Building on a very brief sketch of Spadina Library that I posted in October 2007, I’d like to offer a more complete picture. On previous visits, the branch had been packed with people, but last Tuesday it wasn’t desperately crowded. I was able to gaze at dream catchers, artwork, and the extensive Native People’s Collection without annoying too many patrons who might need to navigate around me.
As a viewer taking her time to look around carefully, I really appreciated the decorative unity of the First Nations, Inuit and nature-themed objects which rested on shelves and hung suspended in the air. For example, two upright hand puppets with Inuit features and fur-lined parkas stood a shelf away from a miniature canoe woven from plant fibres.
A flamingo marionette hung next to a marionette of uncertain taxonomy, and a striking assortment of dream catchers kept aerial company with a flying wooden duck.
Closer to the ground, librarians had created a path to the children’s collection by laying down playful animal tracks on circles of blue, green, and yellow paper. The book-loving animals which had left their paw and hoof prints on the carpet included bears, raccoons, and deer.
Animal themes were amplified in the vibrant collection of First Nations artwork on the walls. Placed overhead at well-spaced intervals were intense portraits in solid colours of the following creatures: owls, spirit fish, turtles, baby robins, a bear on his hind legs reaching for a bee hive, a frog catching flies, a redwinged blackbird, a squirrel, a cricket, a raccoon, and a porcupine.
Eleanor Kanasawe, a painter who exhibits on Manitoulin Island, created all of these beautiful pieces, and a couple of animal paintings by two other artists rounded out the collection. I loved the strong colours and the way each piece retained stand-alone integrity while simultaneously remaining part of an integrated whole.
Moving down the walls from art to books, the Native People’s Collection included novels and non-fiction material about culture, art, religion, history, and languages (plus DVD’s and videos on these subjects). The reference shelves displayed dictionaries for students of Cree, Micmac, Mohawk, Anishinaabe, Metis Cree, and Chippewa.
Although Spadina Library’s multilingual collection was small, it did contain language kits for most of the languages listed above, as well as Tlingit, Cherokee, Persian, French, Spanish, Vietnamese, Somali, and Hungarian. Crouching on the floor to study the kits, the plastic boxes seemed so hopeful to me; they promised travel and communicative adventure. Inspired by the possibilities of new words and new perspectives, I put away my notebook and made tracks to Spadina subway station.