Visiting Weston Library was like stepping into a fairytale. Flower boxes, stones, and a vine-blessed trellis set the stage for enchantment, and the spell continued once I ventured inside the old section of the library. Constructed in 1914 with a Carnegie grant of $10,000, the structure’s simple elegance gave me a spiritual lift.
The old brick walls held exquisitely-coloured arched windows. Each one was decorated with multicoloured glass shields bearing the names of dead white male writers: Johnson, Ruskin, Shakespeare, Moore, Wordsworth, Dickens, Scott, Tennyson, Stevenson, Lamb, Burns, Chaucer, and Milton (among others). One window’s shield didn’t have a name underneath it, which gives me hope that it’s reserved for a live radical feminist of colour. What lively debates the windows’ representatives could have!
While most of the panes looked out onto the streets outside, one window offered a view of the staff’s office. This puzzling addition to one side of the building somewhat spoiled the fairy-tale effect for me. Why did they tack it on this way? It meant that after I spent some exalted moments contemplating the giants of literature, I suddenly fell to earth with a thud at the sight of filing cabinets, piles of paper, and a plastic snack tray. Also, I was distracted by a tempting spread of grapes, cookies, Cadbury fingers and doughnuts on the other side of the glass. A library staff member walked by and grabbed a morsel, casting a slightly apprehensive glance at me. Was I the snack police? Was I researching the dietary habits of librarians? I decided to move away from the window before the next snacker arrived.
The new wing of Weston Library, added in 1981, was to the right of the entrance and held the ESL, Teens, Spanish, and French collections. Finally, the basement level contained a spacious Children’s Department with murals that covered three walls. While Shakespeare, Lamb, and Milton kept it real upstairs, the pantheon of my favourite mural downstairs included Bambi, Snow White, a Wild Thing, Babar the Elephant, Winnie the Pooh, Curious George, Peter Rabbit, The Cat in the Hat, and Paddington Bear with a jar of marmalade. I wished someone had asked the muralist to match the writers above with characters in the basement. I see Chaucer and Burns as Wild Things, Dickens as Curious George, and Wordsworth as Bambi.
From murals to stained-glass windows, Weston Library was a delightful site to visit. I enjoyed feeling connected to a part of history just on the precipice of change before the first World War. Its square simplicity and implied faith in an unchanging literary canon reminded me of a quotation from L. M. Montgomery’s journal. In Lucy Maud Montgomery: The Gift of Wings, Montgomery’s biographer, Mary Rubio, cites a January 1932 journal entry which describes the world experienced by Montgomery’s generation compared to what two previous generations experienced: “They lived their lives in a practically unchanged and apparently changeless world. Nothing was questioned — religion — politics — society — all nicely mapped out and arranged and organized. And my generation! . . . Everything we once thought immoveable wrenched from its pedestal and hurled to ruins . . . our whole world turned upside down and stirred up — before us nothing but a welter of doubt and confusion and uncertainty.” (422-23). Gazing at windows which have endured for almost a century, I hope Lucy Maud would have been comforted to know that they are still here, even though the view is different.
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