Service returning and Janet Clark retires

Word has been received from Paula Sibley, communications officer with EastLink, that the company will be re-establishing the service, which shut down on May 7 when TDC Broadband went bankrupt. EastLink purchased the assets of TDC Broadband three weeks ago.

Sibley said EastLink was currently reviewing the TDC Broadband assets purchased by the company. She said EastLink would be reactivating the service, and that they would establish a timeline for that once the review of assets has been completed.

"We are definitely planning to relaunch the service," she said. "It's just a matter of sorting out what we have with respect to equipment and what other investment we would have to make in order to make it operational."

More than 225 people in the area signed a letter to EastLink, asking that the company take on the service. The letter was circulated in local stores by Mary Sawler, who lives in South Brookfield, and will now be forwarded to the company.

I got to a Mad Hatter tea party the other day in honour of Janet Clark, the retiring chief librarian of the South Shore Regional Library.

Janet, whose obsessions include Alice in Wonderland, canoeing, intellectual freedom, and riding a small motor bike, is leaving the CEO position after 23 years of running the system, which serves Lunenburg and Queens counties. She and her husband Jim expect to spend a good part of their retirement canoeing on Pleasant River in Queens County, where they have a riverside cabin.

The people who worked over the years with Janet – including library workers, board members and municipal councillors – organized the Mad Hatter tea party. Chairs and tables were dragged into the library headquarters in Hebbville from a local fire hall, and decorated with flowers and paper table cloths. People arrived with pot luck dishes ranging from smoked salmon to Indonesian curry, salads to brushetta, everything arranged in a large smorgasbord.

Those attending were required to wear unusual hats, so that when Janet (whose last full day of work was the previous Friday) was driven to the door, it was a strange-looking crew that lined up outside to greet her. She was ushered inside and seated at the head table, while the rest strolled along the food table and found spaces on their plates for a variety of delectable morsels.

Janet and Jim were then led to an upstairs balcony, overlooking the parking area, where the people who work in the library system did a precision drill, pushing library carts. At the end of several fancy maneuvers they managed to spell out the word "Janet," much to the delight of the royalty above (Janet signs her name H.M. Janet Clark).

Inside again, there were cake and champagne, with toasts, followed by a singing group called the Heaving Bosoms, who sang various favourites like Janet Clark, Superstar and (to the Gilbert and Sullivan tune) a song about her being the very model of a modern chief librarian.

There was also a funny slide show, purporting to be a performance review and featuring Janet in various stages of life and career, after which there were the usual presentations and speeches.

I first met Janet Clark when I was invited to join the library board several years ago. Since then I have been impressed by her dedication to the library users of Queens and Lunenburg counties. She worked hard to improve service in both fixed and mobile library branches and leaves to her successor her efforts to obtain a new branch for the people of Bridgewater.

She believes passionately in intellectual freedom. She felt library users had the right to choose what they read, and that it was not up to the library to censor those materials. In daily life, that meant she often went to bat for a particular work in the library collection, persuading people that it was more damaging to remove that work than to prevent freedom of choice.

- Tom Sheppard can be reached at twsheppard@gmail.com