KENSINGTON – The Town of Kensington has officially opened its new Heritage Library.
“It’s been many years since we actually started it, but we had to wait until we had everything done,” said Kensington Coun. Rowan Caseley.
“This library is a community library. The province of Prince Edward Island also provides the resources, the staffing people and computers and books. It’s a joint effort.”
He said the Summerside Rotary Club also played a role in seeing the library realized.
“They were instrumental in providing all of the new shelving,” Caseley added. “We were not able to come up with the money for this year to do that ourselves. It’s a big chunk of money.”
Caseley said not only have the town, province and rotary club come on board, but there have been several other donors as well. Some people have donated up to $1,000 towards the project.
The new facility is 50 per cent larger than the town’s previous library building.
“The thing that makes this most successful is all of the users that come in and use the resources,” Caseley said. “If it wasn’t for their use of the resources, we wouldn’t have people making donations and therefore we wouldn’t be able to provide all of this.”
Ivan Gallant, chairman of the library board of directors, said the project began a few months ago when discussions were held with the town about moving the facility to a larger location.
“This has definitely been the best move yet,” Gallant said. “It’s storefront and gets a lot more exposure than it has ever had.”
Gallant said one person who hasn’t been talked about much during the library renovation is Senator Libbey Hubley.
“This building, when we came in here a few months ago, needed a lot of repair,” he said.
“At (Hubley’s) cost, she renovated the building. She deserves a lot of credit as well.”
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