By Simon F.

Torontoist loves the library. It’s a total wonder: We request books online and when it’s our turn they ship it to our local branch,a robot librarian calls me to say that there’s stuff waiting for me (“Hello! The Toronto Public Library has one or more items for the customer whose initials are S! …R! …F! …and whose library card ends in the digits…”), and we bop on down the block and a half to get our goodies. Free. This has to be the best deal around bar none.
Except that for us and other folks along the Danforth our local branch at Pape has been down with the renovation flu since April of last year. So that’s 16 months now of schlepping all the way to Jones and Dundas, which is the nearest alternative for us, to bag my books.

But a few days ago the scaffolding and most of the hoardings came down, giving us a glimpse of the renovations and a little spurt of hope. New paint, marble, copper, lots of glass on the outside… door where the window used to be, window where the door used to be… some books going in… can’t be long now. The public relations people say they don’t have a firm date but expect it to open some time in late August. This is good.