking very badly used. All of them are dirty from years of being held. Settlers who wanted to read those books at night had to do that near a fire for light. They read by the light of a bowl filled with grease which burned a piece of fabric. The burning grease gave off a lot of smoke which got onto the book and made it dirty. All of those library books are black with dirt today.

Some early readers did not take care of the books they borrowed from the Red River Colony library. The museum says that many of the books have writing and drawings in them made by the settler's children. One even has a recipe for making cheese written onto its pages!

From the very start, libraries have been more than just places to borrow a book to read. They have been important centres of community activities. When the settlers at the Red River Colony opened their public library in 1901, the reading room became a popular spot. Single men would go there to read and play chess which kept them from feeling lonely.

TRAVELLING LIBRARIES BROUGHT BOOKS TO PEOPLE LIVING OUTSIDE OF CITIES

In the 1900's, when Andrew Carnegie gave money to build public libraries all over the world, Canada built 125 of them in 22 years. The one in Victoria, British Columbia, used the bookshelves to hold up the ceiling. The shelves can never be taken out because the roof of the building will fall down. The library in Hamilton, Ontario, was built with two gravestones placed on either side of the elevator. The markers are from the graves of two of the first settlers to live in Hamilton, Alexander Brown and Merren Grierson. The ghosts of Alexander and Merren haunt the library. They move the elevator up and down and they trap people inside the elevator whenever they want to scare library visitors.

At the same time that Carnegie libraries were being built in Canada, travelling libraries were started to bring books to people who lived in rural areas, far away from the cities. Bookmobiles were mini libraries set up inside long buses, like school buses. The buses travelled around to a different town each day. People could borrow books on the day the bookmobile came to their town. Then they would return them when the bus completed its circuit and came back to their town the following week or month.

In the 1960's, Canadian libraries started to grow with more specialty books. There were braille books for blind people; books in other languages for immigrants; talking books and textbooks for students.

Today, there are almost three times as many public libraries in Canada as there are McDonald's restaurants. Each and every Canadian library has computers with free internet access. At times during the year, almost every Canadian visits a library for one reason or another. Sometimes it is to borrow a book, a movie, or to use the internet to read emails. Sometimes it is to get information. Sometimes it is to go to a class or a children's story group. Sometimes it is just to get out of the cold for an hour or so.

Canadians love to read. If all the books that were borrowed each year in Canadian libraries were placed on a shelf, that shelf would be just as wide, but twice as long as the Great Wall of China.