Olive Hanen

I was born in Calgary in 1927.

When I was 8 years old my mother, sister Evelyn and I moved into a very old house, where we shared one room on the top floor. We had no radio, no books, no playground.

We lived two blocks from Memorial Park Library, and every evening my mother took us walking and we always spent time in the beautiful library.

Imagine our joy, all those books! I read for hours, my sister and I found it hard to leave the library and return to that room.

Now I'm 80 years old. Imagine my joy at my library: all the books, tapes, movies, music and CD's are mine to take home. What a gift.

No need to settle for TV. I have the best kind of entertainment every evening, and all because of my library card. It's a gift everyone can give themselves.

I made up this slogan: Invest in your library. You'll be surprised at what you can learn.

Dilene

My family came to Calgary in 1999 from Rwanda and we only spoke French. It was hard for me to socialize with the other kids.

My mother registered me in the Read With Me program at the library. It was through that program that I was assigned to a volunteer.

She is an amazing person. She traveled to the library once a week to help me practice my reading in English. To my family, it felt like she helped me as she might help her own daughter. She was more than just a volunteer. She was part of our extended family.

I am now thirteen years old. I do well in school, this is my second year as class president, I am a competitive swimmer and I also play piano.

To this day I still remember my library volunteer. Her example has changed my life in a great way.

I am a proud volunteer for the Reading Buddies program. Not only do I volunteer but my family does too and I am starting to recruit some of my friends to start the new trend.

Julia McRae

In our Canadian culture new parents are inundated with 'read to your child' messages. Since the time my children were very small I read to them regularly. Most of what I read was material borrowed from the Calgary Public Library.

For the past 7 years I have made weekly trips to our local library, loaded up my plastic bin with books and used that supply to read to my children. A day in our home isn't complete without book time - usually a couple of books first thing in the morning (makes waking up just a bit gentler) along with another couple of books before bed in the evening.

First it was the board books, then the children's picture books and easy readers. Within the past year or so we've read quite a few hardcover chapter books, reading 3 or 4 chapters a day. Now my oldest child is completing Grade 1 and has become a reader herself. My love of reading has rubbed off onto my children and much of the thanks goes to the CPL for its vast selection of reading material. Thank you!

Aliya Daya

My fondest memories of childhood involve books and the public library... I traveled to so many worlds in those books, had a myriad of adventures, met so many wonderful and interesting people and learned so many fascinating things. I fell in love with books and my imagination was forever carried away in a sailboat powered by the literary word and I never looked back... As a teenager I would often find sanctuary amongst the stacks at the Nose Hill branch after school; sometimes doing homework and research, but often decompressing from the traumas and dramas of adolescence.

I still become excited and giddy when visiting the library as an adult. It has been 21 years since my first library card, but the sight of those stacks upon stacks of lovely books (with that distinctive book smell), the multimedia items like CD's and DVD's (which I have come to adore), the calm and serene atmosphere and the lovely, kind and always helpful librarians always illicits a sense of joy and comfort within me... every single time and with every single visit.

Karen Chernenko

The Library really helped me when I had a new baby. I registered her in all the Library programs. I met a friend there at one of the programs. We have become really good friends and even enjoy meeting at the Library at different times.

My kids have enjoyed the pre-school programs and the summer reading program as well. We go to the Library about once a week and come out with at least two bags full of books each time.

We love the Library!