We’re coming up to the 90th anniversary of the Vancouver Island Regional Library. In this morning’s interview Beatrix Baxter, the new Circulation Supervisor at the Cortes Island branch, talks about the library, her love of books and how they are going to celebrate on Saturday, May 30th.
Beatrix Baxter: “The Vancouver Island Regional Library was established in 1936, and it started off with six library branches, 28 sub-branches, and seven van routes. Now we’re up to 39 library branches and our online branch, which we say is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, because you can go online anytime.”
“All 39 branches share what we call a floating collection. We all each hold part of the collection. When a library customer goes online to put a book on hold, the call goes out to all the branches that might have a copy of that book. The first one to respond sends the book off, and it goes through our system and ends up here on Cortes, or wherever the person is requesting it from.
“I don’t know how many books we have, but more than five million items are circulated annually. That’s books, magazines, video games, DVDs, TV shows, audiobooks — it’s everything that we have, which is actually quite a lot.”
Origins of the Cortes Island Library
Narrator: The first Cortes Island Library is actually one year older than the Vancouver Island Regional Library.
Beatrix Baxter: “The first library that Cortes had was started by the Whaletown Women’s Institute in 1935. They were gifted or negotiated the use of the Farmers Institute building, which we now know as the Louise Tucker Library. That’s our longest running library. The Whaletown School had a library at some point.”
“When Manson’s Hall underwent a major renovation in 1978-80, they expanded it to include the space for the post office and the play school and the library. So we were up in the top floor of Manson’s Hall for many years.”
Cortes Island Joins the Vancouver Island Regional Library System
“May Ellingsen ran things over there before the museum was established. She used to keep all of her famous photo albums at the library. I don’t know when it became part of the Vancouver Island Regional Library, but she was instrumental in making that happen.”
“In 2009–2010, a structural engineering assessment of the building found that it was no longer safe to house the weight of the books in that room. There were simply too many books. There was a lot of community engagement at the time. A lot of people were really concerned that we weren’t going to have a library.””
The Move to Linnaea
“They were looking for a new location for at least a couple of years, and in 2012 they made a new arrangement with Linnaea to use the space that had been the former Linnaea school. The building was renovated, and by November 2013 the library had moved into the new space and was open to the public again.
“We added a self-checkout machine, which made lineups shorter — one of the concerns residents had about the old location. We’ve also added more hours over the years, which is great. We changed our hours in September, adding an extra evening and another daytime shift, so you’re more likely to be able to drop by and find that the library is open.”
Narrator: Jude Marentette was the circulation supervisor when the library moved from Manson’s Hall to its present location in the Linnaea Education Centre, but she retired last fall. Beatrix has been the librarian since December 2025.
Books ’n Beatrix
Cortes Currents: Do you want to tell us a little about your relationship with books?
Beatrix Baxter: “I have been a reader my whole life. I was reading before I got into school because my family just read to each other all the time. Most of my family members are teachers and librarians. I can’t remember what the first book was, but I remember that it was pink, and I remember the feeling of, ‘Whoa, I’m actually doing this,’ while I was reading to my mom.
“We spent tons of time at the library. We’d go probably once a week at least, sometimes every day in the summertime. My sisters and I read voraciously. As a kid, I remember (Pizza Hut’s) Book It! program in school, where you would get a personal pan pizza for reading — I can’t remember — maybe 100 books or something. That was just so much fun. We would build these long paper bookworms all over our classrooms, with the names of the books we read and our names on them.
“Most of my friendships have reading in common. We talk a lot about books.
“My grandma was a very voracious reader. She lived in Ontario, and she always said that all the books in the world were like candies, and she was a kid in the candy shop. I would order books online and send them to her after she wasn’t able to get to the library anymore.”
Cortes Currents: Where did you grow up?
Beatrix Baxter: “I grew up in Edmonton, Alberta, but my extended family is in Ontario. So I went back and forth between Thunder Bay and Edmonton.”
Cortes Currents: What brought you to Cortes Island?
Beatrix Baxter: “I came to Cortes in the winter of 2015. I had been living in Vancouver for quite a few years, but it just became too expensive. It was too hard to find work and be able to afford housing. I was looking for a new home that I could potentially afford, and I’ve been able to make it work here so far. So here I am.”
Working in the Library
Cortes Currents: How did you end up being the librarian on Cortes Island?
Beatrix Baxter: “I found out through a friend — an avid reader — that Jude was thinking about retiring and was looking for somebody who would be a good fit for the role. So I went right over to the library to chat with Jude. She told me how to apply for the casual library assistant position. I was interviewed and got the position.
“Then Jude and I trained together for a wonderful month, and I started working as a casual last summer and fall. Jude announced her retirement in October, and I was sharing the responsibility with Izzy Steigemann until December, when I was hired as the circulation supervisor.
“My first week, I think, was December 9, and it was wonderful. It wasn’t very different from what I had been doing as a library assistant, because we work alone here, so we basically have to be trained to do the full job. In other branches, library assistants have less responsibility, and the circulation supervisor is more of a manager.
“There are quite a few additional responsibilities, mostly trying to keep the space safe, the staff safe, and maintaining a lot more communication with the administrative team.
“I have all these co-workers whom I have never met in person, and probably never will meet in person, all over the province. I can pretty much call up anybody from any branch if I have any questions, and they’ll tell me how they do things. We try to keep things fairly standard across the branches so that you know what to expect when you go to any of the libraries, but everyone still does things a little differently.”
A Typical Day at the Cortes Island Library
Cortes Currents: Tell me about a typical day, from when you arrive to what you do during the day.
Beatrix Baxter: “Well, I arrive 15 minutes before I open, so I have a bit of time to open things up and check all the books that have been dropped off in the book drop. Sometimes nobody comes for the first hour; sometimes there’s a big group of people waiting. Every day is so different in terms of how many people come and what kinds of things they want to do at the library.
“My main priority is to help anybody who comes in with whatever they need. If they have questions, want a library card, or need help finding something, that’s my first priority.
“Otherwise, I have a whole bunch of tasks throughout the day. A fun one is getting all the books from the book drop and checking them through. If they trigger a hold — meaning somebody else in the system has requested them from somewhere else — then I put them into a box. The boxes get stacked up and taken away by Lane 8 a couple of times a week, and then they drop off other boxes.
“If it’s one of those days, I get to unpack the boxes, and it’s like Christmastime. I check all those books in, and they go on the hold shelf. Then people get emailed, and they come in, and that’s all very fun because I get to see all the regular people who come and get books from the library.
“Then I print off a list of all the books in our collection that have been called out because other people have placed holds. I go around the library, pull them off the shelves, and pack them away.
“I’m also responsible for managing the collection. We do something called weeding, which means going through everything and taking out the books that are not circulating very much and sending them to administration. They recirculate them throughout the system and among all the branches.
“There’s a constant flow of material outside of what people put on hold and request to come in. Then I tidy the shelves to make sure everything is arranged alphabetically in our fiction section and according to the Dewey Decimal System in our non-fiction section. I work my way through pretty much the whole library every day.”
Her Personal Reading
Cortes Currents: Do you find you read as much as you used to?
Beatrix Baxter: “I definitely read a lot more than I have in recent years. It’s just hard to resist when you see a good book come through — you’ve just got to take it home. But I also think it’s important for me to have an understanding of a wide range of books so that I can make good recommendations when people ask what I’ve been reading. So I try to read a lot of books that I wouldn’t necessarily have chosen for myself before, just so I can get a sense of what’s popular and what’s good for different people.”
Celebrating the Library’s 90th Anniversary
Cortes Currents: How are you going to celebrate the anniversary?
Beatrix Baxter: “All of the branches are celebrating on the same day, which is May 30, and we’re all having little parties. At the Cortes branch, we’re going to have our party from noon until 2 p.m. We’ll have cupcakes. People are invited to come and share their memories and stories of the library, both from when it was at Manson’s Hall and here.
“All the branches are getting passports so people can pick them up and, if they’re traveling around the region in the summer, pop into each of the branches. We all have our own little stamps, so you can collect stamps from each of the branches. So there are 39 stamps and 39 locations, and it’ll be fun to see if anyone local can make it to all of them.”
Cortes Currents: How far north does it go?
Beatrix Baxter: “It goes all the way to Haida Gwaii.” (Laughter)
Cortes Currents: Oh, come on!
Beatrix Baxter: “Yeah, okay — but we have people who go to Haida Gwaii from here, so it’s possible.”
Cortes Currents: That’s true, what do they get if they collect all 39 stamps?
Beatrix Baxter: “I don’t actually know.”
Cortes Currents: Congratulations?
Beatrix Baxter: “Yeah, exactly. You get bragging rights.”
The Cortes Island Library is open:
- Wednesdays and Thursday from 2:30-7:00 PM
- Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays from 10 AM – 2:30 PM
- Cortes Island Branch,
- Vancouver Island Regional Library
- 1255 Seaford Rd (Linnaea Farm)
- Manson’s Landing BC
- V0P 1K0
- Phone: 250-935-6566
- email: [email protected]
(Two popular children’s books right now – Roy L Hales photo; all undesignated photos by Beatrix Baxter)
Links of Interest:
- Cortes Island – Vancouver Island Regional Library (VIRL)
- Read, Watch, Listen (catalogues) – Vancouver Island Regional Library
- Kanopy – the VIRL’s (free) movie website
- Articles about, or mentioning, the Cortes Island Library
All undesignated photos by Beatrix Baxter
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