Sunlight and Triangles at Amesbury Park (1967)

When I saw Amesbury Park for the first time, I liked how it rested in front of a grassy mound of parkland on the south side of Lawrence Avenue West. Its interior had the care-worn look of a neighbourhood facility in high demand, but the library still defined space in interesting ways.

For example, a curved purple screen marked the border between the lobby and the Children’s area and served as additional back support for a cushioned red bench.

On my initial visit in 2009, the wave-shaped divider contained an open porthole that encouraged patrons to imagine a submarine universe, but the portal was absent in 2013.

Nevertheless, plenty of windows remained to illuminate the collections, including two giant triangular skylights and many large windows that faced the park.

As the photographs suggest, triangle shapes abounded in this purposeful yet relaxed parkside branch. However, lest I float off in a reverie of sunlight and triangles, I should mention the large ESL section and offerings in French, Spanish, Gujarati, Hindi, Italian, and Vietnamese. (By 2013, the Tamil collection had moved to Downsview branch). After admiring the multilingual collections, I moved on to Romance. While I was crouching down to examine the spine of a novel called Armed and Devastating, the lights went off briefly, signaling the library’s imminent closure. I enjoyed a few seconds of bathing in natural light — silver and blue on a late autumn afternoon — and gathered up my notebook and book sale items. Then I left Amesbury Park, my eighty-sixth branch, with the sense of an afternoon well-spent.