Bloor West Village Residents Association

Posted on the Inside Toronto website: Runnymede library opens new chapter

An official reopening ceremony is scheduled for Wednesday when critically acclaimed Canadian author Margaret Atwood and Mayor David Miller will speak.

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Runnymede Library now boasts 10,000 square feet and 18,000 brand new books, magazines, CDs and DVDs along with an art gallery and a community meeting room on the second floor.

There are skylights throughout and floor to ceiling windows that look out into the park.

Christopher Hume had a long piece about the renovated Runnymede library branch in the Toronto Star on June 2. Here are some excerpts:

TPL’s latest triumph, the newly renovated and expanded Runnymede Branch, reopens at 4:30 p.m. on June 8. The original building, designed in the 1920s by noted Canadian architect John Lyle, has been refurbished and a new wing added by Toronto architect Bruce Stratton.

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Libraries have changed, too. “They’re a little less precious now than they used to be,” says City Librarian Josephine Bryant. “We want people to come in and feel relaxed. We want them to see inside and out. We’ve learned that architecture is extremely important. We could build more cheaply, but this way we end up with a much better product.”

As TPL’s director of branches, Anne Bailey, points out, every time a branch gets a new or renovated building, membership increases by 30 to 40 per cent.

“Our buildings have to be functional,” she says, “but they also have to be visionary and responsive to the community. Here, we’ve tried to make the library much more open, airy, spacious and inviting. Even though we had to work within a restricted budget, we’re very happy with the results.”

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Read the entire article on the Toronto Star website (requires free registration)

Click here to view the story that appeared in this month’s Gleaner on the BWVRA. (PDF, 2.5Mb)

This article was written by Christopher Holcroft, vice-chair of the BWVRA. Reprinted with permission from the Village Gleaner. This originally appeared in the March 2005
issue.

I believe in participatory democracy. I believe in community activism. These are our rights, and I believe we have a responsibility to exercise them.

It is something I learned at an early age from my parents, who were both very involved in a number of community, charitable and political activities in my hometown of Belleville.

And it was, in part, a history of community activism that drew my wife and I to the Bloor West Village neighbourhood three years ago.

It is now what drives my participation in a new community organization, the Bloor West Village Residents Association (BWVRA).

The BWVRA will exist to serve the community, to keep residents informed of important and relevant information and to organize public meetings to provide a forum for ideas.

Now some may argue that sending out newsletters and organizing so-called town hall meetings to learn about and debate the key issues of the day is the responsibility of our locally elected politicians. While true, it is also the responsibility of all citizens to engage themselves in the public discourse, by using any number of a variety of avenues. Those avenues could include joining a residents association, a political party, or a community action group, attending a neighbourhood meeting or an election debate.

We all have issues that motivate us or public policies that concern us. Yet acting on them has become increasingly unlikely for a lot of us. This is evidenced most clearly by the unexpectedly low voter turnout in recent elections concerning all three levels of government. Read more »

Posted on the Inside Toronto website: Residents’ group is in flight

Posted on the Inside Toronto website: Residents ready to go to work in Bloor West area