Writer in Residence - David Young

Monologue – By Johnnie Walker

A man of about 30 wearing a black pea coat with a Remembrance Day poppy on the lapel.

Welcome to the library. I'm not going to talk about the service cuts. Or the mayor's office. Or the Margaret Atwood thing, or any of that stuff. Unfortunately, I really cannot comment. I'm am employee of the city, actually. I work for city museums, small ones, the ones that…  So, but in terms of what's up for cuts, and that KPMG thing, and which libraries or museums might be affected, that's just… I can't really talk about… Welcome to the library! It's pretty big! I love it here, actually, although I've honestly only been a couple of times. I mean, obviously I've been to other reference libraries in other cities, we all have. But this one. It's big. iI's open. Although I haven't seen it out of construction, and I haven't seen what the plans are for the renovation, so I don't really know it in that context. It's quiet, though. No, actually, you'd be surprised at how noisy some libraries can get. Especially university libraries?

Yeah, so I've been over here are the microfilm station. Do you know microfilm? Similar to microfiche, but um, also different. As a historian by trade, I can'tell you that as far as old documents are concerned, microfilm is the way to go. I'm doing research on the Holiday season in Toronto in the 1920s, so, I'm looking through old copies of Châtelaine from the 1920s and 1930s. Same Châtelaine we have today, yeah, the first issue came out September 1928, which actually surprised me, I thought it was earlier. So, I'm looking at ads, home decorating, holiday stories, and hopefully, we'll be developing programming with the museum. I'm working at Spadina [pronounced “Spa-dee-na”] Museum right now, and we're currently undergoing a massive restoration to return the house to the way it looked in the 1920s and 1930s. Cause now it's actually different rooms, different decades, you know? And ten, twenty years ago, museums were pretty static, and you wouldn't be making a change like this, but now things are starting to change, um, in museums, and we want to be able to show people a different section of Toronto history. Fortunately, when the house was donated, all of its contents were donated to the city as well, and the family kept everything, so there's really a lot to work with; we don't actually have to source anything from outside. Furniture, fabrics, decor, it's all there already. So, it should be something a little bit different, because as far as Toronto museums are concerned, you've already got Fort York, Colbourne Lodge, Mackenzie house, and they're all showing you the 1800s, so this is a chance for Spadina Museum to show you something… a little bit different.

So, welcome to the library. Um, enjoy the microfilm station. I'm sure someone who works here will be happy to explain how it works if you've never used it before, because it's not entirely intuitive. And I'm sure there's lot of other things the library has to offer. Just like the smaller museums of Toronto have, you know, a lot to offer. Provided they… but no, we're not going to talk about that. I really, really, really couldn't comment.

This monologue is reprinted with permission from the author. It was performed at the Toronto Reference Library as part of David Young's Writer-in-Residence workshop program, on November 30, 2011.