The very first municipal public library in Quebec, opened in 1899, is celebrating its 125th anniversary: it is the Westmount Library. Still located in the heritage building designed by Robert Findlay, preserved and regularly expanded in an exemplary manner, with its woodwork, its turret, its stained glass windows inspired byAlice in Wonderlandadjoining a magnificent little greenhouse inexplicably called “ The Conservatory »this library remains exceptional today. As if it had retained, more than a century later, its initial head start. Visit.
“When I was hired,” recalls Anne-Marie Lacombe with a smile, “they told me: ‘Here, you can dream a little.’” The one who arrived in 2021 and became director in 2022 serves as a guide.
This is the lobby, built in 1924. Large windows overlook the park next door. On the long work tables, banker’s lamps with their characteristic green glass shades.
Opposite, the workroom: for a long time it was the children’s room. “Westmount was the first library to have a children’s section,” says Mme Lacombe. Since 1911, and implemented by the librarian Mary Sollace Saxe (1868-1942). The stained glass windows are decorated with illustrations inspired byAlice in Wonderlandlike the old fireplace, also engraved with a quote from Emily Dickinson: “ There is no frigate like a book to take us lands away. »
It is easy to forget that in Quebec, the legacy of libraries is that of the English-speaking population. The Westmount Public Library was the first to be entirely funded by citizens’ taxes, among the pioneers that were the libraries of Sherbrooke, Stanstead and Knowlton.
“It is not surprising that the first municipal library in Quebec was founded in an affluent city where the vast majority of inhabitants were English-speaking and Protestant,” wrote François Séguin in 2016 in Of obscurantism and enlightenment (HMH).
“While French speakers were bogged down in sterile debates about the potential dangers of public libraries, Westmount residents resolved to equip themselves with the first true municipal library in Quebec,” he continues. The City had the means.
And she still gives them today. Because the Westmount library is knitted with the threads of an exceptional attachment and involvement of the community.
We feel this attachment when visiting the place. It can be seen in the number of subscribers and usage, in the involvement of volunteers, and in the extreme attention that users pay to their library.
“Before working here, I would never have imagined a user leaving $50,000 to the library upon their death,” says the director, who previously worked at the libraries of Montreal, the Town of Mount Royal, Saint-Lambert and the Grande Bibliothèque. She points out that while this case is exceptional, it is not unique either.
Sewing machines and 3D printer
Let’s follow the guide again: the spaces are large, bright and shared. We feel a very different atmosphere from that of the libraries in the City of Montreal network — Westmount is not part of it. The notion of a third-place library remains more steeped in tradition — here, it remains quieter, more studious.
Downstairs, the new children’s room, well stocked – it accounts for 35% of the collection. A large patio door opens onto the small garden: sometimes, story times take the air there.
On the side, the future laboratory, which should open in the fall. There will be a 3D printer, probably an editing room, to try to attract teenagers, always a fleeting clientele of public libraries, along with that of young adults. But this lab will also make room for sewing machines, allowing technologies from different generations, and their users, to rub shoulders.
Upstairs, the bulk of the shelves. The collection contains 190,000 physical documents and generates 265,000 loans per year. For a population of approximately 20,000 inhabitants, these numbers are enormous. “There are days when we welcome 1,000 people,” confides M.me Lacombe.
“Every year, when we answer the questions asked for the National portrait of public librariesthere is always someone who calls us back to check our data… because we are too far above the average…”
Whether it is for opening hours – 62 hours per week in the summer, 69 hours the rest of the year – the number of qualified employees, the surface area…
… or popularity. In May 2024, the library had 7,750 subscribers. That’s 39% of the population. “Pre-COVID, in May 2019 for example, we had 8,259 subscribers, or 41%” of the people of Westmount, recalls Mme Lacombe, whose team is working to reach these figures again. But the absolute record dates back to… 1919. At that time, under the auspices of Mme Sollace Saxony, 54% of the population was subscribed.
Reading on the terrace
Like its population, 77% of the adult collection is in English. In the children’s section, it’s 68% — digital documents are excluded from this count. A little history: in 1933, when 31,358 books made up the collection, there were only 250 in French, or 0.79% of the total, and only school textbooks.
Next November, a festive evening after opening hours will conclude the year of celebrations. Anne-Marie Lacombe hopes for a similar success to that of the party in early June, which attracted 550 people, around the play by the Children of the Library, the concert, ice cream cones and bags of popcorn.
As the director of this magical place, what else does Anne-Marie Lacombe hope for? We see her thinking, searching… “I can’t wait to see what the lab will look like.” Okay, but it’s almost finished. What else? Another silence.
“A terrace. A terrace here, on the side, which would overlook the park,” imagines the director, where one could settle down without having to consume, in this spirit of libraries that also want to offer access to greenery or nature. We think in the process of the one in Lake Placid, in the United States, which leaves its privileged access to Mirror Lake open at all times not only to subscribers, but also to passers-by. Ideas, supported by enough money, which make collective places unique, magical.