To enrich your Sheridan Mall shopping experience, check out Black Creek Library on the lower level between a denture clinic and a dry cleaners. A resident of the mall since 2002, Black Creek branch shares its architect, G. Bruce Stratton, with fellow mall-libraries Woodside Square and Bayview.
When I visited Black Creek for the first time, I found its cream and brown colours very inviting, drawing me into a comfortable mall-cave. Stratton’s website had not been exaggerating when it described the library’s design concept as “bright and warm with flowing lines.”
Responding to the coziness, the patrons looked at home in the newspaper lounge and the branch as a whole. Every computer was taken, including one screen that was surrounded by a spirited group of kids hooting at You-tube videos.
Liveliness was further supported by a dragon with flame-shaped eyebrows, a nearby pink rocket, and a series of wooden cutouts on the north wall that depicted happy kids with their arms up in the air. Two grey cardboard castles provided slightly more subdued decoration, but a closer look revealed a courtyard that sparkled with glitter.
The most distinctive feature of Black Creek was a magical reading zone whose borders were defined by a semi-circular wall about four feet high and a tiled pillar. This shiny pillar supported a round structure overhead that resembled a tiled shower-head. Hanging from the structure were delicate lights enclosed in purple and dark-red glass. Shelves built into the inside curve of the wall completed the stylish nook.
My husband was getting library-weary after visiting three in one afternoon, so before leaving I just took a quick glance at the ESL collection (meaty) and the multilingual shelves (diverse). Languages on offer were Spanish, Italian, Chinese, French, and Vietnamese.
As we left Black Creek, I reflected on how its presence at North York Sheridan Mall influences the overall atmosphere. When I saw my first mall library in Canada eight years ago, I considered the idea somewhat odd. Borrowing books seemed out of place in a zone where everything else was for sale.
However, I’ve come to appreciate the fact that mall branches like Black Creek, Bridlewood, Eglinton Square, Bayview, Woodside Square, and Maryvale provide welcome patches of public space in a larger establishment devoted to private profit. In this way, a library “redeems” a mall instead of becoming compromised by its commercialism. In my view, we need these literary reminders of the immaterial — ideas, imagination, poetry — in a world obsessed with the material.
