It’s not your typical library. Located at Pouce Coupe Elementary, the Pouce Coupe municipal library celebrates its 10th anniversary at the location.
Split part time as a school library and as the public municipal library, you can find the books you need, but don’t expect the librarians to shush you (or anyone else, for that matter).
“The library seems to be more of a gathering place now,” says Cindy Blayney, chair of the library. “It’s not a quiet library. The kids will be talking and engaging and enjoying themselves, rather than just sitting and being quiet in the library, and [us] going, ‘shh.’”
A mix of clubs meet at the library — for both kids and adults — covering a wide range of interests, including Pokemon, Dungeons & Dragons, Sowing, and lego. The library also hosts babysitting training and test invigilation.
“It’s a plethora of things that we try to give a small community, so they don’t have to [go to Dawson Creek],” explains Blayney. “Pouce likes to be an entity separate than Dawson Creek — we want to be our own community.”
It was that need for independence that had initially sowed the seeds for the library being in the school.
“Twelve years ago, we were trying to decide how we would keep the school here in Pouce, because we didn’t want them having to bus into town, because some of the kids would be on the bus for over a half hour to an hour,” says former councillor Donna White.
“Because the student population was going down, they just figured it wasn’t going to be big enough. They couldn’t see the feasibility of keeping the school open.”
The idea they came up with was to put the community centre inside the new school that was going to be built, giving it a dual purpose. A third purpose — the new library — was found because the old library — the building now called the Annex — was too small.
“It probably was the size of the kid’s section that we have now,” says Blayney.
The proposal worked, and 10 years after the building opened, kids in Pouce Coupe still have an elementary school to go to, and the community loves its library.
From the Dawson Creek Mirror