First Person is a daily personal piece submitted by readers. Have a story to tell? See our guidelines at tgam.ca/essayguide.
Illustration by Rania Abdallah
The people pause to look. Sometimes they walk past, then stop, turn around and return. Sometimes they cross from the other side of the street.
From our second-floor window, I watch the visitors to our little library box. At the front of our garden on our central Toronto street, the box offers hope of a treasure for passersby – a beloved classic to read again, new inspiration, a mental challenge or just something to bring joy to their day.
Neighbourhood libraries – front-yard cupboards where strangers can leave and take books – have become so ubiquitous in Toronto that it is hard to remember a time when they didn’t exist, though the Little Free Library non-profit says the first was built in 2009 in Wisconsin. For me, they’ve always felt whimsical and I’ve never passed one without stopping to look. I’ve picked up books in libraries across the city, in Kingston and even in Whitehorse. Sometimes there are great finds, quite often there aren’t, but what matters is the possibility.
When we were planning to buy our first house two years ago, I knew I wanted a library for free books and the aforementioned whimsy. I snapped up a box in April from a giveaway group online before I actually had a yard to put it in. My husband thought I was mad since we weren’t closing on our new house until June, but it felt right. For the next two months, the empty wooden box sat in our apartment’s storage locker.
First Person: How The Bench brought friendship – and our neighbourhood – together
Once we got settled in our new home, we had to figure out how to install it. Armed with instructions from the internet, the very basic construction skills of first-time homeowners, a 4×4 cedar post and too much confidence, we got to work.
The post was meant to be buried two feet in the ground for stability, but we hit concrete faster than expected. Without the tools to cut the post down further, we planted it in the ground as deeply as we could and braced it with large rocks on all sides. This misstep means the top of our library sits comically high at 6½ feet above ground.
Within a day of the installation, I saw a message pop up in our neighbourhood Facebook group, announcing the arrival of our library. “Thank you to you,” the poster wrote. I was chuffed. I hadn’t thought of what the library might mean to others until that point, and from there the delight in watching people use it only grew.
My favourite thing about little libraries is how each has its own character, unique to its owners and place: Boxes painted like Doctor Who’s Tardis time machine are popular (I’ve visited at least three), others have stained glass fronts to match the elegant houses in the background and many more have walls painted by children or artists.
They come in single and multilevel, or as paired companions to offer collections for different age groups. I like to visit one near my sister’s house with a plaque dedicating it to a loved one who has passed. Beautifully decorated or not, I often stop just to rearrange the books in a messy library under the guise of browsing.
Each box has its own character on the inside as well. Around the corner, my neighbour’s brightly painted box has become the place for romance paperbacks. Ours, which my daughter hoped would be an endless source of kids books to sate her reading hunger, skews older, and often more literary.
But the books left in our library also tell us quiet stories of the people who live around us. Someone nearby is trying to understand an autistic child. Someone needs the pep talk of self-help books. Someone tested out vegetarianism early in the year and changed their mind. Someone was grieving, but I like to think that now that they’ve given their books away, it’s because they’re okay.
First Person: I had to say goodbye to my old Encyclopedia Britannica set
Not everything left for us is a winner, and our library garden needs weeding regularly. People leave old flyers and textbooks, stacks of postcards, religious materials, out-of-date technology magazines or really anything else they feel bad throwing out. Most mornings my husband and I will reorganize and tidy the books, and pull out what is better suited for the blue bin.
I still try to give books not to my taste, such as Empowering Mantras for Awesome Women or Royal Wedding: Andrew and Sarah, a chance. Someone out there purchased this book once, so maybe there is someone else who will connect with it now. However, if it lingers for a few days – a week tops – we pull it out. We have a standard to maintain.
Occasionally I think of taking books we’ve purchased ourselves to the used bookstore to recoup the costs, but then I think of the gift I wouldn’t be giving to my neighbourhood. I have great finds from mine and libraries all over because people chose to pass their purchases along. Better still, watching those people who stop and browse in front of my house makes me endlessly happy; it’s a way that we connect to total strangers in this anonymous city.
Lizz Bryce lives in Toronto.