That’s all she wrote for library gift shop

Advertisement

Advertise with us

Friends of the Public Library is closing the book on its fundraising gift shop after 17 years.

Read this article for free:


or

Already have an account? Log in here »

To continue reading, please subscribe:

Subscribe and receive a limited-edition Free Press branded hat or tote.

Digital Subscription

One year of digital access for only $205*

  • Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
  • Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
  • Access News Break, our award-winning app
  • Play interactive puzzles

*First annual payment billed as $205.00 + GST for one year. This annual subscription will automatically renew at $233.00 + GST every 52 weeks (10% off the regular annual price of $259.35). Offer available to new and qualified returning subscribers only. Cancel any time.

To continue reading, please subscribe:

Add Free Press access to your Brandon Sun subscription for only an additional

$1 for the first 4 weeks*

  • Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
  • Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
  • Access News Break, our award-winning app
  • Play interactive puzzles
Start now

*Your next Brandon Sun subscription payment will increase by $1.00 and you will be charged $17.95 plus GST for four weeks. After four weeks, your payment will increase to $24.95 plus GST every four weeks.

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 03/11/2022 (1399 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Friends of the Public Library is closing the book on its fundraising gift shop after 17 years.

The Best of Friends Gift Shop, located near the lobby of the downtown Millennium Library, will close in December. It’s holding a sale now.

Friends president Rita Burgess said the closure is not because they are verging on bankruptcy or concerned about downtown safety.

Daniel Crump / Winnipeg Free Press Files
                                The Best of Friends Gift Shop, located near the lobby of the downtown Millennium Library, will close in December.

Daniel Crump / Winnipeg Free Press Files

The Best of Friends Gift Shop, located near the lobby of the downtown Millennium Library, will close in December.

“The gift shop was and is profitable,” Burgess said on Wednesday. “It has been profitable all along. It is our volunteers and the changing face of volunteerism. To get people to commit on a regular basis is challenging. This isn’t a once-a-year event. It is a store and, not only do people volunteer there, but they also have to be trained. People don’t have that time commitment anymore.

“We’re all very sad about it.”

Funds raised by the Friends, in part through the gift shop, help it co-sponsor the library’s writer-in-residence program, as well as the annual spring break program and other library initiatives.

The organization has raised more than $345,000 in the past two decades.

The gift shop, open Thursday to Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., sold unique literary-themed tea and coffee cups, puzzles, games, bookmarks and jewelry.

In its place, the Friends have turned to trivia nights — it held a successful one last month — and it will have a used book cart at the downtown library on the last Saturday of every month. It will continue to hold the annual fundraising book sale.

They are once again accepting donations of used books, as well as DVDs, CDs and record albums, Burgess said. They can be dropped off in boxes — no bags — at any public library branch.

“We haven’t held a book sale since 2019, but we are looking at having one in 2023,” she said.

(Go to www.friendswpl.ca for a list of needed items.)

“The Friends are not going away. I want to assure people of that,” she said. “We still need to generate revenue to fund projects. It’s just the changing way of volunteers. Retired people are not here all year.”

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca

Kevin Rollason

Kevin Rollason
Reporter

Kevin Rollason was a general assignment reporter at the Free Press.

Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber.

Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.

Report Error Submit a Tip

More Stories

Port of Churchill celebrates first grain shipment in six years

Aaron Epp 5 minute read Preview

Port of Churchill celebrates first grain shipment in six years

Aaron Epp 5 minute read Yesterday at 6:02 PM CDT

Approximately 30,000 tonnes of Canadian durum wheat from Saskatchewan-based AGT Foods is being loaded at the northern Manitoba port and will be shipped to customers in Europe.

Read
Yesterday at 6:02 PM CDT

Rare and tough to notice, sarcomas may lurk in the body

Jen Zoratti 12 minute read Preview

Rare and tough to notice, sarcomas may lurk in the body

Jen Zoratti 12 minute read Yesterday at 6:00 AM CDT

Last summer, Michelle Finley was going about a normal day.

She had just dropped her car off at a garage and was walking back to her office building downtown when, suddenly, she was stopped in her tracks by a searing cramp on the bottom of her right foot.

“It was so painful it took my breath away,” says Finley, now 52. “I stopped and held on to the side of a building for a second — like, it was bringing tears to my eyes.”

Finley thought she had a really bad case of plantar fasciitis. Nine months later she would lose her foot to sarcoma.

Read
Yesterday at 6:00 AM CDT

Provincially regulated workplaces required to provide free menstrual products

Carol Sanders 4 minute read Preview

Provincially regulated workplaces required to provide free menstrual products

Carol Sanders 4 minute read 5:21 PM CDT

New regulations came into force Tuesday requiring all provincially regulated workplaces in Manitoba to provide free menstrual products to employees.

The amendments to the Workplace Safety and Health Regulation were published March 9 but didn’t take effect until Sept. 1 to give employers six months to purchase supplies, and where needed, dispensers and disposal containers.

Labour Minister Malaya Marcelino said Tuesday that rather than push back, employers have asked for more information.

“The only concern I heard was that people don’t know about it and that we need to spread the word in a better way. That was the only issue,” Marcelino said in an interview.

Read
5:21 PM CDT

Blue Bombers hope improved ball security sign of better things to come

Ken Wiebe 6 minute read Preview

Blue Bombers hope improved ball security sign of better things to come

Ken Wiebe 6 minute read 6:45 PM CDT

It’s not like Cam Lawson was an unwilling participant in the impromptu game of hot potato, he just wasn’t expecting Davis Alexander to toss the ball in his general direction.

The Winnipeg Blue Bombers defensive lineman was chasing down the Montreal Alouettes quarterback early in the third quarter of Friday’s 44-28 victory and was locked in on throwing a thunderous hit as Alexander scrambled outside the pocket.

“I wanted to light him up, but he (threw) it right at me and I was like ‘Oh my God,’” Lawson said after the Bombers returned to the practice field on Tuesday. “I almost had it, but it slid off my arm as I turned. It was really weird. I’ve watched (the replay) 100 times.”

Lawson remains in disbelief over the sequence of events that followed, which included multiple players and multiple body parts making contact with the football before Bombers linebacker Tony Jones finally scooped it up for a fumble recovery.

Read
6:45 PM CDT

Dynacare strike could lead to lab test logjam

Carol Sanders 4 minute read Preview

Dynacare strike could lead to lab test logjam

Carol Sanders 4 minute read 2:00 AM CDT

DOCTORS and health-care advocates are raising concerns about patient care if a Sept. 8 strike goes ahead at the private company that provides nearly all medical lab services in Manitoba.

There is no essential services agreement in place with Dynacare, so if its lab techs are off the job, patients who need blood tests and urinalysis will be directed to hospitals and public clinics for those services.

“There’s only so many of those workers and I’m sure that the public folks are bracing for big crunch of additional patients if the strike really goes ahead,” Noah Schulz of the Manitoba Health Coalition said Monday.

Dynacare serves 1.2 million Manitoba patients a year at 23 community lab locations.

Read
2:00 AM CDT

School zones return Tuesday as lead-footed drivers risk steep fines

Maggie Macintosh 5 minute read Preview

School zones return Tuesday as lead-footed drivers risk steep fines

Maggie Macintosh 5 minute read Yesterday at 6:00 AM CDT

School crossing guards are preparing to resume their posts on busy corners across the Winnipeg School Division, but Luna Zúñiga isn’t one of them.

Zúñiga hung up her high-visibility vest about 30 months ago after she was struck by a motorist while escorting a child through a pedestrian crosswalk on Grant Avenue at Lanark Street.

Zúñiga protected the child, who wasn’t hurt, but the educational assistant at nearby J.B. Mitchell School suffered life-altering injuries, including nerve damage that limits her stamina, range of motion and makes her left leg “feel like it’s burning all the time.”

“I don’t know what needs to be done (to improve school-zone safety),” she said. “But I do know that when a six-year-old is crossing the street, a car needs to be fully stopped.”

Read
Yesterday at 6:00 AM CDT