Rural Canada Needs Libraries by Nora Bateson (1944)

Rural Canada Needs Libraries/Livres pour Aujourd'hui et Demain by Nora Bateson. Ottawa: Canadian Library Council, Inc., 1944. 8 pages with diagrams.

The genesis of Nora Bateson’s pamphlet on the scarcity of libraries in rural Canada was her February 1943 article “Libraries Today and Tomorrow” in the journal Food for Thought published by the Canadian Association for Adult Education. At this time, Bateson was still Director of Libraries, Regional Library Commission, Nova Scotia, and worked to assist the Canadian Legion Education Services in organizing libraries for armed forces personnel serving in the Atlantic region. Her knowledge of rural Canadian conditions stemmed from her previous library positions. She had first worked in the Carnegie financed Fraser Valley regional demonstration in British Columbia in the early 1930s. Afterwards, she established a regional library system in Prince Edward Island from 1933–36 and then prepared the way for the development of regional libraries in Nova Scotia with a series of publications and speaking engagements across the province. As a result of her considerable administrative background in library extension work, she was well-versed in delivering service in rural communities and remote settlements.

Rural Canada Needs Library graphic

    Food for Thought was an important Canadian publication which often highlighted library efforts to assist adult educationists. The solution Nora Bateson relied upon was the formation of regional library systems. This type of public library was not new by any means, but the Canadian experience had diverged from British and American versions. Typically, at the outset of the Second World War a regional library in British Columbia and Ontario was an agency serving a group of communities (called a  union library in BC), a single county (called a county association library in Ontario ), or, in Prince Edward Island, an entire province. These bodies were supported in whole or in part by public taxes from a variety of local government expenditures and were governed by provincial statues.

    Whether men or women were fighting on the battlefield or working on the home front to support democracy, Bateson emphasized the beneficial, even essential, role of reading, books, and public libraries.

Books are indeed important weapons in the double-fronted fight for freedom. But in them is to be found, too, refreshment and recreation for the mind and spirit at all times. Biographies, histories, novels, poems, plays, books of philosophy, books on art and music: such books literally open up new worlds and new channels of interest and speculation. They give also perspective and balance to the immediate urgent problems of the day.

Of course, in many urban municipalities, the library was a vital part of the distribution chain of books but not in rural Canada. Citing 1938 statistics gathered by the Canadian government, Bateson noted the striking disparities in service: 92% of city dwellers had library service, 42% in towns and villages, and only 5% in rural districts, which represented nearly half of Canada’s population. The remedy: “Small communities cannot afford such a service but several communities pooling their funds can. Today the general opinion of experts is that a minimum of 40,000 people is desirable with a minimum budget of $25,000.” She estimated 50 cents per capita would provide a basis for adequate service.

    To support the regional concept, Bateson briefly reviewed the development of county systems in the United Kingdom and the United States. She then turned to Canada, noting the formation of diverse examples of regional service across the Dominion:
Fraser Valley Union Library, BC
Okanagan Valley Union Library, BC
Vancouver Island Union Library, BC
Prince Edward Island Library
Eight county library associations in Southern Ontario
Eastern Township Library Association, headquarters in Sherbrooke, QC
Legislation in Nova Scotia to support the formation of regions through an appointed library commission.

For other types of rural service, she opined that “Travelling libraries and open shelf systems are generally a stop-gap and no substitute for full library service.” Small boxes of books sent out to small communities or the loan of a requested book(s) by mail to individual borrowers were merely supplements to a “real service.” Indeed, by the 1960s, travelling libraries and open shelves were being phased out across the country.

    In her concluding remarks, Bateson addressed the issue of establishing and directing regions in the nine provinces.

What is needed in every province is a library commission keenly aware of the need for universal library service which will formulate a provincial plan and work towards its establishment. Such a commission usually consists of five (sometimes seven) members, serving say five years, one member retiring each year.

To finance libraries, Bateson recommended substantial support from provincial coffers because many municipalities could not increase expenditures due to education, infrastructure, or social welfare costs. Because there were many disparities between the economies of the Maritimes, Quebec, Ontario, the Prairies, and British Columbia, Bateson considered federal equalization grants for libraries a possible solution. Ever the optimist, she finished by saying, “When we win this war it is the common man in Canada as in all the United Nations who will be the victor and who will largely decide on the kind of peace and the sort of world which is to follow. Information and knowledge about the issues at stake need wide circulation such as can only be effectively accomplished by books.” The author’s original article was well-received; accordingly, the Canadian Library Council published it as separate pamphlet along with a French version a year later in 1944.

Over the next decade, just more than a half dozen newly formed regional systems would appear in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland. Improved legislation in Ontario reformed and strengthened the county library cooperatives. These systems served about 1,500,000 people, mostly in rural districts surrounding smaller towns, and they were circulating almost 5,000,000 volumes. This was a dramatic change from the situation described by Bateson, who lived to see these improvements before she died in 1956.

Further reading:

Sue Adams, “Our Activist Past: Nora Bateson, Champion of Regional Libraries,” Partnership: The Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research 4, no. 1 (2009): 1–12.

Nora Bateson, Rural Canada Needs Libraries. Ottawa: Canadian Library Council, Inc., 1944. [requires Adobe PDF viewer]

For Bateson’s other contributions in P.E.I. and Nova Scotia see my earlier blog.

Library Service for Canada Brief by the Canadian Library Council, 1944

Library Service for Canada: A Brief Prepared by the Canadian Library Council, as Forwarded August 2, 1944, to the House of Commons Special Committee on Reconstruction and Re-Establishment. 10 leaves, 2 appendices [Ottawa?]: Canadian Library Council, July 1944.

In 1942, the Canadian House of Commons appointed a Special Committee on Reconstruction and Re-establishment. James Gray Turgeon, a Liberal politician from British Columbia, served as chair. The committee’s purpose was to study and report the potential problems and ensuing responses that might arise from a postwar period of reconstruction and re-establishment following the Second World War. The committee submitted a report of its activities and associated briefs in 1944 and completed its work in 1945. A major aspect of the committee’s activities concerned the state of culture across the Dominion. A variety of arts and cultural groups made submissions which helped create a better awareness of cultural issues. These early efforts provided a basis for which later developments could occur, which saw the federal government support Canadian artists and develop national institutions in the 1950s. In terms of library service, the Canadian Library Council (CLC) assumed the responsibility for drafting a brief earlier in the summer of 1944, but final approval was delayed until July. The CLC then forwarded its report to the committee for its 2 August 1944 meeting; however, the Council did not make an oral submission and receive questions, although references to the CLC’s proposal appear in the committee’s minutes for this date.

It was well known from many reports in the 1930s that library services in schools, colleges, and municipal institutions were deficient. A 1943 survey by the Canada and Newfoundland Education Association especially lamented the poor state of school and public libraries. One of its reported recommendations concluded: “That library service be extended over the whole Dominion. Not less than $1,000,000 per annum is required for this purpose.” The CLC, formed in 1941 and incorporated in late 1943, existed to promote library service and librarianship in Canada. It included representatives from library associations in Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, the Maritimes, Ontario, Quebec, and Saskatchewan. By 1944, its membership was busy publishing information to raise awareness about the need for rural service, regional libraries, a national library, and improved library education. The Turgeon Committee afforded an excellent opportunity to give prominence to library matters at the federal government level.

There are a few references to the CLC’s work on 21 June 1944, when a delegation representing 16 national arts groups presented the Reconstruction Committee a brief concerning the cultural aspects of Canadian postwar reconstruction. This “Artists Brief” (as it came to be known) set forth a comprehensive national program to encourage the fine and applied arts and general culture in the interest of an enriched society. It called for establishing a national  “governmental body” to administer the arts and for the founding of hundreds of community art and civic centres across the country in municipalities and rural communities, such as the one in Hamilton featured in this accompanying illustration. One component of these centres would be a municipal library in larger cities and regional or county libraries in smaller communities and rural districts. At this time there were only a few libraries operating in community centres. The Dominion government would fund these centres by setting aside $10,000,000. The brief also proposed the coordination of cultural activities by the National Film Board, the National Gallery of Canada, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation with the building of community centres. Other proposals for government attention concerned many issues such as copyright law, creating a national library, expanding the national archives, and improved programs for federal publications and government information. In the case of library service, establishing a national library in Ottawa would provide for the “circulation of books in Canada and for the sending of the best Canadian books to public libraries in other countries to create a better understanding of Canadian life.” The Arts and Letters Club in Toronto reiterated these ideas and called for “a tremendous extension of library services in Canada.” The playwright, Herman Voaden, one of the artists delegation, said, “When you build a library you make provision for a small stage at one end and for clearing the hall for plays and concerts. You have art exhibitions on the walls.”

At the same June session, the Canadian Authors Association also weighed in on the development of libraries with two specific points:

That travelling libraries be organized and circulated in rural districts throughout Canada, including books written by Canadian authors, and dealing with Canada—these to be drawn from a central library or depot of Canadian books at Ottawa, which shall be adequately financed and staffed for that purpose—the staff to be drawn by preference from discharged Service men or women but strictly limited to competent persons. This library service would fit into the Community Centres Plan accompanying this brief, which we support. That collections of the best Canadian books available be sent to public libraries in other countries of the United Nations, to create a better understanding of Canadian Culture.

Together with other short references, library services caught the attention of Members of Parliament at the June session. In the context of all the cultural briefs, discussions at the Reconstruction Committee hearings, and general postwar planning, CLC forwarded its brief to the Reconstruction Committee in August. The CLC emphasized three critical points at the outset: (p. 5)

The Canadian Library Council believes that an effective, Dominion-wide, library service can make a valuable contribution toward the settlement of post-war problems of rehabilitation by providing books and audio-visual aids in training or re-training demobilized service and civilian personnel for new and old skills; by dispensing current information regarding new developments in the fields of agriculture, industry, business, and the professions; by supplying cultural, recreational, and citizenship reading.

London Public Library art display, March1945

The Council brief also noted the potential for library development in a national community centres program: “This would be a natural association of services. The Library is open every day to a varied group of readers and its workers are trained in community guidance. The cultural art centre with the library as nucleus (featured in this illustration on the left) has been demonstrated successfully in London, Ontario, where book, art, music, and film services are provided under one administration.” However, the Council advocated a centralized plan of development beginning with a federally appointed and financed national Library Resources Board “to guide, co-ordinate, and encourage provincial, local and special efforts.” The initial focus for the Board would be a survey of existing library resources and book collections used by the armed forces at stations that would be discontinued and any suitable buildings at present used by wartime activities. With this information and collection of provincial data, the Board, using federal funds under its control, could provide incentive grants for regional libraries and devise a system of co-operative use of library resources at provincial and local levels. A regional library would typically be “40,000 people with a budget of $25,000 a year [which is] is the minimum unit recommended in order to supply the readers with the three essentials of library service (apart from buildings accommodation), [that is] a wide range of reading on all subjects, a constant supply of new books, and trained librarians to select the books, advise readers, and manage library affairs.” (p. 8) The National Library Service would include a variety of institutions and ambitious programs:
1) a National Library in a building perhaps dedicated as a war memorial;
2) compilation of a storehouse of national literature and history;
3) development of reference collections on all subjects;
4) formation of a lending collection which other libraries might borrow from when their resources failed;
5) shared microfilm, photostat, and other copying services;
6) a union catalogue to make existing books in libraries available through an inter-library loan on a Dominion-wide basis;
7) the coordination of  book information with audio-visual aids, working in close co-operation with the National Film Board, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and other national organizations;
8) administration of collections of books about Canada for exhibition abroad;
9) publication of bibliographical works about Canada.

The Library Resources Board would also encourage adequate standards for personnel, training, salaries, etc. Finally,  the Board would provide library consultation services (e.g., legislation, book tariffs, postal rates, the National Selective Service, and functional architectural plans). The proposed national library board to direct and coordinate library work was a bold idea, but it was in keeping with the sweeping powers the federal government had assumed during wartime as well as the central idea proposed in the Artists Brief. Much of the work of the national advisory Library Resources Board could be furthered by assistance from provincial library associations and groups working in adult education or teaching. By providing leadership through the creation of library standards and advisory services, the Library Resources Board could spur library expansion. In this scheme of thinking, a National Library was necessary to implement and support many activities. The CLC’s plan did not avoid the thorny issue of financing by the federal government (p. 10).

Dominion encouragement of library service will need large initial grants. The suggestion has been made that funds could be raised to initiate such projects as library undertakings, community centres, etc., by a special Victory Loan to supply the Tools of Peace. Another suggestion is for an annual per capita tax to provide funds to maintain the above enterprises.

In conjunction with other provincial briefs submitted by library associations and groups, the CLC’s postwar rebuilding vision could advance the nation’s “intelligence, character, economic advancement, and cultural life.” (p. 4) Library reconstruction plans at all government levels would confer benefits for Canada’s citizens and lead to a better, more informed society. Some of the main ideas in the brief— a national commission, a national library, and regionalization—had appeared earlier in January 1944 in Charles Sanderson’s Libraries in the Post War Period.  Sanderson had accentuated the potential programs and roles that libraries might assume in their communities and noted the importance of provincial organization. To bolster its case, the CLC appended two more specific documents: Nora Bateson’s Rural Canada Needs Libraries and Elizabeth Dafoe’s A National Library. Both publications had appeared earlier and already received distribution and promotion across Canada. [These will be the subject of future blog posts.]

Like the contemporary Artists Brief, Library Service for Canada achieved little in terms of prompting federal action or securing funding. In the immediate aftermath of WWII, the federal government’s priorities were decidedly not cultural and political support for libraries at local levels sporadic. The arts and library services were provincial and municipal responsibilities. The postwar Liberal governments under Mackenzie King and Louis St. Laurent prioritized economic recovery, jobs and housing for veterans, national defence, and immigration. And there were additional obstacles. Although both the arts and library plans proposed centralized direction and coordination, the building of multi-functional community centres depended on local initiatives and preferences in hundreds of government settings. When Leaside, an independent suburban community in Toronto, decided to build a community centre shortly after the war, the need for sporting facilities, not a library, moved to the fore. As a result, a separate $100,000 library building opened on 8 March 1950 in Millwood Park (now Trace Manes Park), two years before the community centre, which required extensive fundraising beyond original expectations, began operation. The trend to form regional libraries developed slowly. By the early 1950s, there were only two dozen regional or county systems serving about 1,500,000 people in seven provinces, mostly in Ontario. In the realm of education, new schools required increased capital and operating tax levies that made library requests challenging to fulfill. At the national level, federal government enthusiasm for the building of a National Library was episodic. Library advocates began to focus on incremental program activities, not an expensive construction project.

Nevertheless, Library Service for Canada heightened awareness of the need for libraries, especially regional library development and national-provincial planning in a country that had scarcely equated libraries with this type of development before WWII. It presented a progressive vision, parts of which would persist and eventually change Canada’s library landscape for the better.

The ten members representing various Canadian jurisdictions who endorsed the CLC brief were:
Nora Bateson, Nova Scotia Regional Libraries Commission
Alexander Calhoun, Calgary Public Library
Elizabeth Dafoe, University of Manitoba Library
Léo-Paul Desrosiers, Montréal Public Library
Hélène Grenier, Bibliothèque des Instituteurs de la Commission des Ecoles Catholiques de Montréal
Gerhard R. Lomer, McGill University Library
John M. Lothian, University of Saskatchewan Library
Edgar S. Robinson, Vancouver Public Library
Charles R. Sanderson, Toronto Public Library
Margaret S. Gill, Chairman, National Research Council Library, Ottawa

Further reading:
Canadian and Newfoundland Education Association. Report of the Survey Committee Appointed to Ascertain the Chief Educational Needs in the Dominion of Canada (Ottawa: the Association, March 30th, 1943).
Canada. Parliament. House of Commons. Special Committee on Reconstruction and Re-establishment. Minutes and Proceedings of Evidence, vol. 1. Ottawa: King’s Printer, 1944.
Nora Bateson. Rural Canada Needs Libraries. Ottawa: Canadian Library Council, 1944. [Previously, a shorter version had appeared as an article: “Libraries for Today and Tomorrow,” Food for Thought 3, no. 5 (February 1943): 12–19.]
Elizabeth Dafoe. “A National Library,” Food for Thought 4, no. 8 (May 1944): 4–8.

Library Service for Canada was republished along with accompanying provincial briefs in 1945. This book, Canada Needs Libraries, was reviewed previously in 2017.

D’obscurantisme et de Lumières: La Bibliothèque Publique au Québec by François Séguin (2016)

D’obscurantisme et de Lumières: La Bibliothèque Publique au Québec, des Origines au 21e Siècle by François Séguin. Montréal: Éditions Hurtubise (Cahiers du Québec, no. 168), 2016.

The presence of libraries in Quebec stretches back almost four centuries; their history is complex and plentiful. Now, François Séguin has composed a comprehensive and noteworthy history of libraries used by the public on various terms from the 18th to the 21st century. The author worked for many years in Montreal’s public libraries and has witnessed firsthand the developments over the last forty years. As a historical work, the focus is primarily on the era before 1950; the progress made after the Quiet Revolution is dealt with more briefly. The title reveals the fundamental theme of enlightened progress impeded by conservative elements opposed to the democratization of library access to public reading and knowledge. The author explores why predominantly French-speaking Quebec has undergone an ideological/political library struggle that was not present in other Canadian regions. Yet, there are similarities with English-speaking counterparts: like other North American library developments, the manifestations of the “public library” in Quebec has passed through periods of private, semi-private, and tax-supported services that ranged from the exclusionary use of shareholder/subscribers to municipal entities usually free to local/regional residents. It is this eventful passage that will fascinate many readers.

A summary of the book’s twelve chapters must, of course, not do justice to the depth of Séguin’s scholarship and his ability to provide an appealing narrative based on the history of individual libraries. An introductory chapter briefly outlines private and institutional libraries in New France before the British conquest in 1760. The establishment in 1632 of the Bibliothèque du Collège des Jésuites was a significant highlight of the French regime, but it was not for public use. The concept of public use and literacy growth was demonstrated by the establishment of small subscription libraries, commercial lending libraries, reading rooms, newsrooms, and mechanics’ institutes (instituts d’artisans) in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The appeal of these organizations to different clienteles is outlined in the following three chapters, 2 to 4. These libraries were utilized mainly by urban elites, professionals, and people engaged in business. Before the province of Lower Canada was united with Upper Canada to form one British colony in 1841, the major points of interest were:
1764 — Germain Langlois forms a commercial circulating library at Quebec;
1779 — British Governor Haldimand founds the bilingual Bibliothèque de Québec/The Quebec Library;
1828 — The establishment of Mechanics’ Institute of Montreal (now the Atwater Library).

At this point, 1841-42, an extraordinary French visitor from the United States, Alexandre Vattemare, an exponent of free public libraries and the universal distribution of reading through exchanges of books, arrived (chapter 5). In Montreal and Quebec, he proposed the union of local societies into one institute that would form a library, museum, and exhibition halls bolstered by his exchange plan. Séguin devotes an entire chapter to his efforts which did not materialize but ultimately led to the formation of the Institut Canadien in 1844 in Montreal. The intellectual ferment of the early 1840s also stimulated a response from conservatives anxious to block liberal, secular ideas that might threaten the conservative elite and the Catholic Church’s authority. Two chapters (6 and 7) explain the problems encountered by the Institutes Canadiennes in Montreal and Quebec and the development of the parish library (bibliothèque paroissiale) by Catholic authorities. For a century to come, the parish libraries were open for readers, but their organizers placed priority on a rigid system of morality that taught acceptance and passivity in social and political matters. Orthodoxy was more important than the liberal sponsorship of public lectures, debates, and circulating collections that the institutes promoted. The opening of the “Œuvre des Bons Livres” in Montreal by the Sulpician Order in 1842 signalled decades of conflict between the two philosophies while the church succeeded in establishing its hegemony over public reading and defeating the philosophy of the two institutes. The Catholic hierarchy was determined to stiffle the influence of “bad books” by providing “good” ones.

After Confederation in 1867, the Sulpicians began to play an important role in championing publicly authorized reading (chapter 8), notwithstanding the proclamation of an 1890 provincial Act (seldom used) that authorized municipal corporations to maintain public libraries. When Montreal’s civic authorities failed to secure funding from Andrew Carnegie to establish a public library, the Sulpicians founded the famous Bibliothèque Saint-Sulpice for the public and scholars. Eventually, in 1967, its collections became part of the Bibliothèque nationale du Québec and later, after 2002, the provincial government integrated its resources with the Grande Bibliothèque, one of the busiest public libraries in Canada. The formation of the “GB” owed much to the sponsorship of Lucien Bouchard, the leader of the Premier of Quebec between 1996-2001. This chapter of D’obscurantisme et de Lumières underscores the author’s general theme and how social and political elements impact public library development.

The Saint-Suplice Library was a remarkable beaux-arts style building, but it was followed shortly afterwards by an equally imposing edifice in the same architectural style, the Bibliothèque municipale de Montréal, which opened in 1917. By the turn of the twentieth century, there were gradual social, economic, and political forces underway that would eventually undermine the dominance of the parish library in local communities as well as the authority of the clergy in determining collection building. English-speaking minorities, especially in major urban centres and the Eastern Townships, evoked the rhetoric of the Anglo-American public library movement, which embraced municipal control and free access at the entry point for public libraries. Séguin charts the course of this inexorable movement in three chapters, 9 to 11. In Montreal, the Fraser Institute, Quebec’s first free library for the public, opened in 1885, followed by anglophone public libraries in Sherbrooke, Knowlton, and Haskell. Westmount opened another free library in 1899. Even a small francophone municipality, Sainte-Cunégonde, founded a free library immediately before Montreal annexed it in 1905. However, Montreal’s municipal public library on Sherbrooke Street grew slowly because financial resources from the city for collections and staffing were in short supply during its first half-century of existence. Children’s work and a film service were not introduced until a quarter-century after the library opened. After the Second World War, the forces of urbanization, secularization, and the unique national identity of Quebec began to change the province’s political culture and introduced a new important player in public library development--the provincial government.

The book’s final chapter (11) deals with the growth of public libraries after 1959 when the province passed a modest provincial law for public libraries authorizing municipal establishment and control of library services. Regional libraries were planned and formed, professional staffing was encouraged, improved revenues from local government were secured, new branch libraries opened, and new library associations formed that emphasized social issues, such as intellectual freedom. In the early 1980s, Denis Vaugeois, the Minister of Cultural Affairs, emphasized library development with a five-year development plan that improved infrastructure and services substantially. Yet, when the province rescinded the outdated 1959 library legislation, no new specific library act was enacted. Instead, the province moved to establish the Grande Bibliotheque in Montreal, an outstanding circulating and reference library for all Québécois. However, lacking a general law, basic principles, especially free access to resources, remains a legacy of flawed, incremental plans . The current general legislation, one concerning the Ministry of Culture and Communications, has governed public libraries since 1992. Séguin entitles his chapter on the twentieth century “un laborieux cheminement,” an appropriate designation.

D’obscurantisme et de Lumières is a rich narrative firmly focused on the institutional development of libraries and their public value in terms of access to books, the intellectual or recreational content of collections, and a broad range of formats that have challenged the dominance of print after the first decades of the 20th century and the popularity of radio. Séguin uses many documentary sources to illustrate his chapters: quotes from bishops, politicians, and librarians; newspapers such as Le Devoir; personal correspondence; municipal debates; government reports; and, of course, library reports. Influential American practices, such as the Dewey Decimal Classification and the evolution of library science education in degree-granting universities, are evident. But several decisive post-1950 changes are not in evidence. There is little in the book about societal changes, for example, the transformation to electronic-virtual-digital libraries, the “Information Highway” of the 1990s, gender roles (especially the predominance of males in administration), the image of the library or librarians in films or television that reflected societal views, or the effects of library automation and efforts to network libraries for collective usage. Perhaps a few in-depth case studies of major libraries outside Montreal might have been used to illustrate library progress. For example: more emphasis on how the Institut Canadien de Québec, which initially accepted the church’s authority on morality and orthodoxy, then evolved in a singular way into Quebec City’s public library after municipal control in 1887; or, how the regionalization of rural library service proceeded after 1960. The use of informative sidebars on Montreal’s two library schools, influential librarians (e.g., Ægidius Fauteux), children’s libraries, or library associations such as ASTED or the l'Association des bibliothécaires du Québec/Quebec Library Association could advance our knowledge of library progress.

However, these observations in no way diminish the significance of D’obscurantisme et de Lumières as it stands. François Séguin has made a valuable contribution to Canadian library history and allows his readership to understand better the cultural forces that determined library development and the course of librarianship in Quebec. The issues I pose simply suggest that a second book by the author employing various contemporary themes would be equally helpful for those eager to know more about Quebec’s remarkable library history.

Les bibliothèques canadiennes, 1604-1960 by Antonio Drolet (1965)

Les bibliothèques canadiennes, 1604-1960 by Antonio Drolet. Ottawa: Le Cercle du Livre de France, 1965. 234 p., tables.

Antonio Drolet, n.d.

Antonio Drolet was born in Québec City on July 31, 1904, and studied at the Petit Séminaire de Québec where many young Catholic clerics were educated. He earned his BA at Université Laval in 1925. Eventually,  he chose a career outside religious studies: he became an academic librarian at Laval. He also performed duties as a Secretary to the respected literary critic and rector of Laval, Camille Roy. Later, he organized and directed work at the library in the Faculty of Medicine at Sainte-Foy from 1955-1961. In 1964, Drolet became chief librarian at the Archives of Québec. During his career, he published important works, notably Bibliographie du roman canadien-français 1900–1950 in 1955 and Les Bibliothèques canadiennes 1604–1960 in 1965 along with many scholarly articles on libraries, especially in the vicinity of Quebec City (see below). Drolet died on June 30, 1970.

Antonio Drolet's history of Canadian libraries was a groundbreaking work in Canadian library historiography and owed much to his knowledge of Canadian bibliography and his own scholarly work on libraries and book collections in the province of Quebec. In attempting to encompass the development of our nation's libraries from the arrival of French explorers to the postwar period after 1945, the author was examining an area of research that was, for the most part, a patchwork of regional histories and unsynthesized commentaries. Drolet was largely successful in striving to weld these pieces together in a sweeping historical survey of Canadian library development. More than half a century later, some parts may seem dated or insubstantial due to subsequent research, nevertheless, Les Bibliothèques canadiennes is still a reliable, concise account which blends Drolet's narrative and analysis, notably his portrayal of the considerable influence of the clergy in Quebec's public library development. Drolet was steadfast in his account of the historical ascendancy of public services at a time when Quebec's politics and culture in the 1960s -- the Quiet Revolution -- was fundamentally changing life in Quebec. Drolet seems to be deeply aware of this trend and, as a result, his general work remains an important starting point in historical inquiry, especially for the evolution of libraries in Quebec.

Drolet chose to divide Canada's library chronology into three parts, from (1) the early libraries in the French colony established by Samuel Champlain to the British military victories in the Seven Years' War at Québec City and Montréal (1604-1760), (2) the British colonial period to Confederation, to (3) the entire post-Confederation period (1867-1960) of developing nationhood. These dates mirror the earlier dominance of political history in Canada's past established by Canadian historians in the first part of the 20th century and the ideas that emerged from its colonial experience and the aftermath of Confederation. Of course, Drolet composed his work before the rise of new social history in Canadian universities that involved a variety of studies on urbanism, ethnicity, labour, demographics, regional or societal structures, and more complex patterns of chronology. It was sometimes called "history from below" or "history with the politics left out." This new history used different viewpoints and source materials and did not focus on attempts at a national synthesis. Drolet was composing his narrative at a time when French-language historians at two major universities, Laval and Montreal, were beginning to re-interpret Quebec's history using professional standards to investigate the province's social and cultural development beyond the traditional nationalist emphasis on the survival of francophone culture in a North American setting. Les Bibliothèques canadiennes displays an interest in print culture and book history, areas of study in their own right in relation to the field French-Canadian library history. Drolet's successors who have made authoritative contributions to Quebec's library history, such as Yvan Lamonde, Gilles Gallichan, or Marcel Lajeunesse -- have followed in this tradition of interrelating library history with printing and publishing, the history of books, literacy, reading, and intellectual development. These works reflect the new cultural historiography that became more influential on both sides of the Atlantic in the 1980s, many years after Drolet's publication appeared.

However, Drolet was also writing at a time when institutional and administrative concerns in library history -- the growth of collections, the spread of various types of libraries, or the tenure of chief administrators -- dominated local narratives, especially in American and Canadian English-speaking accounts. Drolet chose to focus on types of libraries and their development -- a typical institutional approach that is less favoured by historians now. His contemporaries writing library history echoed the liberal-democratic premise of practicing librarians and trustees who projected the idea of public libraries financed by municipalities and administered by trustees as a powerful force for literacy and democracy. To some extent, Drolet was not subject to this overarching Anglo-American-Canadian experience because he specialized in the course of Quebec's library development which had resisted this thinking. As he notes, even in 1930 a Liberal Premier of Quebec, Louis-Alexandre Taschereau, could state that the content of public libraries posed some threat, especially to youth (p. 173-74). However, while he adhered to the cultural-religious aspects of Quebec's library history, Drolet necessarily was concocting a national interpretation of the historical record emphasizing facts and events that often were institutional, administrative, and political in focus, thus giving weight to the progress of institutional growth.

In his first time frame, Drolet examines the libraries of New France, particularly private libraries of the colonial elite and Catholic religious institutions. The vast majority of private collections were not large and, as he notes, were often devoted to religious works, as were the libraries in churches and seminaries. He covers the entire period as one -- the reader does not get a sense of the growth of libraries in the French regime, perhaps because they were small and a "book culture" with contemporary printing presses and book stores was lacking. For institutional libraries, Drolet drew on his own published work, particularly the Séminaire de Québec (see below) which is still cited by scholars. The most important library in the French colony was the library of the Collège des Jésuites at Québec City which Drolet had published an extensive article on in 1961 (see below). He calculates that there were about 20,000 volumes in about 50 personal collections in New France (p. 25) with prominent French writers, Pascal, Descartes, and Montaigne available to readers (p. 45). He concludes his section on mostly private collections by noting the appearance of libraries for the public in North America, a trend the French colony had not experienced.

The central part of Les Bibliothèques canadiennes (1760-1867) is more successful in providing details that offer a sense of colonial library development including the background of difficulties inherent in Canada's burgeoning book trade, especially in Quebec. Commercial circulating libraries, subscription libraries (which Drolet terms as public, p. 88, because they did not belong to a person and attracted a limited clientele), English language mechanics' institutes and their French counterpart instituts d’artisans, school libraries, parliamentary libraries, professional libraries, public libraries of different types, parish libraries, college and university libraries begin to appear. Drolet examines the size of collections, for example, the Bibliothèque de Québec founded in 1779. The author's interest in parish libraries encouraged by the Catholic Church after 1840 stems from his earlier research (see below) and continues his observations on the importance of religion on library development in his home province. He finds the clergy repeatedly thwarting the development of local or municipal public libraries by acting as a conservative force to actively control social and cultural institutions, especially the foundation of libraries for the public in a general sense ("bibliothèques populaires" p. 135). In two notable cases, the visit of Alexandre Vattemare in 1840-41 which resulted in the founding of the controversial L’Institut canadien de Montréal (1844-80) and the refusal to accept money from Andrew Carnegie's program to build free public library buildings at the beginning of the 20th century, the Catholic ultramontane philosophy prevailed. The development of school libraries under Egerton Ryerson and Jean-Baptiste Meilleur is also highlighted. To illustrate the growth of libraries, there is a chronological table (p. 151-54) of the foundation of many Canadian libraries during this period, perhaps a realization on the author's part that a substantial descriptive history of all library development over one hundred years was not feasible in the early 1960s. Drolet was touching the surface of library history not burrowing deeper to examine the complexities of library formation, investigating the contribution of persons (politicians, trustees, librarians), or identifying general trends or geographic differences that influenced library growth.

In his final section, Drolet moves to a national stage beyond Quebec and Ontario and covers important libraries in ten Canadian provinces. Discussion is necessarily compressed, but it engages the reader with useful information and displays the author's extensive learning and dedication to details. At the same time, the author introduces government, business, school, and academic libraries. Generally, the primacy of private and public library history lessens and types of libraries multiply. In this time frame, as might be expected because he was writing before the influence of new social and cultural history approaches, Drolet remains fixed on an institutional focus, even with library education and the development of librarianship (p. 203-04). As the formation of provincial and national library associations comes into play, he notes the bi-cultural nature of Canadian librarianship: the formation of the Canadian Library Association (still bilingual at the time of Drolet's publication) and L'Association canadienne des bibliothécaires de langue française shortly after the Second World War. There is little opportunity to consider the societal impact of libraries, although the author indicates Quebec's decision to follow the example of Canadian-American public library development in other provinces with the formation of a provincial public library law in 1959.

Les Bibliothèques canadiennes has influenced Quebec authors in the past half-century, in part because Drolet was in tune with the changes of the Quiet Revolution and the need to secularize and reinterpret library history in his home province. Conversely, Drolet's work is seldom cited in English-language publications even though it could easily serve as an introductory handbook. A variety of reasons likely account for this neglect beyond the obvious obstacle of language and its brevity. The book's all-encompassing scope provided brief information on various types of libraries or librarians; its focus on private libraries, book collectors, and reading in Quebec did not attract researchers outside the province; some of its contents gradually became dated or known through other works; some important aspects, such as regional libraries, are scarcely mentioned; and, of course, it is now more than half a century past its original publication. Nevertheless, Drolet's history can still reward readers because the author was careful to establish his facts and confident enough to interpret more than three hundred years of Canada's past, an academic project which probably would be attempted by a collegial of effort in 2020.

Drolet's Bibliothèques canadiennes is available for readers at the Internet Archive of books.


Additional works by Drolet:

Antonio Drolet, “La Bibliothèque du Séminaire de Québec et son catalogue de 1782,” Le Canada Français 28, no. 3 (Nov. 1940): 261–266.
Antonio Drolet, “La bibliothèque de l'Université Laval,” La revue de l'Université Laval 7 (1952): 34–41.
Antonio Drolet, “La bibliothèque du Collège des Jésuites,” Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française 14, no. 4 (mars 1961): 487–544.
Antonio Drolet, “L’Épiscopat canadien et les bibliothèques paroissiales de 1840 à 1900,” vol. 29, Rapport - Société canadienne d’histoire de l’Église catholique (Hull, Québec: Leclerc, 1962), 21–35.

About the author:

Alphéda Robitaille, “Hommage à un historien: Antonio Drolet, 1904–1970,” Archives: Revue de l'Association des Archivistes du Québec 70, no. 2 (juillet-décembre 1970), 32–42. [bibliography]
Charles-Marie Boissonnault, “Antonio Drolet, bibliothécaire et historien,” Proceedings and Transactions and of the Royal Canadian Society, Antonio Drolet, bibliothécaire et historien (1972), 127–134.

Toronto’s Free Library: Facts for the Citizens (1881) by John Taylor

Toronto’s Free Library: Facts for the Citizens by John Taylor. Toronto: n.p., signed 25 October 1881,  4 p., tables.

John Taylor was born in Leek, Staffordshire, England, in 1841. He came to Canada as a teenager with his family when he was fourteen. His early business training was with Taylor Brothers, paper makers, a firm that was at the forefront in an expanding paper industry based on the use of wood pulp. After leaving the firm, John ventured into the commission business with J.L. Morrison. He eventually established his own major factory specializing in the manufacture of soap, John Taylor & Company, on the Don River.

Taylor became a director of the Toronto Mechanics' Institute in the 1870s, showing an interest in the welfare and education of working people. He was treasurer of the Institute in 1880. He was also a member and president of the St. George's Society which sought to assist immigrants and those in need.  He also entered the arena of politics, serving as an alderman and school trustee. By 1881, he was becoming a promoter of a public library in Toronto with the publication of a short booklet, Toronto’s Free Library. Along with John Hallam, Taylor became a leading exponent of free library service for Toronto residents, although their ideas were not entirely in unison despite the Grip illustration caption from March 25, 1882.

Taylor's small tract begins with a statement that Toronto was in need of the intelligence a free library could provide for its future welfare and good government. Taylor, like his friend John Hallam and many others, believed in cultural accessibility and the communication of ideas to society through systematic education. Books and magazines could help explain the organization and processes of government and help explain current issues. Libraries could also provide resources to study social conditions. Already, in the United States and Great Britain, libraries were in operation affording free reading to thousands of people. Taylor offers examples of libraries in America, Britain, France, and Australia to buttress his point and, to counter skeptics, asserts that "it must not be taken for granted that reading for amusement is the sole aim of a rate-supported library." As well, he offers another argument based on his view of democratic political life in North America:

Free libraries are certainty not so numerous in Great Britain as in the United States. Class distinction is much more clearly marked in the Old World than on this side the Atlantic, and that same wave of democracy that has done so much to merge classes and creeds among our neighbours will no doubt in time reach the Dominion without necessarily weakening the loyalty of the people."

Taylor, like his friend Hallam and most Ontarians, was reluctant to disassociate his promotion of libraries from the preservation of the British connection. He was more concerned with a practical scheme for Toronto.

There are two feasible methods of establishing a library from municipal funds. One plan—advanced by my colleague in the Council, Alderman Hallam—is to forestall and fund a portion of the rate so as to erect handsome and suitable buildings at once and fill (or partially fill) them with say 60,000 or 80,000 volumes the first year. The other plan would be to commence on a more moderate scale and spend the money in books, etc., as it is granted. Either way would secure a grand result for any corporation availing itself of the Act. I would advance such an establishment that the maintenance thereof would not exceed $5000 a year for Librarian, Assistants, Caretaker, gas, etc., so that the purchase account for new books, periodicals and newspapers may be as large as possible.

Taylor even suggested a civic museum could be established with the free library and that the cost to a small householder would only be about twenty-five cents a year, the price of one dinner at a farmer's hotel! At civic elections held at the start of the new year, in January 1883, Toronto's ratepayers voted in favour of the ballot question to establish a library thereby authorizing the city council to establish a bylaw for its creation. Like his aldermanic counterpart, John Hallam, does not reference the term "democracy."  He is content to postulate that the library would ultimately contribute to a better-educated citizenry.

Taylor's contribution to the establishment of Toronto's free library was satirized by Grip on December 2nd, 1882. In time, Taylor, and other directors of the Toronto Mechanics' Institute, came to favour a third option, i.e., the transfer of property belonging to the Institute to the municipality for free library purposes according to Ontario's 1882 Free Libraries Act. On 29 March 1883, at a special general meeting, the Institute's directors (which included Taylor) voted to transfer all its property (and liabilities) to the city of Toronto. Later, on 20 June, the transfer deed giving legal effect was executed. The institute formally reopened on 6 March 1884 as Toronto's free library on the corner of Church and Adelaide Streets. John Taylor served as chair of the new Toronto Public Library in 1885 and continued on its Board of Management until January 1900.


John Taylor's short pamphlet is available at Canadiana Online.

Notes by the Way on Free Libraries and Books (1882) by John Hallam

Notes by the Way on Free Libraries and Books with a Plea for the Establishment of Rate-Supported Libraries in the Province of Ontario by John Hallam. Toronto: Globe Printing Company, 1882, 36 p. tables.

John Hallam was born in Chorley, Lancashire, England, in 1833, the son of a poor workingman. When he was still a boy, he worked in a cotton mill to help his parents. In his early twenties, Hallam emigrated to Canada, arriving in Toronto in 1856. For several years he took on menial work as a labourer but managed to save money to open a small business as a hide, wool and leather merchant. Through his own exertions and business acumen he developed a thriving business that became a leading Canadian importer and exporter, including a branch plant in Winnipeg. A political Liberal of the Lancashire type who preferred individual liberties, popular suffrage (including universal suffrage for women), and free trade, Hallam was out of step with the established Conservative norms which characterized "Tory Toronto;" nevertheless, he entered municipal politics in 1870 as an alderman, a position he held at different intervals for the next three decades. He campaigned unsuccessfully for mayor in 1900, finishing third. Hallam died shortly afterward at his residence on Isabella Street, Linden Villa. He was civic-minded and was one of the first directors of the Canadian National Exhibition which opened in 1879. Today, his original summer property in Rosedale, Chorley Park, continues to be enjoyed by Toronto residents with its quiet walkways and small gardens. Another notable civic contribution, of course, is the Toronto Public Library, one of the busiest public libraries in North America.

Because his personal interest leaned to book collecting, it is not surprising that John Hallam eventually became a prominent library promoter as well. He was treasurer of the Toronto Mechanics' Institute in 1871. His survey of libraries and call for the establishment of free library legislation was published in early 1882, Notes by the Way on Free Libraries and Books. His pamphlet was the summary of his inquiries by letter and personal visits to England, France, and Germany in the course of his travels, particularly in 1881. Hallam had already proposed the formation of a library in Toronto at the outset of 1881 and contacted both the Minister of Education, Adam Crooks, and Premier, Oliver Mowat, about the need for enabling legislation. The alderman made a forthright statement for rate-supported public libraries in his preface:

Free public libraries, to be useful and successful, must be rate supported, and free from the tedious formalities of an educational department, and represent every phase of human thought and opinion, every class and condition of men, and be absolutely free from all political and sectarian influences. They are the institutions of the people. They must initiate, manage and pay for their support.

In the opening pages of his work, Hallam stressed the value of reading and books. "Books are the records of human feeling, opinion, action and experience; and though the mere form of such records may have differed in different ages, the desire for and creation of such records have been inseparable from the career of mankind" (p. 8). His argument ranged from the Egyptian pharaohs, the library of Alexandria, the medieval period, and modern Europe, punctuated with quotes from celebrated authors such as Cicero and Milton. He emphasized that classroom education in the schools and self-education in adult life were the keys to a successful life.

Hallam followed with a description of library progress in France, Germany, and Great Britain which was the focus of his tract. He defended novel reading in a section on Leicester and praised the work being done in Birmingham and Manchester. Liverpool, Bradford, and Preston also received his attention. He had less information on American states, Edinburgh, and Dublin, but noted the evolution of thought in public library thinking after 1850. Of course, Hallam followed the conventional contemporary interpretation of Canadian ties to Britain and its imperial economic and cultural successes unlike Goldwin Smith's view of continental linkages with the United States.

Hallam also wrote about Canadian developments, such as they were. Most of his comments were directed to Egerton Ryerson's free libraries in schools which had been mostly "abandoned" by the government of the day. However, Hallam cleverly framed his central line of reasoning: "I put the question, that if a municipal tax freely voted by the people for the support of common schools works wisely and well, surely a rate for libraries must work in the same way" (p. 28). In a few paragraphs he sketched a plan for provincial legislation in Ontario to allow the formation of free public libraries. This would require the successful vote of the ratepayers in a city, town, or village to permit a suggested annual 1/2 mill rate, an expression of direct democracy through a referendum. He does not provide further details (such as the administration of libraries) but does provide insight into what he, a good liberal Victorian committed to cultural elevation, felt should be in the circulating collections.

I think the ingredients of such a library should be as general, as attractive and as fascinating as possible. I would have in a library of this sort a grand and durable foundation of solid, standard, fact literature. I would have a choice, clean-minded, finely imaginative superstructure of light reading. The vulgar, the sensuously sensational, the garbage of the modern press, I would most scrupulously avoid, just as I would avoid dirt and the devil. I would have everything in a library of this kind useful and captivating; mentally speaking, there should be nothing nasty and nothing dull in it. Next to dirty reading, for badness of effect, is dull reading. (p. 30-31)

Hallam then closed his arguments by summarizing his rationale for free library support. He maintained that free libraries were "profitable investments" for the public that developed a taste for reading, offered paths of study, and diverted working-men from street corners or "dram shops." They introduced the great minds of the past to new readers, promoted public virtue and enlightenment, and influenced social order, respectability, and intelligence. Thus, "by developing these virtues amongst the multitude, they [libraries] must necessarily diminish the ranks of those two great armies which are constantly marching to gaols and penitentiaries, and in the same ratio they must decrease the sums of money which ratepayers have to provide for the maintenance of those places" (p. 31). Ultimately, he contended that it was wiser to pay for intelligence than to tolerate ignorance.

John Hallam and his fellow alderman, John Taylor, were important promoters of free public library service in Toronto. Taylor also published a short tract, Toronto's Free Library, earlier in 1881, proposing the adoption of rate support of a 1/2 mill on the dollar. But Hallam's work was more detailed and specific about the purpose and benefits of free libraries. Although he does not reference the word "democracy," he calls upon the active, direct participation of citizens through the municipal referendum process to authorize the formation of libraries and thereby support the concept of rate-support for collections to be available freely to citizens. The library as a separate institution would be managed publicly, separate from the school system. Its resources could assist citizens to make better decisions than being left in ignorance, a vital ingredient in democratic life. Through the activity of self-education people could learn more about science and technology, business, government, medicine, and many other subjects.

Canada's essential democratic values in the British North America Act were "peace, order, and good government." Good government conducted in an orderly fashion through public consent was a keystone of political thinking during this period. The idea of common good through the power of popular government buttressed by public support shines through Hallam's Notes. This democratic impulse is similar to the development of Ontario's school system -- the advancement of knowledge and learning in an expanding population and electorate.

Hallam's efforts were rewarded when the Ontario government enacted the Free Libraries Act in 1882, an earlier blog I posted in November 2017. Toronto availed itself of this enabling legislation in January 1883 by a two-thirds majority of eligible votes cast, 5405 to 2862. Of course, in a city of 90,000 population, property or income qualifications excluded many workers from voting in annual municipal elections or on referenda. Not surprisingly, Hallam became the library's first chairperson later in the same year. His friend, John Taylor, followed as chair in 1885.

On 24 December 1881, the satirical magazine, Grip, invoked the spirit of  Christmas on behalf of a free library in Toronto. It commented on a drawing that "Santa Claus shall not fail to bring it in due time," a prediction that proved to be correct.

A short contemporary biography on John Hallam from the mid-1880s is available in George Maclean Rose's Cyclopaedia of Canadian Biography.

John Hallam's Notes by the Way on Free Libraries can be read at the Internet Archive.

Les Bibliothèques Populaires (1890) by Eugène Rouillard

Les Bibliothèques Populaires by Eugène Rouillard. Québec: L.-J. Demers & Frère, 1890. 61 p.

Eugène Rouillard was a man of many talents. He was born in Québec City in 1851 and died there in 1926 after a long career as a notary, journalist and writer, civil servant, and geographer. He studied at the Université Laval from 1872-75 and graduated with a degree in law. Although he was notary at the beginning of his career, he turned to journalism as a writer and editor of newspapers and then to work in government positions for three decades. In his government positions he dealt with a wide variety of issues, such as land sales, colonization issues, and lawsuits. Rouillard came to be well respected by contemporaries: he became a member of the Société du Parler Français au Canada, the Geographical Society of Quebec, and, in 1915, the Royal Society of Canada. He was grounded in the political life of his home province and his journalistic and civil service background familiarized him with Anglo-Saxon concepts of government and civil society with respect to public services. He was the author of a number of books: Our Rivers and Lakes (1895); The White Coal: The Water-Powers of the Province of Quebec (1909), and an important work on public libraries which will be discussed here.

Rouillard was one of a number of Canadian library promoters agitating for free public libraries after 1880. John Hallam, in Toronto, was notably successful after publishing his Notes by the Way on Free Libraries and Books with a Plea for the Establishment of Rate-Supported Libraries in the Province of Ontario in 1882. The Saint John Free Library, which opened in 1883, owed much to the work of Colonel James Domville and a committee of women headed by Miss Manning Skinner. In Montreal, the bequest of Hugh Fraser led to the establishment of the Fraser Institute, open free to the public in 1885. There many other people in localities across Canada--enough to label their activity as the "public library movement." By 1891, Ontario, British Columbia, and Quebec had all passed provincial laws enabling municipalities to support free public libraries through regular taxation.

Les Bibliothèques Populaires (1890) appeared at a time when public library development in Canada, especially Quebec, was at an early stage. There were a variety of interpretations about "bibliothèques populaires", i.e. "popular libraries" or "libraries for the people" as they were known in Europe, especially France. These libraries usually concentrated on recreational rather than educational collections. In North America, public libraries might be regarded simply as library that was not a personal collection, as libraries for public access resulting from private initiatives (e.g., the Fraser Institute opened in Montreal), as libraries established by an organization requiring small fees for public use, or as municipally rate-supported public institutions that allowed local residents free access to reading materials at the point of entry. It was this last sense that drew Rouillard's interest and led him to publish his pamphlet promoting public libraries in the same year that the Quebec provincial government, under the premiership of Honoré Mercier, was about to issue legislation authorizing cities, towns, and villages to support free libraries (or library associations and mechanics' institutes) through taxation (54 Vic., chap. 34, sec. 1-3). The promotion of free public libraries -- primarily a British and American ideal in 1890 -- might be construed as liberal politics. But it seems that Rouillard leaned more to the reformist politics that the Mercier government practiced in asserting Quebec's position in Confederation. Rouillard repeatedly mentions that free libraries complemented the evening courses for the working class that Mercier's nationalist party had created: "En un mot, la bibliothèque est le complément indispensable de l'école; l'une ne peut aller sans l'autre" (p. 18). Rouillard contended that the state owed the working class improved educational opportunities.

In two short sections, Rouillard surveys the development of free public libraries in the United States (p. 26-36). He was particularly impressed by the Chicago and Boston libraries which had grown rapidly after the 1850s. Magnificent donations to build libraries by John Jacob Astor (New York) and Andrew Carnegie (Pittsburgh) also drew his admiration: "les millionnaires qui se font non seulement un devoir, mais encore un honneur et une gloire de doter leur ville natale d'une bibliothèque à l'usage du peuple" (p. 31). Also, American states had established state laws that permitted municipalities to fund public libraries on an unprecedented scale. He wrote that Canada lagged far behind America both in philanthropic efforts to establish libraries and in government support.

Developments in Europe were also explored. He notes that fourteen free popular libraries already were receiving city ​​council grants in Paris. In Britain, public library legislation had been introduced years before in 1850. Rouillard's argumentation went beyond the free distribution of reading material in libraries. He claimed that many cities and towns in England, France, Switzerland, Belgium, and Germany offered regular evening courses and public speakers who gave their time and their knowledge for free as well.

But in Quebec, there was much work to be done to reach a similar state enjoyed by working-class people in the United State and Europe. "Dans la province de Québec — il faut bien le confesser — nous sommes encore sous ce rapport dans la première enfance" (p. 45). By comparison, Ontario was comfortably ahead: there were several free libraries and a host of libraries and evening classes of varying degree in mechanics' institutes. Rouillard accepted the idea that the education of the people was a legitimate concern of localities: "Aussi, je prétends que la ville qui veut avoir une bibliothèque chez elle doit intervenir et payer sa quote-part des frais généraux" (p. 57). Legislative grants from provincial governments were not incentive enough, each city or town must do its part. The generosity of Andrew Carnegie might not be matched in dollars, but there were rich men from the ranks of commerce and industry in Quebec who might be expected to support libraries. Rouillard concluded that the idea of popular libraries that had been launched was too noble, too big, too beautiful, and too patriotic not to catch on and flourish in the future (p. 61).

The pamphleteer made a good case in 1890, but it would be many decades before Montreal would adopt the public library concept he was advocating. At this time, the predominant position of most French Canadian leaders espoused the idea of a separate national identity for the Québécois people rather than the adoption of  Anglo-American conventions. When a proposal to use a $150,000 Carnegie grant for a new central library was floated by the mayor of Montreal in 1901, it was not accepted. The opening of a new municipal public library building on Sherbrooke Street in 1917 was of long gestation. By this time, Rouillard's treatise, grounded in the political life of Quebec in 1890, was less relevant. Nevertheless, today, when thousands of people enter the Grande Bibliothèque on Montreal's De Maisonneuve Boulevard every week, one can see that Rouillard's fundamental insight and rationale for the provision of free municipal libraries more than a century ago -- the expansion of knowledge in his home province -- was justified. In this respect, his work will reward students of library history and deepen our knowledge about the development of Canadian public libraries.

Eugène Rouillard's work is online at the Internet Archive

Rouillard's biography is available in English and French at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography site.

The Public Library: Its Place in Our Educational System (1912) by Edwin Austin Hardy

The Public Library: Its Place in our Educational System by Edwin Austin Hardy. Toronto: William Briggs, 1912. ii, 223 p., illus., tables, appendices. Published version of Hardy's Doctor of Paedagogy dissertation.

Edwin Austin Hardy, who was born in New Hampshire in 1867, was a teacher, author, and library advocate. When he was still a child his family moved to Uxbridge, Ontario, where he received his early education. Eventually, he received a BA at the University of Toronto in 1888. He then took teacher training and taught in Lindsay where he became a trustee at the Mechanics' Institute in 1894. Although teaching was Hardy's profession, he also promoted public libraries. In 1899, Lindsay became a free public library and Carnegie money was granted to open a new building in 1904. Hardy was one of the founders of the Ontario Library Association (OLA) in 1900 and he worked tirelessly as its Secretary from 1900-25 before serving as President in 1925-26. Hardy moved to Toronto to organize work with the Sunday Schools Associations of Ontario in 1904, to be President of Moulton Ladies' College in 1906, and then a teacher of English and History at Jarvis Street Collegiate in 1910. He retired in 1936.

Hardy was a progressive organizer in the Victorian mold and held many interests. He helped found the Toronto High School Teachers' Association in 1903 and the Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation in 1919. He also helped found the Canadian Teachers' Federation in 1920 and was active as an officer in the World Federation of Education Associations and the Canadian Authors' Association. He was chair of the Toronto Board of Education in 1940 and pursued activities in the League of Empire and Health League of Canada. Hardy received the Order of the British Empire for his outstanding community work in 1935.

From a library perspective, Hardy's efforts in his role as secretary of OLA to promote public libraries, trustee governance, and library training were significant. But another prominent achievement was his 1912 doctorate on public libraries and an historical account of their development in Ontario. His work reviewed the development of libraries and provided an influential account of activities that libraries could undertake to improve the lives of individuals and, by extension, society. This will be the focus of my post.

Hardy arrived on the library scene at an important moment in 1895 when the Ontario legislature introduced an Act to amend and consolidate the Acts respecting Free Libraries and Mechanics' Institutes (58 Vic., Cap. 45). One section of this act provided that every free library and every Mechanics' Institute would be called a "Public Library." Hardy felt that this terminology "had something to do with their progress since [1895], especially in the developing of public interest in their management and betterment" (p. 42-43). Of course, Hardy was thinking of larger "public libraries" that were supported by mandated municipal levies raised in cities and towns rather than the vast number of smaller "public libraries" in Ontario that subsisted on membership fees, fundraising, and modest grants from local and provincial governments. Hardy foresaw a bright future for this first type of public library: "Its possibilities are only now being recognized by our legislative and educational authorities and by the public, in fact, even by library workers themselves. But it is coming to its own, slowly at first, but gathering force and speed daily, and the near future will see the public library system of Ontario as efficient as her primary and secondary school system" (p. 123-124). Despite many societal changes, Hardy's prediction for the most part has stood the test of time for more than a century.

Hardy's outline of the early 20th-century library purposes, activities, and educational work, as well as the factors contributing to the success of Ontario's public libraries may seem somewhat simplistic or outdated by today's standards, but they were by no means entirely acceptable to all his contemporaries. In fact, Hardy's treatise was ahead of his time and filled with suggestions for improving early 20th-century libraries. In many ways, his thesis is representative of classic arguments and conditions that existed for more than half a century when public libraries in Ontario (and Canada) were establishing firmer, more systematic roots on a provincial basis. It was the full-blown era of the "public library movement" when enthusiastic citizens in many urban communities agitated for municipal rate-supported libraries that would allow free access to people in local communities. By the mid-1920s all of Ontario's larger cities had established free public libraries.

Concerning the purpose of public libraries (aka, today's mission statement) and its general operation, Hardy advocated that they provide 1) a selection of the "best books" of general, scientific and reference literature; 2) recreative "good" fiction which would reach a broader public; 3) books and story hours for children of all ages; 4) current periodical holdings to satisfy a variety of community interests; 5) properly classified and catalogued collections (Hardy favoured the Dewey Decimal system and card catalogues); 6) open access to collections; and 7) effective publicity ("The public must be made to know and to feel that the library belongs to them and not to the librarian or the Board", p. 80)

Concerning the important educative value of public libraries, Hardy outlined a number of activities:
Technical Education -- provision and promotion of books for engineering and industrial training
Commercial and Agricultural Education -- materials for bookkeeping, accounting, banking,
transportation, etc. to serve commercial growth and rural progress
Musical Education -- a variety materials (possibly sheet music as well)
Art Education -- books, catalogues, reproduction, photographs, etc.
Domestic Education -- resources for the home, its furnishings, maintenance, and health
Political Education -- newspapers, public documents, statues, legislative materials, etc. In an era before women were legally able to vote, Hardy was particularly keen to satisfy the needs of lawyers and students of politics (the "young men entering the field of public life", p. 94)
Medical and Legal Education -- mostly books for serious study or reference concerns
Teachers' Institutes -- materials that could bring teachers in closer touch with the public library
Local Clubs and Societies -- space for local organizations to house their holdings
Travelling Libraries -- a centre for local study groups to access the Ontario Department of Education's book service which continued until the early 1960s
Lecture Rooms in the Library -- "Lecture courses, debating societies, library institutes, and all such intellectual activities, find themselves in a congenial atmosphere in library buildings" (p. 97)
The Library and the School -- Hardy summarizes several ways that the public library and school might operate to the benefit of students and community life but did not advocate one over the other.

Concerning the successful administration and management of libraries, Hardy felt that Ontario was on the right track in several sections. It began with contemporary Legislative Assistance and Supervision which was now greatly improved. Only the inadequacy of the staff in the Inspector of Public Libraries office was holding back progress at the provincial level. Library Boards held the power of management and were optimally representative of their communities. Educated direction by community members was an important ingredient in library success. Of course, Hardy was hopeful that board members (mostly men) "should attract the best classes of citizens" (p. 105) and provide continuity in library affairs through open-minded decision making. He admitted that Finances were often inadequate (especially in smaller libraries) and suggested a few remedies for added grants and incentives from governments. For Public Library Buildings Hardy suggested "The essential qualities to be aimed at are simplicity, convenience, facility and economy of administration" (p. 109). He offered Lindsay as an example: its radial stack plan at the rear was open to the public for browsing and it held separate small rooms on each side of the entrance for reading purposes and children. An efficient Librarian was an instrumental part of public library success. "Efficiency here does not mean knowledge of books and skill in library methods alone; it implies a right spirit; a spirit of service, of tact, of open-minded alertness, of zeal and of sympathy" (p. 109). With proper Training of the Librarian at the recently opened summer school for librarians in Toronto in 1911, Hardy felt a good beginning had been made. But there was much work to be done in educating and training librarians in Ontario. Finally, the author concluded with some comments about Public Sentiment and Library Organization. Hardy foresaw that the efforts of the Ontario Library Association to arouse public support and establish better standards would be essential for future success.

Hardy had opened his thesis by developing a history of the public library in Ontario that followed along the lines of his contemporary, James Bain, chief librarian of Toronto Public Library. Together, they outlined a progressive record in Ontario from subscription libraries (aka, membership or association) libraries, Mechanics' Institutes, free libraries, and ultimately public libraries after 1895. Both men emphasized the community aspect of local library growth: a bottoms-up effort assisted by small provincial grants that gave prominence to Ontario's "public library movement" led by nonprofessional civic leaders. This was a Victorian success story in many ways, but one that could also continue to be improved in many ways. Victorians in Britain and Canada believed in cultural accessibility, social order, and a more expansive representative liberal democracy. Books, improved literacy, and reading freely attainable at a public institution such as the library was all well and good as Hardy illustrated in his epigraph to his work from Edward Edwards, the English librarian and author:

"To make good books of the highest order freely and easily accessible throughout the length and breadth of the land were surely to give no mean furtherance to the efforts of the schoolmaster, and of the Christian minister, to produce under God's blessing a tranquil, a cultivated and a religious people."

Hardy, a lifelong Baptist, held strong religious views and was also active in promoting Sunday School libraries. It could be said he possessed what his American contemporaries, such as Melvil Dewey, called the "library spirit" -- the possibility of social change for the better through the educative qualities of the public library. It was a stance that would be the mainstay in public library growth in Ontario until after 1945 when social life and librarianship began to undergo many changes during a new phase of mid-century modernization that emphasized recreational aspects and new concepts related to information access that Victorians, such as Hardy, could scarcely imagine. In retrospect, he provided the most informed Canadian statement concerning the "library spirit" in speaking about its main protagonist, librarian:

An efficient librarian can do more with a thousand books in unfavorable quarters than a poor librarian with ten thousand in a thoroughly satisfactory building. Efficiency here does not mean knowledge of books and skill in library methods alone; it implies a right spirit; a spirit of service, of tact, of open- minded alertness, of zeal and of sympathy. Given a librarian of that spirit, trained in some adequate fashion and the public library becomes not only the handmaid of the schools, but it becomes in a very true sense  'the people's university.' It not only meets the wants which the community now feels, but reveals to it new wants to be supplied. (p.109-10)

In time, by the 1920s, the "library spirit" that characterized work in North America in previous decades would begin to give way in Ontario to "modern methods," a unifying concept that Hardy would eventually turn to in later publications.

Hardy's published 1912 thesis is readily available online at Canadiana Online

Further reading:

John Wiseman, "'Champion Has-Been': Edwin Austin Hardy and the Ontario Library Movement," in Peter F. McNally, ed., Readings in Canadian Library History (Ottawa: Canadian Library Association, 1986), pp. 231-243.

Edwin Austin Hardy, “An Outline Program of the Work of the Ontario Library Association,” Public Libraries; a Monthly Review of Library Matters and Methods 6, no. 7 (July 1901): 414–418.

Edwin Austin Hardy, “A Half Century of Retrospect and Prospect; Annual Presidential Address,” Ontario Library Review 11, no. 2 (Nov. 1926): 41–46. [library work as "this great service of culture and happiness"]

Edwin Austin Hardy, “The Ontario Library Association: Forty Years, 1900-1940,” Ontario Library Review 25, no. 1 (Feb. 1941): 9–13. ["lay membership is of great importance"]

GEORGE LOCKE AND THE TORONTO PUBLIC LIBRARY

George H. Locke, chief librarian of the Toronto Public Library between 1908 and 1937, was Canada’s foremost librarian in the first part of the twentieth century. During this period, free public libraries and librarianship in Ontario expanded rapidly due to the philanthropy of Andrew Carnegie, improvements in library education, and the influence of American library developments.

Locke’s outlook in library work was guided by his Methodist upbringing, his association with John Dewey’s contribution to American progressive education, and the Anglo-Canadian academic tradition of British Idealism in the late nineteenth century. These religious and intellectual strands encouraged personal action to seek solutions to improve social conditions. As director of Toronto’s library system, he brought his ambitious ideas to bear in many ways most notably the building of neighbourhood branches, library service for children and young adults, formal education for librarians, and the idea of the public library as a municipal partner in the lifelong self-education of Canadians. By the end of the 1920s, Toronto’s public library system was recognized as one of the best in North America and George Locke’s reputation as a progressive leader had vaulted him to the Presidency of the American Library Association in 1926-27.

Although he had created a large organization that might have succumbed to bureaucratic practices and formalized centralization, he remained faithful to his moral, intellectual, and humanistic values acquired during his schooling and university career. For Locke, libraries and librarianship served the public interest by delivering lifelong knowledge and by guiding individual self-development through experiential learning and transcendent ideals. He promoted adult learning in the early part of the twentieth century when adult education became a field of study in North America.

Many services Locke introduced at Toronto Public Library and national projects he undertook influenced Canadian developments in library work. After the Carnegie Corporation of New York agreed to fund a study of the conditions of Canadian libraries, Locke, along with Mary J. L. Black (Fort William) and John Ridington (University of British Columbia), became commissioners in a national inquiry that was conducted at the onset of the Great Depression. Their 1933 publication, Libraries in Canada: A Study of Library Conditions and Needs, was the first in-depth report on Canadian libraries in the 20th century. Because his impact extended well beyond Toronto, the Canadian government erected a bronze plaque in his honour in 1948 in the town of his birth, Beamsville, Ontario. It reads:

Born at Beamsville and educated at Victoria College and the University of Toronto, Locke taught at Toronto, Chicago and Harvard Universities and was Dean of Education at Chicago and at MacDonald College before becoming Chief Librarian of the Toronto Public Libraries. In that position, he transformed a small institution into one of the most respected library systems on the continent. Sometime President of the American Library Association, one of the founders of the Arts & Letters Club, he was a gifted speaker and the author of books and articles on literary, historical and professional themes. He died in Toronto.

 

Today, the George H. Locke Memorial Branch, the first major library building in Canada constructed after the Second World War in 1949, continues to be a testament to his career and his faith in the idea of the public library as a necessary educational service to society.

George Locke's family upbringing and academic years in Toronto, Chicago, and Boston shaped many of his ideas that he applied to libraries and librarianship. Read about these viewpoints in my illustrated book, “George H. Locke and the Transformation of Toronto Public Library, 1908-1937” available at the Internet Archive of books. Requires Adobe Acrobat PDF software.

 A review of Libraries in Canada is at my earlier post.

CANADIAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION CONSTITUTION, 1947

In June 1946, the Canadian Library Association was founded on the McMaster University campus in Hamilton, Ontario. There were about 300 persons in attendance. One of the first orders of business was the adoption of a draft constitution which had been circulated to groups across the nation. The members present agreed that the CLA would be a bilingual, national organization with annual conferences across Canada. However, the delegates balked at the draft proposal of having executives and governing councilors represent geographical considerations; instead, the members voted to have both the association's  Executive and Council elected by the membership based on personal merit.

Membership in CLA was envisioned to be general, it was to be an "umbrella model" library organization. There would be institutional members interested in the promotion of library service, librarians, trustees and those serving on governing boards of libraries, as well as associate members (persons interested in librarianship and libraries). Professional interests were represented in new active Sections, six by 1950: Children's, Young People's, Trustees, Cataloguing, Reference, and Research Libraries.

The CLA's constitution was incorporated under Canada's federal Companies Act on November 26, 1947. Of course, some constitutional provisions, such as the one on Sections (VII), would be revised a number of times in the next decade. This version was published in 1947 and reflects the ideas and agreement reached at the founding meeting of CLA.

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Canadian Library Association -- Association Canadienne des Bibliothèques

Constitution, 1947

Article I     -   Name
Article II    -   Object
Article III   -  Membership
Article IV   -  Officers and Executive Board
Article V    -  Council
Article VI   -  Committees
Article VII  -  Sections
Article VIII - Meetings
Article IX   -  By-laws
Article X    -  Amendments to the Constitution


Article I. Name
Sec. 1. The name of this body shall be the Canadian Library Association or Association Canadienne des Bibliothèques.

Article II. Object
Sec. 1. The object of the Association shall be:
(a) to promote education, science and culture within the nation through library service;
(b) to promote high standards of librarianship and the welfare of librarians;
(c) to co-operate with library associations both within and outside of Canada and with other organizations interested in the promotion of education, science and culture.
Sec. 2. The Association shall be a non-profit, non-sectarian, non-political body.

Article III. Membership
Sec. 1. Members. An individual, institution or other group approved by the Executive Board may become a member upon payment of the fees provided for in the by-laws. The membership of an individual or an institution may be suspended by two-thirds vote of the Combined Executive Board and Council; a suspended member may be reinstated by a two-thirds vote of the Board and Council in joint session.

Article IV. Officers and Executive Board
Sec 1.
(a) The officers of the Association shall be a President, a President-Elect, who shall serve as First Vice-President, a Second Vice-President, an Executive Secretary, and a Treasurer. These officers, with the exception of the Executive Secretary, shall be elected at each annual general meeting of the Association, and, with the immediate Past President, shall constitute the Executive Board.
(b) All library members shall be eligible for election to the Executive Board.
Sec. 2. Duties of Officers.
(a) The President, First Vice-President, Executive Secretary and Treasurer shall perform the duties relating to their respective offices.
(b) The President shall be an ex-officio member of all Committees of the Association.
(c) i. The President-Elect shall serve the first year after election as First Vice-President, the second year as President, the third year as ex-officio member of the Executive Board.
ii. The President-Elect shall, in accordance with the By-laws, designate to the Executive Board for appointment, the five members of the Nominating Committee.
(d)The President, the Executive Secretary and the Treasurer shall report annually to the membership.
Sec. 3. Duties of the Executive Board.
(a) The Executive Board shall administer the affairs of the Association during its term of office in accordance with the policies laid down by the Council.
(b) It shall review all membership applications as submitted, and be responsible for their approval.
(c) It shall review the annual estimates, and approve the annual budgets which shall be received by the Treasurer. All budgets shall be within the limit of the estimated income of the Association.
(d) It shall report promptly resolutions adopted by the Executive Board to the Councillors.
(e) It shall fix compensation of all paid officers and employees.
(f) It shall choose and appoint the Executive Secretary. This officer shall be appointed by the Executive Board at each annual Executive Board meeting.
(g) It shall designate the length of terms of appointments to Committees in accordance with the By-laws.
(h) The Executive Board shall authorize votes by mail when required.
(i) It shall fill all vacancies in office. The persons so elected shall serve until the end of the fiscal year.
Sec. 4. Term of Office.
(a) The officers and the Executive Board shall serve until the end of the fiscal year.
(b) i. No person shall serve on the Executive Board for more than three consecutive years.
ii. No person can be returned to the Executive Board after a term of three years, during the three years subsequent to the expiration of his term of office.

Article V. Council
Sec. 1. Membership. The Council shall consist of the following members to be known as Councillors:
(a) Nine members elected by the membership at large.
(b) The members of the Executive Board.
(c) Chairmen of Sections.
Sec. 2. Councillors. Members of the Council shall be Members of the Association in good standing.
Sec. 3. Duties.
(a)The Council shall be the Legislative body of the Association.
(b) It shall determine all policies of the Association and its decisions shall be binding upon the Association, its officers, and its constituted bodies.
(c) In the Council shall be vested all powers of the Association not otherwise provided for in the Constitution and By-laws.
(d) It shall inform the Executive Board of all new and revised policies.
(e) The Council shall review the action of officers, Committees and Executive Board of the Association.
(f) It shall promptly consider questions of professional and public interest referred to it by the membership Committees, or Executive Board, and promptly act upon reports and recommendations made by the Association and its constituted bodies.
(g) It shall report regularly to the Association at the annual meeting.
(h) It shall appoint Standing Committees in accordance with the By-laws.
(i)The members may. set aside any action of the Council by a three-fourths vote at any meeting of the Association or by a majority vote by mail in which one-fourth of the voting members of the Association have voted. Such vote by mail shall be held upon petition of fifty members of the Association.
Sec. 4. Terms of Office.
(a) Councillors chosen by the membership at large shall serve for a term of three years except as stated in the By-laws.
(b) No person shall serve on the Council for two consecutive terms.
(c) The Council year shall be the Fiscal Year.

Article VI. Committees
Sec. 1. Committees shall be appointed in accordance with the By-laws.
Sec. 2. All members of the Association are eligible for committee membership.
Sec. 3. The President shall be an ex-officio member of all Committees of the Association.
Sec. 4. Each Committee shall present an annual report to the Council.

Article VII. Sections
Sec. 1. Special interest sections of the Association may be constituted as provided for in the By-laws.

Article VIII. Meetings
Sec. 1. Meetings shall be held as provided for in the By-laws.

Article IX. By-laws
Sec. 1. By-laws and amendments to them may be proposed in writing by the Executive Board, by the Council, or by twenty voting members of the Association.
Sec. 2. They shall be received by the Executive Secretary and included in the agenda for the annual general meeting.
Sec. 3. They may be adopted by a majority vote of the members present and voting at an annual general meeting.
Sec. 4. Any By-law may be suspended by a three-fourths vote of those present and voting at an annual general meeting.

Article X. Amendments to the Constitution
Sec. 1. Amendments to the constitution may be proposed in writing by the Council, by the Executive Board, or by twenty voting members of the Association for consideration by a Constitution Committee at least two months before the annual general meeting.
Sec. 2. Report of the Constitution Committee shall be received by the Executive Secretary, included in the agenda for the annual general meeting, and mailed to the membership three weeks in advance of the meeting.
Sec. 3. Amendments may be adopted by a majority vote of the members present and voting at the annual general meeting.