I held my father’s large, calloused hand and matched his stride as we walked up the steps to the library and through the heavy wooden doors. We stood in the foyer, one long staircase before me led down to the children’s library and the other, up to the distant unreachable land of adult books. Perhaps someday I might venture there too.
After pausing, with some cautious uncertainty I slowly made my way down the stairs and opened the doors at the bottom. What wonder and delight filled my young heart as I stepped through those doors! In an instant I fell in love with books and reading. Books everywhere… colorful and inviting. Perhaps it was at that moment that the reader in me was born.
The memory of sharing that Saturday afternoon with my father is fixed in my brain and when the Edmonton Public Library and Vintage Edmonton displayed this image online it brought a smile. Good things have small beginnings.
This building was my happy introduction to libraries and the wonders they contain.
It demolished in 1966, to make way for more modern architecture.
That which remains is the happy heart of a lifelong reader.
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