Located on Stuart Lake near Fort Saint James the Principal of the Community School Eric Di Nozi contacted Write to Read BC for assistance to regenerate their school library and make it into a community library.
Write to Read BC visited the community in November 2015 to discuss partnership and proejct possibilities. We agreed Write to Read BC will provide shelves and books. Our library response team is putting together books, and shelving will have to be made by Nanaimo Correctional Centre.
Two Rotary clubs will be involved. One will collect the books and computer hardware. The other will deliver the shelving and assist in putting the library together. We anticipate doing this during the summer, an optimal time for travelling to the community.
Write to Read BC representatives met the owner of Windsor Plywood for Vancouver Island, who agreed to supply Write to Read BC with the plywood we were looking for at cost.
The plywood and other materials will become bookshelves that Nanaimo Correctional Centre will build for Write to Read BC projects.
$20,000 cash donation
Also, the owner, Randal Jones, donated $20,000 to Write to Read BC toward library construction costs.
In Tsay Keh Dene, the library is now onsite. Our Write to Read BC library response team visited and set up the library shelves and furniture. Next, Indigenous books will be ordered.
Once we have the computers installed in the library we will be ready to open it.
This small, BC community is in the process of designing and building a new pre-school with the help of Scott Kemp, who is also our Write to Read BC architect.
The community is adding to the building design a portion that will serve as a community library. This project is a partnership with Write to Read BC.
Quatsino is located northwest of Port Hardy, on the BC coast.
Progress for the Write to Read BC project in Wuikinuxv, or Oweekeno, Rivers Inlet, has been encouraging. In fact, volunteers and project partners have already made several visits, to contribute their work to this partnership.
Write to Read BC’s design response team made two trips to Oweekeno—including Christoph Neufeld from Britco Structures (Now Boxx Modular) and the project’s architect Scott Kemp. The meetings and brainstorming with the Oweekeno team developed a vision for a building that we now call the Child of the Big House. This resulted in plans for the building, and a supplies list of required materials, which were handed off to the construction response team.
Write to Read BC’s construction response team will project-manage the 24×34 m building, its pad of steel-reinforced concrete, and dozens of massive wood posts and beams.
Milling logs, mixing cement, transporting steel
The amount of cement required for a pad that’s 15 cm thick is daunting, so the team wanted to use a cement batch plant that would make the cement in a quarter of the time of small mixers. The community went on a search to find such a plant. As with everything on this project, we were able to find a supplier, and a company is willing to contribute. Otherwise, the cost would have been prohibitive for this particular machine.
Finding a way to ship the cement and reinforced steel bars is still on the team’s to-do list.
Western Forest Products and Interfor Corporation are donating the logs to the community. The community in turn will be milling the lumber to the specifications provided by Kemp, the project’s architect. To hold up the roof, the design requires two beams, each 34 m in length and 1.2 m wide. The community and two lumber companies are looking for two trees now, and are confident they can find them. The community’s team lead said, “If we do, the Creator again is working with us.” The community also needs 6 posts of 1.2 m wide, and 16 posts 90 cm wide.
The team is also speaking with Seaspan in North Vancouver, to find the right type of barge to unload a 13 m prefabricated Britco building on the beach at Oweekeno.
Volunteer labour
Write to Read BC members approached Richmond Firefighters and left them with plans of the building. As volunteers they are very eager to help with construction, but because of summer leave cannot start until September.
With a batch plant for the foundations and cement pad arranged, scheduling the firefighters will be easier, and the pad is expected to be finished before the end of September, with building construction well underway.
It’s all donations, no taxpayer dollars
Lions Gate Rotary Club of North Vancouver has taken the lead on fundraising for this Write to Read BC project.
The project uses no public funds and has no administration costs. Every dollar donated has gone straight into the purchase of materials. The success of the project is that urban companies and groups in BC towns and cities are partnering with isolated, Indigenous communities via Internet. They’re bridging the geographical and cultural gap simply through mutual kindness and trust.
“So far, I think the value of donations of time and materials is about $458,000,” said Write to Read BC’s co-lead Bob Blacker, adding: “We are developing a team of great volunteers here, and all the donors have been very generous.” Blacker arranged all of this with the help of a long and growing list of donors.
The value of the logs provided by Western Forest and Interfor is $65,000. Additional funding was made possible by Vancouver Coastal Health, a partner on this project. They provided a way for the project to apply for $25,000 toward construction.
“The key to getting this project done is that it is all community based,” says project architect Kemp, in this video:
“We are not joining the government queue and waiting for handouts. We are simply going out and doing it ourselves, and it’s been a huge success,” said Kemp.
A template for future projects
This by far is the largest project Write to Read BC and a Rotary Club have ever done. Logistically, it has been a huge challenge but the construction response team is managing its way through. Meanwhile, the library response team—which will install the bookshelves and books, technology, and furniture, and which will provide training in library management—is preparing for the last stage.
This project may serve as a template for future projects in other isolated communities across BC. It’s also an opportunity for Oweekeno community to tell the world about itself, says Write to Read BC’s Kemp:
Write to Read BC’s co-lead Bob Blacker reports that the BC Correctional Service, through two of its facilities on Vancouver Island, have agreed to build furniture for Write to Read BC libraries.
First Nations inmates will build bookshelves, computer stations, coffee tables, and any custom work that may be required for libraries that Write to Read BC installs in isolated, Indigenous communities across BC.
Not only will libraries have a choice of shelving types, the shelving can be custom fitted for each library space.
With the help of Windsor Plywood, Write to Read BC will arrange for the required materials. The Correctional Facilities will build the furniture. Another positive aspect of the agreement is that First Nation inmates will be able to help build the furniture, certainly a win/win for all involved.
Shelves will be picked up by volunteers and taken directly to a waiting library or stores in the Write to Read BC distribution centre in Nanaimo.
Old Massett band members talked about their concept of an Aboriginal library with Write to Read BC team members, recently. They were joined by Beng Leng Favreau of Literacy Haida Gwaii, and Christoph Neufeld from Britco Structures (now Boxx Modular).
Britco is providing modular buildings to house a number of Write to Read BC libraries.
The partnership now needs to find a Rotary Club to adopt this community fundraising project, so work can begin.
The community is very excited that we are preparing to do that. A visit to the community by Steven Point, the governor-general of BC, has also raised interest.
After partnering with Write to Read BC, the isolated community of Lax Kw’alaams conceived of a community library that meets their literacy and learning needs.
Another Write to Read BC partner, Mission Rotary Club, asked its community to contribute $5,000 to the project, and then doubled that with a $5,000 grant. The Rotary Club volunteers also set up the library in October.
This new library in Lax Kw’alaams, formerly known as Port Simpson, has shelves of books to read, comfortable seating, and computers for remote attendance in courses and conferences in its learning centre.
Shelves of books in Lax Kw’alaams library.Seating and more shelves of books in the library in Lax Kw’alaams, BC.
Metlakatla, just north of Prince Rupert, recently welcomed a small, portable library. The entire building was placed on a trailer and then transported from BC’s Lower Mainland by ferry, to serve Metlakatla.
The first step: loading the library onto the ferry.
The library is a compact, 10 m² studio with built-in shelving. It has cedar rainscreen cladding, R20 insulation, tilt-and-turn windows, and high-efficiency LED lighting. The library was donated by Western Camera Building president John MacFarlane. Western Camera is known for constructing tiny buildings for use as offices, storage facilities, and—in this case—as a library.
The interior of the library shows space for hundreds of books, and seating for computer use by one person at a time. The floors are easy to clean. Some of the windows open.
Based on the National Building Code for above-ground walls, insulation rated R20 exceeds both the “Good” and “Better” standards for above-ground walls in all zones across BC.
The community library, on a trailer, on its way to Metlakatla.
The library, which the community nicknamed Hobbit House, made the overwater portion of the trip by ferry, a service that BC Ferries provided for free.
On a recent visit to Ditidaht, one Write to Read BC volunteer brought along a digital camera rto donate to the school. He described the camera as “an old Panasonic Lumix SLR” but adds: “It’s amazing what can be accomplished using digital technology. Computers and digital cameras have changed the world in which we live. Pretty soon everybody will be a movie maker.”
That includes the 10 high school students at Ditidaht’s community school.
The Lumix camera has a 24× zoom, a Leica glass lens, built-in image stabilization to reduce motion blur, and a memory card. It shoots great photos. It was given to the teacher for use by the high school students.
Students to make a digital diary
From January to June 2014, high school students will use the camera to take photos of their daily life: going to school, playing, at home, with friends, in the community. Students can also take photos in the woods and on the water.
The camera’s memory card can store thousands of images, and the students are encouraged to photograph everything they see. Their teacher, Eva Clarke, will select the best images and store them on a computer.
The learning objectives of this project are to:
learn digital photography.
learn to see and document village life.
self-publish a book—perhaps an e-book.
A digital diary that shows what life is like in the Ditidaht village can introduce people to a place few will ever get to visit in person. By using a camera, connecting people from elsewhere to an isolated community like Ditidaht is as easy as point and shoot.
The project runs from January to June, 2014.
Ditidaht teacher Eva Clarke will choose the best images that students take of their life in and around the village.
