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Now with pedometers and in-house Scrabble

One of the City of Timmins’ greatest jewels, the Timmins Public Library on Second Avenue, is celebrating 10 years of service to the community.

One of the City of Timmins’ greatest jewels, the Timmins Public Library on Second Avenue, is celebrating 10 years of service to the community.

This unique building constructed by Cy Rheault Construction houses not only the Timmins Public Library but also the offices of the Canadian Mental Health Association’s Cochrane-Timiskaming Regional Offices, Intrepid Place and TCN two drop-in centres for people with mental illness and the Northeast Region Community Care Access Centre (CCAC); plus several other community service offices.

On April 20, 2015 the building was packed with supporters celebrate the 10th anniversary of its most visible occupant – the Timmins Public Library. 

Celebrations will continue all week and include a reading today by Diane Armstrong a local writer and columnist whose book “Mud, Muskegs and Mosquitoes” has been nominated for a Trillium and the Edna Staebler literary awards. 

There have been changes over the past 10 years to the services provided at the Timmins Library as Karina Douglas, a reference librarian noted:

“There is more variety of materials available and activities at the library but books are still the core of the Library Services,” Karina said. 

“The library offers more online resources and services for people with disabilities such as special readers and audio books,” she noted.

As well the library now has regularly scheduled film nights, guest readers, and opens its space for community and global events of interests such as screening some of the games from the 2014 World Cup of soccer last summer.

It even hosted a special appearance by a magician for an event in the children’s section.

While some libraries are loaning a variety of recreational and house repair tools, the Timmins Library has not reached that point.

Karina pointed out that the Library does however loan out pedometers and has in-house use of Scrabble games.

For years Timmins Public Library was situated in a crowded, small two storey building, a former post office on the corner Algonquin Avenue East and Pine St. North. A concerted effort was begun in 2001 under then Timmins Mayor Jamie Lim to build a new library to replace the crowded library on the corner of Algonquin Ave. East and Pine St. N.

Finally on April 20, 2005 a unique public service building opened on former Ontario Northland Railway on Second Avenue between Spruce St. South and Brunette St. S.  built jointly by the Canadian Mental Health Association and the City of Timmins who shared the cost of $13 million for its construction.

Cy Rheault Construction titled this project Timmins Library and Health Coalition project.

The joint owners are listed as the Canadian Mental Health Association and the City of Timmins.

The project was described as follows by Cy Rheault Construction:

“Construction of a 32,000-square-foot public library and information centre, along with a 69,000 of office complex housing local service agencies. Extensive wood design features in the library include exposed 40-60 year old red pine tree columns and extensive glulam structures. The wood structures and design features lead to this building being nominated for and awarded the Wood Works Award. Built in conjunction with Timmins Health Coalition.”

For more information on the construction of the Timmins Public Library Building on Second Ave please follow the link

(PHOTOS: The Timmins Public Library is pictured (above). Supporters (below) gather at a celebration for the building's 10th birthday. Frank Giorno for TimminsToday)


Frank Giorno

About the Author: Frank Giorno

Frank Giorno worked as a city hall reporter for the Brandon Sun; freelanced for the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star. He is the past editor of www.mininglifeonline.com and the newsletter of the Association of Italian Canadian Writers.
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