Susan Bourne, Quetico Park Naturalist

After breathing in an unseasonably hot May and a dreadfully cool and wet June, we are happy to be surrounded by glorious sunny days and light breezes to keep the bugs at bay. Summer is here! Last year’s odd summer limited the number of people coming to programs in the park, but this year promises to lure more visitors. Already, our program visitation statistics are up and I aim to keep this wonderful trend going.

In October of 2009, the Friends of Quetico Park, in collaboration with Quetico Provincial Park, applied for the Friends of the Environment Fund grant offered through TD-Canada Trust. In May, the grant application was accepted and we have completed the first step of implementing our plan. Children’s and adults’ binoculars, backpacks and bird field guides have been purchased and are available for visitors to sign out at the Heritage and Information Pavilion at the Dawson Trail Campground. The ‘Bird Bags’ are available for a refundable deposit of $10/individual or $25/for a family. The bags can be borrowed for up to one week.

Though the majority of the songbirds are no longer singing as their breeding season has come to a close, one can still hear some of the more persistent fellows! The Winter Wren, Red-eyed Vireo, Hermit Thrush, Swainson’s Thrush and Veery are belting out their tunes at French Lake. Of course, hearing birds does make it easier to spot the shy flyers, but if you are patient, you may catch a glimpse and with binoculars, the colours of our birds are absolutely breath-taking. I was lucky enough this season to see a Northern Parula and Blackburnian Warbler. In my humble opinion, these two little birds are among the most beautiful in the area.

Another excellent use for binoculars is in the identification and observation of our fabulous police of the skies, the dragonflies and damselflies. Thanks to these voracious insects, we are less lumpy when we leave the woods than we would be in their absence. Imagine what our wilderness experience would be without these guardians. Not a pleasant pondering….

Come out to Dawson Trail Campgrounds and join us in learning about our natural and cultural history. We look forward to your visit and thank those who continue to support us. Children’s programming takes place every Saturday and Sunday at 10:30 am at the Log Cabin Nature Centre. Friday night films are offered at 7:30 pm at the Teaching Place. To borrow Bird Bags, call 929-3141 ext. 228 Friday-Tuesday. See you here!

This past year the library continued to bring good service while also making many improvements. Computers are always available for free public use. Library patrons can access the Internet and use computer applications for word processing, spreadsheets and other tasks. The library’s CAP student gives assistance to computer users and also gives instruction in website design, database use, and computer basics. About twenty-two people use the library’s computers each week.

One of the new services offered to library patrons is downloadable audio books. The provincial Ministry of Culture has funded an online service that allows anyone with a library card to download narrated audio books as digital files. Patrons can listen to the books on their computer or transfer them to a portable device. A great variety of fiction and nonfiction titles is available.

New online databases are available through the library’s computers. These specialized sources of information are normally only accessible by subscription, but the library now offers them free to everyone. Ancestry.ca is a genealogy database that contains over six thousand sets of electronic records such as birth and death notices, passenger lists and property documents. Users can find their relatives and print copies of original historical documents. The Auto Repair Reference Centre contains hundreds of repair manuals for models of vehicles from 1945 to the present day. Anyone can find technical information on their automobile with a quick search. Career Cruising is a database that can help people locate their ideal career. Users can take a test that will suggest different kinds of jobs and educational paths.

There are 798 people who have active library cards. This represents 26% of the Township population. Most municipalities have between 15% and 20% of their population as members of the public library. In the past year library patrons have checked out 9,683 Adult Fiction Books, 3,811 Children’s Fiction Books, 1,074 Teen Fiction Books, 1,898 Adult Nonfiction Books, 426 Children’s Nonfiction Books, 274 Audio Books, 276 Music CDs, and 3,924 DVDs. This year’s library programs drew visits by 1299 children, 174 teenagers, and 201 adults.

Heather Hosick will hold a Christmas Card and Wrapping Paper workshop for teens ages ten to fourteen on Wednesday December 9 from 6 to 8:30 pm. This event will show participants how to create holiday cards and how to make their own attractive wrapping paper. Call the library to register at 597-4406.

Free yourself from the burden of fines this December. Throughout the month, the library is holding the Food for Fines program. Bring in any non-perishable food item to donate and we will erase your fines. All food will go to the local food bank.

The library will be closed for the last two weeks of December. The last day of 2009 that the library is open is Saturday, December 19. Books checked out now will be due on Tuesday, January 5.

Jeannette Walls had great success with her memoir The Glass Castle. Whether the author’s new book is fiction or nonfiction is a debatable matter. Half Broke Horses tells the true story of the life of Walls’ grandmother. Although it is based on as many real facts as the author could gather, certain areas have been filled in by the author’s imagination. This “true life novel” is also narrated in the first-person. After the scandal surrounding James Frey’s work, publishers are taking no chances and are marketing this book as fiction. The result is a portrait of a bold and resilient woman living on a Texas ranch in the early 1900s. She survives tornadoes, floods, and a bad marriage, supporting her family at times by selling bootleg booze.

In Life Inc., Douglas Rushkoff looks at the history of corporations and how they have brought about unnatural changes in our lives. Starting from the Middle Ages, he traces the development of chartered monopolies, examines how banking became privatized, and how individuals became their own brands. Rushkoff shows how the current financial crisis gives us the opportunity to rebuild our lives on a more human scale. Growing Up bin Laden is a remarkable memoir written by the son and wife of Osama bin Laden. They tell a variety of unusual anecdotes about the family life of the world’s most wanted terrorist. There are stories of Osama’s disapproval of modern conveniences, including electricity and medicine. There is his plan to toughen up his sons by taking them into the desert without food or water, and his plan to protect his wives and daughters from the attacks of western powers by making them dig holes to sleep in. Find out what happened on the morning of September 11, 2001 in the bin Laden household.