SUBMITTED PHOTO - Kinsmen Club of Medicine Hat local services director Evan Laturnas presents a cheque for $80,000 to Medicine Hat Public Library chief librarian Ken Feser on Thursday.
rmccracken@medicinehatnews.com@MHNMcCracken
The local Kinsmen Club has stepped up to provide the Medicine Hat Public Library with some tender loving care.
With few changes since its opening in 1992, the Kinsmen Children’s Library shows its share of wear and tear from decades of regular use – from stained carpeting to rusted bookshelves and worn fixtures – but a $159,000 donation from the Kinsmen will help give the building a new polish for years to come.
“It’s well loved, for sure. A lot of the furniture is pretty tired from kids climbing on it and that kind of thing,” chief librarian Ken Feser said in a Friday phone interview with the News. “The children’s library is actually named the Kinsmen Children’s Library in honour of a previous substantial donation that they made. The money that they’re giving us will all be for space renovations and furniture equipment.”
The Kinsmen provided the first $80,000 of the donation in a socially-distant cheque presentation at the library on Thursday evening, and plans to provide the remaining $79,000 in 2021.
“The first $80,000 that we got, that will cover our carpet, some furniture, things like a counter that needs to be redone, and some shelving,” said Feser. “The rest goes for smaller things like artwork, some new display racks for books. It pretty much covers everything we want to do in the space. We’ll be able to do a renovation that’s as good as we could imagine.”
Kinsmen Club of Medicine Hat local services director Evan Laturnas said in a release that he hopes the donation will help enhance literacy in the community.
“We agreed as a club that our donation would likely encourage even more families to visit the library to not just play, but also to leave with a stack of books and the willingness to make reading a regular part of their children’s lives,” he said.
The Kinsmen Children’s Library received a $74,300 donation from South Country Co-op to build the Co-op Community Developmental Play Space last year, which opened to the public on Feb. 1. Feser says when going through the process of creating the play space, they realized there were a number of areas in the children’s section that could benefit from an update.
“That was such a nice space, we got new colours from that, and when we did that it just made some of the dated stuff that we had that much more visible,” said Feser. “We went to Kinsmen, and Kinsmen right away was supportive of us and happy to make this donation to us.”
The library remains closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but Feser says it will allow work to start as soon as possible with the hope of unveiling some updates upon re-opening.
“This is just a perfect opportunity to do renovations because there’s nobody in,” said Feser, adding they purchased new carpet Friday. “This is a real, substantial, game-changing kind of a donation that will be really visible in the space, so a big thank you to the Kinsmen. I just bought my (Kinsmen) Home Lotto ticket. I’m a little embarrassed I didn’t buy it before because I believe in what they do anyway.”
