Prime minister Stephen Harper's recent invitation-only audience event at the Toronto Reference Library (TRL) was countered by the local chapter of the War Resisters. TRL has invited retired Canadian General Rick Hillier to appear at the Bram & Bluma Appel Salon on 19 November 2009 at 7:00 p.m.

Continuing its concerted decade-long effort at “closure–renovation” of numerous library branches, Toronto Public Library (TPL) announced recently: “the Toronto Reference Library will be transformed over the next five years . . . The $30 million revitalization project will be funded through a combination of public and private sources [during] the most significant capital funding campaign in the library’s history.” (Whats On, TPL quarterly magazine, April-June 2008, p3)

Commissioned in 1977 at 789 Yonge Street, steps north of Bloor Street West, the Toronto Reference Library (TRL) “houses one of the country’s most important reference collections,” said Stephen Harper at the library on 16 October 2009.

Administrators currently resist defining the “transformations” in risk-benefit terms. Linda Mackenzie, TPL’s Director, Research and Reference Libraries, admitted in a 23 June 2009 letter to me: “we did not adopt a formal definition of revitalization.” Ms. Mackenzie failed to explain how “revitalization” might add value to the library, or how it could enhance the library’s acknowledged societal role of preserving public memory.

TRL is the nerve center and administrative headquarters of TPL’s network of nearly 100 branches, and even a minor “revitalization” mishap at the reference library could impact the entire system. I have occasionally experienced chaos in neighborhood library branches following telephone and computer breakdowns traced by staff to malfunctions within TPL’s information technology & facilities unit at Toronto Reference Library.

Soliciting Ottawa cash and attention for the makeshift transformation, management invited Harper to address invitation-only guests in TRL’s Bram & Bluma Appel Salon.

Alert Toronto journalists bared many controversies tarnishing this invitation.

Thus Brodie Fenlon wrote in The Globe and Mail, October 16: “Library officials were tight-lipped about the Prime Minister’s announcement. Heather Rumball, president of the [Toronto Public Library] foundation, could not be reached for comment. John Farrell, who’s heading up the fundraising effort, and library spokesman Edward Karek did not return calls. Opposition parties condemned the Conservatives this week after it was revealed that on at least two occasions Nova Scotia MP Gerald Keddy was photographed at similar announcements holding oversized cheques featuring the Conservative Party logo – a clear violation of the Federal Identity Program. The Liberals released a raft of other photos taken from Conservative MPs’ websites with their own names or that of Mr. Harper prominently displayed on the mock cheques.”

National Post’s Richard Roberts nuanced on 16 October 2009: “Usually Conservative MPs show up to distribute our tax dollars bearing giant cheques emblazoned with their faces, names, or the logo of the Conservative Party. But when Prime Minister Stephen Harper showed up at a funding announcement today, not only did he have no giant cheque: neither he nor anyone in his office appeared to know how much he was actually giving . . . A library news release trumpets the ‘state- of-the-art’ Bram and Bluma Appel Salon, completed this month, ‘comprised of three magnificent natural light-filled spaces.’ The PMO handlers ushered us into one of these spaces; alas they had erected three-meter-high black curtains around the circumference of the place where the PM was to speak, so that he would look better on TV. A backdrop to the podium featured the logo of Canada’s Economic Development Action Plan. One reporter joked that staging this event probably cost at least half of the total dollars Mr. Harper announced today.”

Just over two years earlier, National Post eulogized Bram Appel as a prominent Canadian venture capitalist, entrepreneur of the Pall Corporation, and later philanthropist (10 October 2007). National Post's Diane Francis enthused on 9 October 2007 that David Pall had served with the top-secret US-UK-Canada World War II Manhattan Project to manufacture the atomic bomb. “After the war David told Bram and Bluma what he had accomplished, that he had been given US citizenship and wanted to start a technology company. Bram gave Pall $2,500, his life savings and with that Pall Corporation was launched.”

TPL’s website promotes the library’s next polemical presentation in the Bram & Bluma Appel Salon, scheduled for 19 November 2009 at 7 pm by retired Canadian general Rick Hillier, ex-commander of NATO’s “international security assistance force” in Kabul, Afghanistan. TPL glorifies this pro-war “book-related” program, cosponsored with Toronto Star, as a celebration of Hillier’s memoir A Soldier First.

Activist previously reported haphazard “closure-renovations” including Cedarbrae District Library, 545 Markham Road, S. Walter Stewart District Library, 170 Memorial Park Ave, and Jane/Dundas, 620 Jane St. Next looms the locally-disputed shuttering of Brentwood District Library, 36 Brentwood Rd. N.

Until its surprise demolition, Cedarbrae was a leading host of the Rita Cox Black and Caribbean Heritage Collection, a major antislavery statement. Excoriation of the antislavery collection, like TPL’s demarche with Stephen Harper, is pathetically polemical.

Distressed by the Harper Government’s deportations to prison of US war resisters sheltering in Canada, antiwar activists countered TPL’s Harper invitation in silent witness on level 2 of the Reference Library near Appel. Solemn protesters unfurled a long black-on-yellow “Stop the Deportations!” banner, and hoisted placards proclaiming “US war resisters welcome here!”

“While we deeply respect the silent reading and study spaces in Toronto Reference Library, our priority is the safety of Iraq war opponents fleeing the US military to refuge in Canada. The majority of Canadians want these people to stay,” affirmed antiwar activist Patricia Molloy.

Molloy said the TRL security guard deployed unnecessary force. “He pulled a sign reading ‘Stop the Deportations!’ from my hands, and physically pushed against the camera of a videographer shooting our action, obscuring the lens with his palm.” The restrained videographer’s voice is audible on the video remonstrating the guard: “You don’t need to push me.”

Molloy claimed: “A person I think was a senior librarian challenged us, stating: ‘You are on private property.’”

Molloy told Activist: “We still affirm that facilities of Toronto Public Library are public property.”