Renaissance
Canada’s first all-digital library nears completion
CAMBRIDGE — Six years ago, the patient was flatlining.
The old Galt Post Office, water pouring in through its 1885 slate roof and rotting its wooden innards, twitched like a fresh cadaver on a realtor’s discount auction block.
A lonely tree, like a leafy flag of surrender, grew atop the chimney.
That’s when the city stepped up and bought the woebegone Water Street fixer-upper — designed by Thomas Fuller, the architect who sketched the Parliament buildings in Ottawa — for $950,000. Today, a $15-million city-led revival and reimagining is almost complete.
“I feel like a doctor when he saves somebody’s life,” said Slobodanka Lekic, the city’s manager of building design and construction and the project manager for a heritage-preserving operation spanning five years.
Canada’s first all-digital library for all ages — a $13.5-million city project that got a $1.6million grant from Parks Canada — is to open on July 6.
“If the city didn’t purchase this building ... It was the last moment, it would be really to the point where you could not restore
it. Inside it was all crumbling.”
Now, the old postal depot once at the centre of the Galt core’s economic despair is tagged to be the in middle of its techsavvy renaissance along the Grand River.
We’re talking four floors with 104 data outlets in an environmentally top-rated building. The closets of wires are hidden from sight while the tall windows stretch up along a building reaching 59 feet above Water Street. There’s a 60-person terrace and a patch of live vegetation on its “green” roof.
Nine thousand square feet of old space has been carefully-crafted to recreate 130-year-old charm out of the original railings and Douglas fir staircases. Fuller’s original notes were located and consulted. The original ground-level floor had to be raised two feet to get above the 100year flood line.
Another 8,400 square feet of new space reaches 20 feet out over the east bank of the Grand River. The bottom level has a section that is technically below the water.
We’re also talking about maker labs and robot-building and laser cutters and soundproof studios, and a basement theatre where horse-drawn carts full of mail once wheeled through a wide entrance.
“If you think about 1885, people across the country were connected by letters and the post office was very important,” said Helen Kelly, the chief executive for Idea Exchange, which runs the city’s libraries and galleries.
“It was really a communications hub for connecting people. We’re taking that idea now into the 21st century.”
A new way of connecting people in a time of increasing digital isolation is the vision Kelly is pitching for the library that can hold up to 170 visitors at a time.
“When they come into a community space like this, then it’s digital inclusion,” Kelly said. “Because you’re working together. You’ve got a partner. You’re understanding technology. You’re learning how to code. You’re doing it collaboratively.”
And if that doesn’t work for you, you can grab a snack from the restaurant or you can just stroll along the observation levels and look out over the Grand River.
On a sunny day like Friday, the views were staggering. To the left, the new pedestrian bridge, which opens Saturday, stretches across the river. Church steeples, an architecture school, a theatre and the Main Street bridge are part of the scenery.
Collaborative Structures Limited of Cambridge is the main contractor. Tyler Sharp is the design architect. But 60-yearold Bob Kapa of Mississauga is one of the masons in charge on pointing and stone repair on the project.
“I spent one and a half years,” Kapa said of the daunting task of repointing all of the stonework on the old post office. “We’re almost done — 99 per cent.” A working clock tower with four rebuilt faces is ready to be wound up and lit up.
There’s no sign of Emily, the ghost of a broken-hearted clerk who supposedly haunted the clock tower after an ill-fated romance with a married postmaster.
When Mayor Doug Craig walks into the new library, he senses the approving political presence of predecessors Bob Kerr, Claudette Millar and Jane Brewer. The project’s focus on environment, the river and heritage would please those late mayors, he believes. “I feel like their spirits are all here with me,” Craig said Friday.
“I know it sounds corny, but that’s how I feel. That they’re all here with me and they’re applauding Cambridge City Council for what they’ve done. This is unique in North America.”