Prison book drive and bake sale returns to West End

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This article was published 08/06/2022 (1228 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

WEST END

A popular annual West End book drive is returning this month after a two-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Manitoba Library Association’s Prison Libraries Committee and Bar None Winnipeg will hold their fifth annual book and bake sale on Sat., June 11 at the Cindy Klassen Recreation Complex (999 Sargent Ave.) from noon to 4:30 p.m.

West End resident Jacquie Nicholson, 38, has been organizing the event for the past five years, which raised over $3,000 in 2019.

“I’ve been interested in issues related to prison solidarity for many years, and community safety is a big issue of mine and something I care about,” said Nicholson, who is also a volunteer with both organizations. “I spend a lot of time thinking about the way our society respond to crime and harm. I think locking people up, isolating them from their communities and then releasing them months or years later with few supports isn’t something that makes our community safer.”

The Prison Libraries Committee was formed in 2012 and runs libraries in six jails in Manitoba. Their programming has been somewhat limited during the pandemic, but the organization currently runs an email reference service, and in the past has hosted author talks, writing workshops and book clubs for incarcerated Manitobans.

“They are thrilled to have books,” Nicholson said. “Obviously there’s not a lot to do when you’re incarcerated, so having books to pass the time, especially stuff that’s culturally significant or educational, is great for them.”

The committee’s book sale partner, Bar None Winnipeg, co-ordinates a fleet of volunteer drivers who offer free transportation for people looking to visit their loved ones in out-of-town jails or prisons.

Books have been donated at four drop-off locations around the city, including the Millennium Library and St. James Library, and there a couple of businesses that also support the drive.

“We go through them to pull out what’s going to be most high demand for the libraries themselves and set them aside,” Nicholson said. “Everything else gets sold at the sale and then we’ll usually do another big sort afterwards to pull out even more for the prison libraries. We usually end up with many dozens of books that go off to the prisons.”

Kirsten Wurmann, founder and chair of the Prison Libraries Committee, said the demand for reading material has increased since the organization has been allowed back into prisons.

”There’s some misconceptions about prisons and that prisons look like what we see on Orange Is the New Black or The Shawshank Redemption, where there are libraries that are stocked with books,” she added. “Our provincial systems don’t have that, and I think that would surprise some people. Before we went in, Headingley Correctional Centre had a bunch of paperbacks some of the guards had brought in, but they didn’t even have a space for those books.”

The book drive and bake sale usually raises a couple grand, which gets split between the two organizations. Bar None Winnipeg typically uses the money for gas costs while the committee purchases books that might be too niche to get donated to the sale, like graphic novels and books by Indigenous writers.

“It provides them with access to information, which is a human right, and those rights don’t stop when you go inside a prison,” Wurmann said. “It provides a way to escape – that’s why we all enjoy reading – and provides small connections to the outside world.”

For more information about the Manitoba Library Association’s Prison Libraries Committee and Bar None Winnipeg visit www.mla.mb.ca/about/committees/prison-libraries-committee/ and www.barnonewpg.org