Time Has Come Today

Over the past couple weeks I have been in a respectful email conversation with my local Vancouver Public Library (VPL) that began with its titled sections.

My local has a "Fiction" section and a "Non-Fiction" section -- even a "Movies" section -- but no "Poetry" section. I asked about this, and why the library doesn't have any programming focused on the appreciation and enjoyment of Poetry. The local branch's response implied a powerful Main Branch central authority.

I was told that if people want to talk about poetry at VPL branches, the Main Branch's Programming & Learning Department has put together book club sets featuring two Indigenous poets (a good thing!) from Alberta and Ontario (not such a good thing when we have many Indigenous poets from B.C. to draw on). Maybe one from here and one from away?

I shared some of my thoughts in a second email and received an equally positive response. My third email, then, would be a list of local or area authors who might be worth acquiring for my local's dedicated "Poetry" section, and in doing my research on which local books have resonated over the years, I checked the B.C. and Yukon Book Prize online archive and found that it only goes back to 2008, when in fact the organization has awarded prizes since the 1980s.

Why 2008? Then yesterday's news story about Ontario's Peel District School Board removing from its library shelves all books published before 2008, as part of its quest for equity, diversity and inclusion, how students returned to school in September only to find gaping holes in those shelves, with many of their favourite titles -- The Hunger Games, Harry Potter, the Diary of Anne Frank -- removed and, according to the New York Post, taken to the landfill.

The closest correspondence I could find to 2008 and a signal event that occurred that year is the Truth & Reconciliation Commission of Canada, which was founded on June 2 by Murray Sinclair. The TRC is something I was aware of in the moment, and followed as it made its way across Turtle Island, with a stop in Vancouver, where Tarah Hogue and Rose N. Spahan curated a parallel exhibition that featured Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun's crucifix made of boys and girls underwear, the kind issued by residential schools, each pair with a red dot on them.

So 2008 it is. A date to remember, or to at least keep in mind. Only a matter of time before it enters the lexicon, those water cooler conversations. "Was that before or after 2008?" Laughter. "Oh, long before! Long before!"