A good library is essential for living near the top of British Columbia

By Bryan • fort nelson, personal, small town, space, urban planning • 1 Oct 2012

I used to buy a lot of books. Text books to cheezy Star Trek novels. I had no qualms about dropping piles of dough on a trip to Chapters, Munro’s or Bolen’s when I was living in Victoria. I had fun in used bookstores too. Then I used to just wander into bookstores to look…or buy a coffee…or loiter pretending I was intellectual….I’d maybe buy an occasional bargain bin book for a few dollars. Then it was Amazon…which devolved quickly into penny books from Amazon. The kind you purchase for one cent then pay $6.95 in shipping charges.

Now I just go to the library.

Fort Nelson has a really good library.

It occupies a space in a former hotel (along with a theatre, the municipal office and senior housing) that was the victim of a very well done adaptive reuse gig. If you look closely enough, that sunken space you are comfortably sitting in sipping tea/coffee…it’s actually the old disco floor. The curriculum is not massive, and the selection of periodicals is so bizarrely random I only recognized three or four titles, but the chairs are bloody awesome and there are actually less squealing kids present that most cafe’s in these parts (philosophically, that’s probably not a good thing, but on a selfish, short term basis, it’s bliss).

Yup…I’m cool.