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11/24/2005: "Stroll: Toronto Reference Library"
This week's Stroll is about the Toronto Reference Library.
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A city among the stacks
Shawn Micallef
If the city had a brain, the Toronto Reference Library would be it. It's big, public and one of the few places where all types can bump into each other. Men in suits read statistics near the guy who waves his arms and reads to himself aloud, consumed by madness and Heidegger. I often sit on the fourth floor by the north windows, surrounded by students calculating things on foldable computers while they share tables with retirees reading journal articles.
It's here that Pierre Berton researched many of his novels and the inventors of Trivial Pursuit dug up some of their answers, back when the questions were actually hard. Resources are so deep that most of us can find a bit of ourselves somewhere in it -- like an old City of Windsor directory from 1966 that listed my grandfather, then a recent émigré to Canada: "Micallef, Paul C. Labourer, Chryslers. 816 Dougall Avenue." Line by line, Toronto and Canada's story is told as a matter of fact, with no embellishment needed.
I've found out more about what it means to be a Torontonian (or Canadian) inside the TRL than anywhere else, apart from walking around. When I show people Toronto, I take them here, and make them ride the glass elevator to the top of the enormous five-storey atrium. It's like the opening shot of Metropolis, all the layers and movement visible at once.
Inside the front doors is a cement pond and waterfall, above which a fabric sculpture by Aiko Suzuki used to hang like a jungle. It contained a million feet of fibre, separating the chaos outside from the order inside. I hope it's not gone forever; it belongs here just like the orange carpeted walls and the hanging plants that used to dangle over the edge of each level. Built in 1977, all are vestiges of the Trudeau/Crombie years, Toronto's last great era of city-building. That it survived the lean years intact, and that it is used and loved by all kinds of Torontonians -- manufacturing a steady stream of public intellectuals -- could be why a civic renaissance is even possible today.
