Like the legendary Brigadoon that fades into the mists of the Scottish Highlands, Ontario’s Babel rejects time as a measure of its progress. It marches to its own drummers. It sets its own clocks. It prints its own calendars. And they all run slow.
Babel time is when things happen in Babel. An interesting example is the new library branch that opens next week. We will ignore the promises that it would open last year. Babel calendars never do get the year right.
But the main library in Babel is one of the redeeming features of this town. It is an excellent building in Babel’s downtown. It is bright and airy and modern. The librarians are friendly and helpful. They delight in a challenging bit of research. The collection reflects more sophisticated readers than one would expect in a provincial backwater.
Mind you, they have been refurbishing the main library branch for so long, they might as well use the construction barriers to display the collection. Whether building a new branch or refurbishing the old, it is all done on Babel time. Someone, somewhere in the Sleepy Hollow that Babel calls a city hall, there was a promise of speedy, on-time construction. It was a promise, soon forgotten.
But next week, the usual political suspects will line up to cut the ribbon for the new Painswick Branch. Named for a long-gone village in the area, this new branch of the Babel library is carefully hidden away on a street named Dean. Just drive south between Zehrs food market and the LCBO store from Big Bay Point and you will not miss it.
The Painswick branch is Babel’s first attempt at branch library operations. Hopefully they will get it right and people in the north end and in the south west of Babel will also have their own libraries. They will, in Babel’s own time.
It is not as though anyone would come to Babel and not be infected by Babel time. The province rebuilt a two-lane bridge across Highway 400 for St. Vincent Street—and the province was only about a year late.
Refurbishing Babel’s historic train station to nowhere is still not complete. That hardly matters when the town has absolutely no idea what to do with it. Babel time, it infects all your plans.
-30-
Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry
Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]