Friends Task Force on Libraries
Friends' Library Task Force
Please let us know your views on the closures, and your vision for Regina Libraries
email submissions to friendstaskforce@yahoo.ca
Phone numbers and meeting dates will be listed soon!
Friends' Library Task Force Terms of Reference
1. To listen to the concerns of Regina’s citizens regarding the library closures and the future of the Regina Public Library.
2. To encourage dialogue, discussion, and debate on the issue.
3. To assess the process leading to the closure decision and the reasons for the decision.
4. To recommend, to the best of our ability, sustainable and innovative methods of maintaining library services at their current levels and enhancing them for the benefit of all Reginans.
Friends' Library Task Force Members
CHAIR – SEEMA GOEL is an artist and writer who returned to Regina in 1998 after a 13 year sojourn in other parts of the world. She currently teaches in the Visual Arts Dept. at the University of Regina, and is also a medical student (on leave) at the University of Saskatchewan. Newly appointed to the City of Regina’s Civic Arts Collection Committee, she hopes to contribute her knowledge and determination to bringing challenging, engaging work to the public of this city. She is an active member of the Saskatchewan Film Pool, an in the last years has been part of the Regina Flying Club, and the Regina Rowing Club.
Born and raised in Regina, she maintains a long-standing relationship with the Saskatchewan Writer’s Guild, the Indo-Canadian community, and through the Saskatchewan Summer School of the Arts – the Saskatchewan Arts Board. Seema holds a B.Sc. in Environmental Biology (McGill), an Associate Arts Diploma in Fine Art (Ontario College of Art and Design), and a Masters of Fine Art (Rhode Island School of Design).
Since her youth here, the library has fostered imagination, independence, and curiosity, and these tenets have shaped her life. Seema is pleased to have the opportunity to
protect and give back to the institution, which gave so much to her.
JANET BROWN, born and raised in Regina, is a fashion designer, educator, editor, and office manager who lives and works in the Cathedral community with her husband Tim, a Regina lawyer, and their three children, aged 9, 11, and 13. She was a founding member of the original Friends of the Connaught Library in 1998.
She also helped to found the Taxpayers for Accountability in Regina Education in 1997 and narrowly missed winning election to the Public School Board in 1997, finishing eighth in the “at large” system in which the first seven candidates were elected. Since 1998 she has been an executive member of the Athabasca School Parent Teacher Association. She coaches community and school basketball, and as a dedicated gardener, is a volunteer editor of the Native Plant Society Newsletter.
A graduate of Sheridan College in Oakville, Ontario, she has a Diploma in Fashion Design which she made use of as a consultant with SPMC in its Buy Saskatchewan Division from 1988 to 1991, and from 1992 to 1997 in creating Brown Original Designs,
a children’s clothing company. She currently is the manager and bookkeeper for the Tim Brown Law Office.
She has been a patron of the Regina Public Library since 1972 when, she reports, she took 22 books home on her first visit.
AYDON CHARLTON was born and raised in the shadow of Taylor Field fifty years ago. He is convinced that if he had not been able to make use of the nearby Albert Branch library and its committed group of librarians, it is unlikely that he would have been able to obtain the education that has enabled him to teach English and Humanities courses at the University of Regina and in community colleges throughout southern Saskatchewan since 1982. Because of his interest in preserving and reusing the best from Regina’s fascinating architectural heritage and history, he was nominated for membership on the Friends’ Tasks Force by Heritage Regina, on whose board he has served for the last five years.
He has also unloaded boxcars and driven semi-trailers for the CPTransport, and from 1975 to 1982 worked an as executive assistant to then Premier Allan Blakeney and later was chief of staff for Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Roy Romanow. While at the University of Regina, he has played an active role in the University of Regina Faculty Association, and served on the national committee of the Canadian Association of University Teachers to improve working conditions for the non-tenured part-time faculty who teach about 50% of the classes in Canadian universities. He is also a member of the Board of the Regina Community Clinic and its committee to lobby for an effective program to prevent, diagnose and assist those with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder.
He is married to Regina lawyer Merrilee Rasmussen, who served on the Board of the RPL for twenty years. All three of their children benefited from their proximity to the Connaught Library and its reading programs.
APRIL DAHNKE works and volunteers her time with several community and literacy organizations. Dahnke, 25 years old, has worked as the Community Outreach Coordinator and Program Facilitator for the Al Ritchie Community Association and Family Wellness Centre since 1996. She has also been the Regina Family Literacy Project Coordinator since its inception in 2001. She sits on Advisory Committees for the City of Regina Transit Board and the Second Glance Magazine Recycling Project. As well, she is an instructor for the Royal Canadian Sea Cadet youth program and member of the Regina Literacy Association, Early Childhood Network, and the Board of Directors for the Saskatchewan Literacy Network.
JIM ELLIOTT has been a long time resident of Regina, more specifically the
Cathedral area, and currently lives in the Al Ritchie area. He has a University of Regina degree in Biology and a certificate in Community Development. He has been a member of a committee of City Council since 1989, including the Urban Environmental Advisory Council, the Parks & Recreation Board, and the Transit Advisory Board. He has made frequent contributions as intervener at many civic decisions including the City budget, pesticide use in Regina and the Wascana Lake Deepening Project. He sits on many
non-profit organization boards, locally and nationally. He has twice been a candidate for City council and now operates a business in environmental education.
WENDY GERVAIS is a teacher in the Catholic School System who lives in the Al Ritchie area. For those reasons she is aware of the crucial importance of retaining the Prince of Wales Library, which her nephews and their fellow students make extensive use of. She knows that even though her sister works full-time, her family with four children, like so many others in the area, simply do not have the funds to afford bus fare so the kids can go down to Central Library downtown when they want to or need to. The Prince of Wales Branch, just a few blocks away, serves as a safe, interesting, and educational home away from home for Wendy’s nephews and friends.
Born and raised in Regina, Wendy is proud of her Metis ancestry. She comes from a large family of seven, and has many Aboriginal relatives who live in the Al Ritchie community. She is a single parent who is also very proud of her son, who recently graduated from Riffel Collegiate.
Wendy currently teaches grade eight at St. Angela Merici in the northwest part of the city, and she has previously taught at Sacred Heart in North Central.
ALBERT OLSON, a resident of North Central, was the very first person to submit an application to serve on the Friends’ Library Task Force. Now retired because of a serious back injury, he was pleased to mention that he signed the “Save the RPL” referendum petition while he was visiting the Food Bank. From personal experience he knows the value of libraries, which have been essential to him in his research for and writing of several books and articles on theological subjects and for his submission to the Romanow Commission, entitled “How to Heal Our Health Care System”. He has recently made an extensive study of and written about BSE.
Brought up in the Hamlet of Oakshela, Saskatchewan, (between Grenfell and Broadview), he has resided in Regina for the last 34 years. In his long and varied work career, he served for eleven years in the Canadian Armed Forces, ran a general store in Oakshela, trucked fuel for Texaco, and worked on rail line repairs for the CPR. For four years, from 1980 to 1984, he was a union. representative in the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees.
Albert writes, “Our rich society needs to appreciate what or City Fathers have done for us” by having the foresight to create a system of community-based libraries that ordinary people can have ready access to.
MARGUERITE PORTER is the representative on the Friends’ Task Force of the library workers union, CUPE 1594. She has 31 years of library experience in academic and public libraries in Nova Scotia and Saskatchewan. She is currently the Branch
Librarian at the Regent Place Branch. She has worked at Regina Public Library in
Reference, Central Circulation, Technical Services, and at the Connaught and Regent Place Branches.
EDITH SCHINDLER has lived in Glen Cairn since February 1968. She is a founding member of the Glen Cairn Community Association, which was instrumental in securing the Glen Cairn Rec Centre as well as the Glen Elm Cairn Library. As a member of the Association’s Civic Affairs Committee, she has been vocal about the need to obtain access to Glen Cairn from Victoria Avenue, improve the design of the current interchange at the Ring Road and Victoria Avenue, and build the north service road. She spent many hours trying to convince the then City Council to build a Fire Hall closer to the community (that Fire Hall is now located at Victoria Avenue and Arcola), and worked tirelessly to obtain a high school for the area, F. W. Johnson Collegiate. She has also served on the Regina Planning Commission.
In her thirty-five years in the work force, Edith was a secretary to a deputy minister in the provincial government, a senior secretary with the federal government, and held positions as confidential secretary, administrative assistant, and executive secretary in the public and commercial sectors. After “retirement” she set up her own home-based business, Elms Crafts.
She is married, and her husband Ed served on the Regina Library Board for nine years. They have four children, and they are always ready to boast about their seven grandchildren.
SUSAN SEBO has lived in the Al Ritchie area for the past 12 years. She loves the area because it is a community full of old and new, with many seniors as well as many young people, including those attracted to the neighbourhood by the new housing project. She realizes that poverty is a big issue to many of the area residents.
Community development is her passion, and through those activities she has come to know the area and its residents very well. She is a team member of Leadership Regina, and is well respected for her grass roots approach to solving problems.
She believes that community libraries are vital to inner city neighborhoods. That is why she fought hard -- and successfully -- to keep the Prince of Wales Branch open in 1998 an 1999, and is committed to doing the same now so that it can continue to benefit all the residents of the Al Ritchie neighbourhood. Susan wonders, “Why does it seem that whenever cuts are made, it’s the people who can least afford to lose a vital service who are the ones who have to fight hardest to retain them?” |
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Upcoming Events
Library Home Lottery
The Library Board has announced plans for a home lottery to raise funds to support Regina's libraries. More information at Library website.
Home Lottery
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See the 2005 Spring FRPL Newsletter in the Letters and Reports Section
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Library Budget Presentation to City Council
The Library has had confirmation this week that the budget presentation to City Council will take place on April 6 at 6:00 pm. Having supporters present in the gallery for the Library's presentation would certainly be welcome. Come one, come all - and bring a friend.
May 16, 2005
Libraries in Our Lives: A Love Story. Lunch with the Right Honourable Adrienne Clarkson, Governor General of Canada. On Stage, Saskatchewan Centre of the Arts. 11:30a.m. Seating. 12:00 p.m. Lunch. Tickets: $55.00. For tickets please call Maria Galati at 777-6013
Also be sure to download the poster available in the Media Releases section to publicize this event.
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