Breakfast in Scarborough

Built in 1962, Forest Hill branch presides on a rise of land located on the north side of Eglinton Avenue West, just east of Bathurst. It has a wide central aisle flanked by four large arches which span well-spaced rows of shelving. Each arch contains a wavy piece of metal in its top third. Silver mesh occupies the space between the curved metal and the apex of the arch.

I enjoyed walking down the main aisle, noting the large fiction collection, young adult grotto furnished with a red recliner, solid ESL offerings, and an unmarked Hebrew and Yiddish section. Apart from kits for learning Russian and French, Forest Hill branch didn’t have the diverse multilingual collections I was used to seeing in Scarborough. It was also less crowded and more hushed than most of the branches east of the Don Valley Parkway, especially Woodside Square, Steeles, Agincourt, Malvern, Cedarbrae, Albert Campbell, and Pape Danforth.

Without a patron or stroller in sight, the Forest Hill children’s section was completely quiet. A forlorn train set rested on a ledge above the raised and enclosed pre-school area. The train’s body was composed of five boxes in varying sizes. They were covered in fading red, yellow, and blue construction paper, but the sixth box, the engine car, was decorated in black. While each box had two cardboard wheels each, the engine box had some extra features. For a chimney, it sprouted a cardboard tube (a recycled paper-towel spool), and an opaque white plastic bag puffed out of the chimney as steam. All six boxes carried a word, which together announced, “All Aboard the Forest Hill Express!”.

This Toronto Public Library fan visited her sixtieth and sixty-first branches recently. Todmorden Room was number sixty, a library I’d actually tried to check out last year, only to find it temporarily closed. Located inside East York Community Recreation Centre, Todmorden Room was the smallest branch I’ve visited so far; a sign informed me that its maximum capacity was 33 people. The modest size of this branch, however, was a large part of its charm. It created the feel of a frontier outpost of literacy — like a bookmobile parked for the winter in an isolated prairie town.

The checkout desk of Todmorden Room was directly in front of the entrance, and Stewart was struck by how the librarian greeted each incoming patron by name. Even though there were only eight people in the library (including two staff members), we kept tripping over each other as we moved up and down the two short aisles. Supporting the frontier metaphor, Todmorden Room was very spartan in its decorations — white walls, brown shelves, with only two paper flowers in the shape of large macaroons (one in orange and yellow, the other in blue and purple) to liven up the space.

The only multilingual resource I noticed was a Spanish learning kit with a CD, and the ESL collection had fourteen books (hardly the fault of library with so little space to spare). As at Woodside Square and Bridlewood, the romance genre was well-represented at Todmorden Room, and it included a couple of titles that caught my fancy: “Kidnapped by the Cowboy” and “Outback Boss, City Bride.” Somebody please teach these rural he-men some dating skills!

As I exited the room, I noticed a cream-coloured locker beside the check-out desk, possibly a hand-me-down from the gym down the hall. I liked how the library seemed to be a well-integrated part of the community centre, which also offered swimming and martial arts classes.

The sixty-first branch on my library quest was Pleasant View, which was also the very last branch east of the Don Valley Parkway that I hadn’t visited. Hoorah!

Pleasant View had its own building just next door to a community centre. To the right of the library’s entrance was a glass display case filled with objects related to Chinese New Year: lucky red envelopes, an illustrated zodiac, and a red firecracker decoration.

As I ambled around Pleasant View, I discovered a medium-sized auditorium, sections with books in Chinese, French, and Italian, as well as a robust ESL collection. I was especially taken with the open reading areas. There was one in each of the four corners of the building, all with comfy chairs and floor-to-ceiling windows.

Though Pleasant View’s character seemed very utilitarian and functional, it definitely had a whimsical side. In the Children’s section, five arches that contained portraits of animal characters were separated by flat columns that had been splashed with flecks of pink and green paint, creating a very trippy effect.

Proceeding from left to right, the first portrait starred a seated deer wearing a sari. Relaxing in a temple grove, the deer held a book (or possibly a large Blackberry) in her hooves. While she read, she was serenaded by a woman with a sitar and a man with a drum.

Next to the deer was a picture of a rabbit who was wearing the traditional clothes of an unnamed First Nation band.

The third frame depicted the head and neck of a cheerful giraffe. She wore a patterned red scarf and a green and yellow tunic.

The fourth animal’s identity was unclear to me; possibly it was a fox, but its whiskers looked sort of feline. This ambiguous creature was garbed in some class of priestly robes.

Finally, the last animal portrait featured a scholarly bear at work in his study. He wore a robe like an Oxford don and a blue hat in the shape of a Yorkshire pudding.

Inspired by the studious bear, I’m looking forward to continuing the library pilgrimage. Only thirty-eight more branches to go!

The previous post described the first two libraries out of the five Stewart and I visited a couple of weeks ago, so now I’d like to focus on the remaining three.

Goldhawk Park branch resided in its own square building and seemed less trendy than Woodside Square. However, Goldhawk Park’s location on the edge of a large park gave it a scenic advantage, as Woodside patrons had only a Food Basics parkingscape for inspiration when they looked up from their books. So much reading in my childhood may have made me fanciful, but to me Goldhawk Park looked like a chalet of books in marginally-alpine village on the Markham border. Resting on the rim of a pasture dotted with fir trees, the chalet offered a chair and a newspaper to weary literary pilgrims.

As I made a quick tour of the facility, I accidentally disturbed a seniors’ coffee afternoon in progress. Recovering my cool after a swift exit from the meeting room, I sat down at a table in front of a park-side window. When I had my fill of admiring the vast open field with blowing snow, I walked through the main area, noting the shelves of books in Hindi, Tamil, and Chinese. All in all, I liked the unpretentious and comfortable atmosphere of Goldhawk Park.

Pushing on to Steeles Library, the peaceful natural setting gave way to the insanely busy parking lot of Bamburgh Gardens Shopping Plaza. Stewart dropped me off and heroically went to find a parking space while I investigated the fourth library of the afternoon.

Steeles branch was located on the left side of a concrete walkway leading to the mall. Steeles was very compact, and the homey impression created by its lime green walls was taken up a notch by the presence of several stuffed creatures on top of a high shelf: a gorilla, tweety bird, and Marvin the Martian. Similarly to Woodside Square, Steeles had lots of Chinese New Year decorations and an enthusiastic crowd of library-users, with nearly every chair occupied by a reader. It made me happy to see so many folks consuming words instead of mall-products.

The fifth and final library of the day, Bridlewood, was a tenant of a mall with the same name. This branch was a big white square room around the corner from the bulk food store and Jasmine Chinese Food. In comparison to Malvern and Woodside Square, Bridlewood appeared more downmarket due to its handmade decorations and non-automated check-out desk. In this respect, Bridlewood reminded me of the library in the small town where I grew up, especially when I saw the large paper snowflake cut out by hand and a poster made from black construction paper and photocopies of cartoons.

The most prominently low-budget decoration had to be a rocket that hung from the ceiling near the youth section. A roll of brown construction paper formed the body of the rocket, and more of the same kind of paper had been fashioned into the pointy head of the missile. The initials “TPL” were written on the side beside a blue globe, each letter cut from brown paper with a larger outline of the letters in aluminum foil as background. Yet more aluminum foil flared out in streamers from the hind end of the rocket. Though I believe the time may have come to retire this particular ornament, I do agree that reading can transport you around the world and even into space.

Apart from the rocket, other noteworthy features of Bridlewood branch included a blue toadstool table, books in Chinese and Urdu, and a romance title “Beauty and the Beastly Rancher.” I didn’t check out the romance novel to learn what made the rancher so beastly, but I was very glad of this beautiful Saturday afternoon spent at five great libraries. As the number of Toronto Public Libraries I’ve visited continues to skyrocket (now up to 59!), I grow more and more impressed with the wonderful services they provide to local communities. It makes me proud to carry my blue library card in my wallet! Long may the TPL flourish!