Miniature library opens in a Beaconsfield park
Bookworms in Beaconsfield should be on the lookout for a new installation at Beacon Hill Park.
The Beaconsfield library, with the support of the Beacon Hill Community Association, installed a new “book house” in the park on Sept. 11. This miniature library is a small, sheltered area for readers to take and leave books for others.
The installation is a first for Beaconsfield.
According to the website littlefreelibrary.org, which tracks installations like Beaconsfield’s, there are about 40,000 similar mini-libraries registered around the world, including one in Dollard-des-Ormeaux. (The Beaconsfield library does not appear on the website and isn’t formally affiliated with it.)
The city had considered putting this kind of mini-library in a park in Beaconsfield for a while, said Anne Bourel, head of public services at the library.
“At the beginning of this year, we decided, oh, we’re going to do that,” she added. So when a member of the Beacon Hill community, Carole Thériault, independently asked about putting a mini-library in a park, the city had a perfect place for a pilot site.
“We are very, very proud that the Beacon Hill community wants to be really involved,” Bourel said. “They’ve already stocked some books to start.”
Fifteen of those books came from Thériault. “
(The mini-library) is quite full. There must be 40 books in there — children’s books, books for adults, self-help books, comedies, mysteries, science fiction,” Thériault said. “There’s a little bit of everything.”
The mission of the project is to encourage adults and children to enjoy reading again. Or, as Thériault put it, “to get adults and children sitting together with a book instead of everyone sitting on their own with a computer.”
“When my kids were little, there was nothing more fun than cuddling up on the couch with a book and looking at the pages together,” she added, though she enjoys her Kindle, too.
The mini-library’s structure is modelled after Beaconsfield’s Six Sisters, a collection of six cottages built along Lakeshore Road in 1877 by John Henry Menzies.
The mini-library was officially inaugurated at the Beacon Hill Community Association’s summer corn roast.
“We’re very, very happy to support Beaconsfield with the pilot project,” said Tracy Petzke, acting president of the association. “We have a really special community here in Beacon Hill. Everyone I’ve spoken to is really, really happy to see it here.”
The city hired a woodworker to build the mini-library and a local artist, Bev Wight, decorated it.
A second one is in the works, Bourel said.