Our hearts brought us back

Cheryl had grown up in a little BC town called Mount Lehman, about an hour east of Vancouver and now a part of the city of Abbotsford. She earned a Master of Library and Information Studies from the University of British Columbia and, after graduating, took a job as manager with the Surrey Public Library, dealing with patrons with special needs. She progressed to manager of the provincial audiobook program in British Columbia, and served as a consultant to an international library in Switzerland.

She and her husband, Martin King were bothered by certain things in British Columbia. Apart from the cost of real estate, they saw the disappearance of neighbourhoods in BC, and an imbalance in what Cheryl called "work-life priorities." They began looking for another place to live, traveling across Canada and exploring communities.

That ended when they got to Nova Scotia. They traveled around the province and discovered Mahone Bay, where they bought a small house near the water and settled back to enjoy life on the South Shore. "One of the biggest surprises," she told me, "was the sense of personal security people have – we still find it hard to walk past bicycles people have left unlocked without wondering if they will get stolen."

The job she took with the South Shore Regional Library involved multiple responsibilities, including looking after the three branches in Liverpool, Lunenburg and Bridgewater, as well as maintaining software systems in the libraries, looking after the Community Access Program, managing interlibrary loans, talking books and volunteers, and supervising the library workers in her section.

She enjoyed her work in the library system. She said she found the atmosphere at the South Shore Regional Library encouraged people to be creative, resourceful, enthusiastic, and collegial. "I think this reflects the attitude of the South Shore," she said. "If there's something that needs to be done, people will gather together and get it done."

After two years, however, Martin was offered a position back in British Columbia. It would be impossible for the two to be separated by living on the opposite coasts of this country, so Cheryl resigned her job with the library and moved back with him to British Columbia. The South Shore Regional Library system was truly sorry to see her go – she had made an impact not only in this area, but on provincial library affairs as well.

In the intervening years, she worked as a library consultant for public libraries in BC, served as manager of library policy and technology systems in the BC provincial public library system, and joined the part time faculty of San Jose State University's School of Library and Information Science. She wrote academic papers and gave a number of presentations and lectures in different parts of the country.

And yet, she and Martin missed Nova Scotia. They realized they had to come back. "Our hearts brought us back," she said. She and Martin bought a house in Lunenburg, and Cheryl did contract work for Saint Mary's University, plus kept up her online teaching with San Jose State. When the South Shore's chief librarian Janet Clark retired this summer, Cheryl applied for, and won, Janet's job.

She began work at the beginning of October. I asked her what goals she had for the library system here. She said she wants to continue and expand programs and services in all communities in the two counties, improve mobile library service, and work for a new library and headquarters in the Bridgewater area. She wants to focus on strengthening the collections in each of the branches, fixed and mobile. She wants to encourage cooperation among all types of libraries. She wants to celebrate the accomplishments of the people in the library system, which have gone on despite problems with funding. Cheryl said the strength of the regional library here lay in its staff.

She told me that she is committed to the concepts of freedom of information, community building and environmental sustainability, and that she hopes to promote these ideas both privately and in her work in the organization. She and Martin have installed both a solar panel and a pellet stove in their new home.

At the same time, she wants to continue to enjoy living on the South Shore. The two have been renovating the house they bought in Lunenburg. Martin is a musician, and Cheryl enjoys music as well. She goes to yoga classes in Lunenburg, and is a recreational speed skater. She also likes a night out at the local pub in Lunenburg, "where everybody knows your name."

Tom Sheppard can be reached at twsheppard@gmail.com