Breakfast in Scarborough

When I was writing a post about Main Street Library, I phoned a librarian there to ask if she knew the exact year the front entrance was added to the building. She wasn’t sure but promised to pass the question on to the branch librarian. Sure enough, I received a call this evening from a well-spoken woman who let me know that the correct date was 1977. I was so impressed that she took the trouble to make sure I had the necessary information to make the Main Street post as accurate as possible. Hooray for librarians!

Noreia’s Birthday Sufi (2008)

Fuzzy Cave Temple (2010)

Divine Grief (2010)

From 1921 to 1977, Main Street Library was known as Eastern Branch. Even though it opened the same year as Dufferin/Saint Clair and three years before Gerrard/Ashdale, Main Street didn’t resemble its 1920′s cohorts when I looked at it from the outside. A well-intentioned renovation in 1977 had produced the glass and red metal entrance, a somewhat Legotastic look that contradicted Chief Librarian George Locke‘s original vision of “English domestic architecture” (A Century of Service: Toronto Public Library 1883-1983, page 26). It’s difficult to imagine an English cottage, for example, with a bright red triangle over its weathered, ivy-covered door, but my notion of traditional cottages might be overly influenced by Beatrix Potter.

What the front lobby might have lacked in historical character, it made up for in playful angles and arches. I appreciated all the interesting corners on the first floor, such as the light-filled reading lounge visible through the arch (pictured below), as well as the 1928 south extension with its powder blue walls. The main floor also yielded a large central room and a north wing devoted to adult non-fiction (also painted powder blue). With so many windows and open spaces, the inside appeared much bigger than I had expected.

Despite my initial disappointment with the tacked-on modernity of the entrance, a trip to the top floor restored my image of Main Street as a heritage branch. The wooden ceiling even smelled pleasantly old!

I must not have been in full library quest groove on my first visit to Main Street several years ago, because I didn’t even walk up to the upper level then. What was I thinking? It all worked out for the best, though, as it meant that I got to experience the delightful attic for the first time last Saturday. Once I saw it, I could immediately sense its historical kinship to Gerrard/Ashdale branch. Two 1920′s attics, beautifully connected!

The south wing of Main Street’s attic featured exposed brick walls, long wooden tables, and dignified window frames, giving this home for older children’s books and the kids’ French collection a scholarly yet comfortable atmosphere. Warming the bricks of the east wall was a quilt stitched in honour of Toronto’s 1984 Sesquicentennial, the same occasion that inspired the quilt at Beaches Library. Without the thematic flow between each section that characterized the Beaches tapestry, the one at Main Street lent itself to individual panel study. My top three favourites depicted a mule pulling a Canada Bread cart, an abstract row house, and Fire Station #17.

As I was taking pictures of the textile art, I enjoyed the lively sounds of families using the library. One attentive mom was listening to her child read a counting book while another prompted a young reader to respond to an illustration, “Is that a squirrel? Is she painting with her tail?” This parent was sitting in the north wing, which contained inviting armchairs in front of dormer windows and some steps leading to a reading nook under the west eave.

It made me happy to see 21st-century families gather around books under the slanted beams of an early 20th-century attic. After all, what happens inside the library is more important than the shape of its front door. I think George Locke would be proud to know that Eastern Branch is still fulfilling its purpose eighty-nine years after it opened!

Swan Woman, 2010 (Lacy Goose from Karel Teissig’s Illustration of Aesop’s Fables, 1971)

Cats, Fruit, Mouse, and Cardinal, 2010 (Central Sleeping Cat from a 2009 Calendar Illustrated by Charles Wysocki)

Barn Ruin, 2010 (Barn Image from Toronto Public Library Picture Collection)

A good friend of mine asked me if I would like to contribute a wisdom story to her blog. I said, “Sure!” and the resulting post can be found here.

On a recent visit to Beaches Library, I took a whopping 119 pictures with my new digital camera! When my husband Stewart gave me the camera a few months ago, I don’t think he expected this degree of enthusiasm. However, Beaches branch shares some responsibility for my camera-happy ways because it’s so consistently photogenic! From the welcoming  bronze owl named Wordsworth to a quilted mural under a hammerbeam ceiling, there was so much scope for a new photographer with no film-development costs to forget herself in a series of visual moments.

The transition from outside to inside the library was not abrupt, as this heritage building seems to have naturally sprung up from the lawns of Kew Gardens. Not only is there a reading garden outside, but numerous windows create a close relationship between the indoor patron and the park outdoors. With trees and grass everywhere I looked, a routine visit to the library became more like a festive natural outing. For instance, the long cushioned window bench on the west side of the first floor was drenched in sunshine, making it the perfect place to curl up in a warm, reader-friendly spot. And for even greater coziness, there was a wooden reading hut with a substantial blue cushion on the floor. On the day I was taking pictures, I heard the sweet voice of a mom reading The Ugly Duckling to her child. They were inhabiting the playhouse comfortably, as if they had read there many times before.

Moving from the Children’s Section to the check out area, I paused to admire a paper jungle that had taken root on the doors leading to the meeting room. On an earlier visit, the door had been open, offering a glimpse of a wooden puppet theatre and an old stone hearth within. However, this time I didn’t fancy disturbing the fierce snake, the butterflies, or the dangling monkey.

Even though I had previously visited Beaches branch many times, I nevertheless walked up the stairs to the second level with a sense of anticipation. The high timbered ceiling that identifies Beaches with its sister 1916 Carnegie-funded libraries (High Park and Wychwood), was as gorgeous as ever. For me, dark wood has always represented classiness and warmth, but the interior paint job took the warmth to another level with an intense shade that fell somewhere between electric nectarine and the ruby red of a Jolly Rancher candy.

Ascending to the minstrel gallery near the north wall, I was surprised by a sense of being uplifted out of everyday concerns. To gaze over the grand east wing of the second floor was to feel a soaring kinship to the great blue heron pictured over the stone hearth on the opposite wall.

When I finally stopped taking excessive numbers of  photos from the gallery, I returned to the second floor and made a bee-line for a quilted tapestry that had captivated me on a previous visit. One of the librarians explained that it had been created in 1984 by local community members and library staff to celebrate the sesquicentennial of the founding of Toronto. The engaging piece depicted park frolics and beach excursions, all through the medium of textile art. In addition to the quilt’s playful inventiveness, what impressed me most was the painstaking way that individual panels connected with each other. If one small section had a footpath sewn on it, then the section below it would be sure to continue the path and incorporate it into its own particular scene.

Once again, I went a little crazy with the camera, kneeling in front of the mural and getting in the way of a poor staff member who was only trying to sort books from a cart. I wanted to move to a place where I’d be less obstructive, but the more I looked at the quilt, the more I found to fascinate me. (Believe me, it was difficult to narrow down the chosen pictures to “only” ten).

I was especially taken with the puffy trees, squirrels, and whimsical figures enjoying their day at Kew Gardens and the beach. And on a lower panel to the right, I loved the way a woman with an orange buggy was about to stroll directly into the magazine sale on the shelf.

When I finally tore myself away from the textile art, my arms were sore from aiming the camera over my head so many times. It was worth it, though, because I felt like a real photographer! My next stop was the stone hearth, complete with historic baseball cap. (I didn’t have the brass to ask the nearby patron to move his hat because it was getting in the way of my artistic vision! After all, he wasn’t obliged to care about my romantic reverie over a very old fireplace).

Between the east and west wings, some casement windows that contained lead glass were embedded in stone overhead, providing a fitting transition from the lofty east side to the more intimate west side. My last stop at one of the loveliest branches in the TPL system was the reading lounge on the upper west wing. With streaming sunlight and comfortable leather chairs, this lounge was an ideal place to really settle in for a good read. For laptop-users, wide tables were provided on the other side of the bookshelves. As for myself, I was more than content to stay in my chair, exhausted but happy from the attempt to capture the beautiful atmosphere of Beaches Library.

Floral Bird and Bunny, 2010

Water, Trees, and Birds Patchwork, 2010

Bordered Forest Steps, 2010