Carrying on with my May theme of “things that were but are no more” I give you public libraries. With the approach of Ontario’s June 2nd provincial election, incumbent Doug Ford has announced that he will be halving provincial support for both the Southern Ontario Library Service and the Ontario Library Service-North. Ironically, if Ford had spent more time in these institutions when he was a younger man, he might have learned how to pronounce them. Instead, he routinely abuses our ears by calling them libarries.
This isn’t the first time Doug Ford has exhibited hostility towards libraries. More than 10 years ago, as a Toronto City Councilor, Ford found himself in a war of words with Margaret Atwood over his attempt to chop municipal funding to local libraries. Again, if Ford had spent more time in these institutions when he was a younger man, he might have found himself better armed for the battle. Then, as now, he went on about libarries and said of Atwood: “I don’t even know her. If she walked by me, I wouldn’t have a clue who she is.” In the same CBC article that disclosed this nugget, we learned that his brother flipped his middle finger to a woman who yelled at him for driving while talking on his cellphone. Ah, Robbie, R.I.P. as you float around in the Elysium Field of witty ripostes.
The problem with defunding libraries is part practical and part symbolic. Libraries provide countless non-obvious benefits to a community. People who foster a social democracy cast of mind have little difficulty noticing these benefits. But for those more politically keyed to believe that people should get only what they deserve or have paid for, such benefits pass mostly invisible. That’s shorthand for: I don’t feel like listing the practical benefits of libraries because, if you don’t know what they are or don’t believe they’re real, then I’m not writing this for you in any event. Persuasion is a waste of time.
In symbolic terms, libraries represent a commitment to learning, literacy, research, and perhaps most importantly, to the written word as a shared resource. Politics aside, knowledge is inherently social, and if you hamstring its social dimension, it withers. The body politic withers. Civil discourse withers. We are all diminished.
Although Doug Ford can’t find the minuscule sum in his budget to ensure that his libarries thrive, he has no difficulty pledging $1.2 Bn for a new prison in northern Ontario. Let’s be blunt, this is just an overpriced housing scheme for Indigenous people. I wonder if Ford has the imagination to see how public institutions like libraries serve a prophylactic function, disrupting the path that leads to a prison’s front doors. For $1.2 Bn, the new prison better have a top notch libarry.
