Memories from the 1930s to the present

I was born in 1929 in a house on Main Street (now Weston Road), just a few minutes' walk from the Weston Public Library. By the 1930s, when I was old enough, I walked to King Street Public School and passed the library four times a day, each school day. This was because students were expected to go home for lunch. I always liked the library, in no small part because my father, James Gove, built the river stone walls around the library grounds. As a consequence, I have a fondness to this day for that corner of Main Street. After I graduated from KSPS and enrolled at Weston Collegiate and Vocational School in 1942, I frequently visited the library to complete school assignments. I remember the librarians quite well. It's funny that in some cases stereotypes are accurate. I know that there are many friendly and helpful librarians in the world, but even after 70 years, I recall that the Weston librarians were stern middle aged women who didn't look like they wanted to help a school aged kid with homework assignments.

Another distinct memory of the library from that period involves the smell. Yes, the smell. When one entered the library through its main double-doors, there were stairs to the right that led down to a lower level, and stairs to the left that led up to the main floor. As soon as one entered, a strong earthy or subterranean smell was immediately evident. It wasn't unpleasant - rocks? dirt? - but no other building in Weston had it. Thinking back, I wonder if it was coming from the staircase on the right. Whenever I looked down those stairs (they were off-limits to patrons), it was always dark down there. Perhaps it was storage space and had a dirt floor, explaining the earthy smell.

My last memory of the library relates to a young man in the community who, many years later, would become my brother-in-law when he married my sister Irene. In the years before WWII, he was a university student and spent a lot of time studying in the library. On one occasion, in the middle of February, he went inside and hung his heavy coat with all of the other coats before going to get his books. When he went to retrieve the coat later, it was gone. He was consoled, perhaps only minimally, by the hope that the person who took the coat must have really needed it and was likely without proper clothing at all.

Although quite a few decades have passed since my last visit to Weston Public Library, the memory of my time spent there remains quite vivid.

— Jean Gove-Carbone, 2014