A break and enter earlier this week at the Fredericton Public Library on Carleton Street has stunned regular patrons of the downtown branch.
Fredericton police are continuing to investigate after being called to the building early Monday morning. The building had been broken into and vandalized.
Computers were broken, walls torn down, one of the front windows was smashed and parts of the building had been damaged by water after taps were turned on and drains plugged. The library is temporarily closed while the damage is being repaired.
Darren McHarg said he was angry when he heard but that soon turned to sadness.
When he and his family, including two young children, moved to Fredericton from Langley, B.C., in 2012, the library became an important space in their lives.
“It became our go-to place, you know, not just on rainy days,” he said.
The staff always welcomed his family with open arms.
“When we were going there a lot, we would come in and one of the staff members … would say, ‘Oh, it’s the McHargs!'” he recalled. “When somebody remembers your name, that really does something.”
McHarg said his family used many of the services available, including attending special events for children and borrowing DVDs, games — even snowshoes.
The library also served as an important resource, he said, for teaching his kids about tough topics, such as residential schools.
McHarg said as a settler living on Indigenous land, he wanted to make sure his kids were well-informed about important Indigenous history, so he took them to the library where there were child-friendly books that answered some difficult questions.
The library remains a part of their lives. His daughter, Janna, is now in university and uses the library as a study spot, and his son, Aidan, borrows a guitar from there every now and then.
‘My heart broke’
Paul Farlow-McAllister, a local author and the founder of Monster House Publishing, said news of the vandalism hit hard.
“My heart broke a bit when I heard about it, you know, it’s never good to hear of any sort of vandalism, regardless, something that affects our community so directly,” he said.
“It’s hard to process when you hear something like this … the library is like a second home to me.”
Farlow-McAllister was planning to launch the fourth instalment of his book series about Herman the monster at the library on Saturday but has decided to postpone it for now, instead of finding another space.
He said some of his earliest memories are from the Fredericton library.
He remembers as a kid looking up at the paintings that lined the wall up to the ceiling, wishing he could one day get a painting up there, too.
Now, as someone who works in the literary world, the library holds some important professional milestones, too.
His first ever Herman the Monster reading took place as part of Shivering Songs at the library, and every Herman launch since then has been there, too.
“The library is there for the community in so many more ways than just books,” said Farlow-McAllister.
There is a regular group of kids who will always attend the programming, whether an author is known or not, meaning up-and-coming authors have a “built-in audience.”
It’s also invaluable, he said, for the kids who listen to these readings.
“They see someone in front of them that’s published a book and it becomes something that they’re connected to, and … it becomes so much more realistic for them to chase that dream,” said Farlow-McAllister.
“The amount of kids that approach me and other authors after a launch and say, like, ‘When I grow up, I want to be an author,’ you know, it’s mind boggling.”
This story was originally published in CBC News on Oct. 2, 2024.
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