Bon Accord bibliophiles are in search of golden tickets this month as the town celebrates the 40th anniversary of its public library.
The Bon Accord Public Library turned 40 on April 1 and is celebrating all month. The public is invited to join staff and dignitaries April 27 for an open house, complete with door prizes and cake.
Library program co-ordinator Anita Vanderleek will also be hiding 40 golden tickets throughout the library this month. Ten tickets will be concealed each week, and anyone who finds one can turn it in to library staff for a prize.
“Some of them are pretty good,” Vanderleek said of the hiding spots, and some of the ones she hid earlier this month have yet to be found.
40-year tale
Bon Accord’s public library opened its doors in 1982, records provided by library manager Joyce Curtis-Bonardi show. Prior to then, adults who wanted to borrow books in town got them by mail from the University of Alberta’s extension library. The local Women’s Institute ran a Bon Accord Library out of the town’s community centre from 1948 to 1953, but closed it due to the cost and work involved. (Its books went to the Bon Accord School.)
Records show that the push for today’s library started in around 1978 when the town started planning an expansion to its main office building. An informal library committee was struck the next year, with council deciding in March 1980 to add a library to the expanded town office. Council passed a bylaw to create the library on May 6, 1980.
Bon Accord was a much different place in 1982, recalled Myrna Ross, a founding member of the town’s library board. There used to be a rail line with several grain elevators along it running through the community, and you always knew when it was 11 p.m. as the train would blow its whistle then every night.
Ross said the library itself was a low-key affair back then, with little more than shelves, books, a card catalogue, and wooden chairs. The shelves ran front to back instead of side to side, and the librarian’s desk was up at the front instead of at the back.
Records show that volunteer Cecilia Taylor checked out the first book from the library on March 29, 1982. This would have involved the librarian stamping a due-date on a card tucked into the back of the book — no RFID tags or bar codes here.
Run by volunteers, the library was open for just a few hours a day, four days a week. Memberships cost $2 ($1 for kids), and proved popular — the library had some 200 members by May 12, 1982, the Sturgeon Gazette reported.
Two red chairs
A driving force throughout the library’s history was Kathy Borreson, who was its first board chairperson and librarian. Borreson served numerous terms on town council and wrote for The St. Albert Gazette.
Borreson was a bookish person who was passionate about everything she put her heart into, Ross said.
“Kathy had her idea of what the library should look like,” she said, and was at the library seemingly every day interacting with its patrons.
Borreson was an active volunteer at the library for roughly 39 years and only stopped last June due to her health, Curtis-Bonardi said.
“She was a very smart woman who could talk to you on any topic,” she said, and was always questing for knowledge.
Borreson died in November. The library placed a plaque in her honour on one of the two red chairs in front of the town office building earlier this month.
The other chair bears a plaque dedicated to Friends of the Bon Accord Public Library Society founder Lorna Pocock, who died last August.
“She was one of those people who never said no to anybody,” Curtis-Bonardi said.
Pocock was a frequent volunteer at town events and often sewed costumes for area schools, Curtis-Bonardi said.
“Every kid had something sewn by Lorna.”
Christmas kidnapping?
The library took on a paid librarian by 1989. Book bar codes and computers arrived in around 1995.
In 1997, the library was involved in what Curtis-Bonardi said was a whimsical fundraiser involving a five-foot-tall stuffed elf named Winston made by Borreson.
As reported by The Free Press in Morinville, Winston was “elf-napped” from the library on Dec. 2. Left behind were his rubber boots and a ransom letter from E.L.F. (Elves Longing for Food), who demanded two dozen chocolate chip oatmeal cookies, one 750-gram or larger box of Turtles, and 4 litres of eggnog be placed under the Christmas tree in the town office foyer by noon Dec. 8 in exchange for his return.
“Do not attempt to call the police or other authorities, we will be scanning their frequencies,” the ransom note said.
“If authorities are contacted, we will send you one of Winston’s hands to show we are serious in our demands!”
Library staff met the thief’s demands with the public’s help, and Winston was returned Dec. 15, The Free Press reported.
Today, the Bon Accord library is a community hub which hosts games, clubs, tutoring, and other community events, Curtis-Bonardi said.
“It’s not just about books.”
The library’s open house runs from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. April 27. Call 780-921-2540 for details.
