Re: Town's library proposal rejected' April 12, by Mandi Hargrave.

On Tuesdays I read to the young sons of a large Christian family in Eramosa: one of the books we read is a compilation from the book of Psalms. Recently one of the virtues we read about was "Diligence." The Psalmist recorded that diligence in one's governing and civic duties was pleasing to God. Certainly few municipal politicians can have been more diligent than Orangeville's Deputy- Mayor, Mr. warren Maycock, in his labyrinthine negotiations with the surrounding municipalities over their (de)funding of the Orangeville Public Library on Mill Street, Orangeville.

One would have to search across Ontario to find such an exemplar of municipal diligence as Orangeville has in Mr. Maycock, also an elementary school teacher - who is struggling to avoid the vice-principal ranks - also a father of four. He is clearly in a class with Mr. Case Ootes (East York) and Mrs. McCallion (Mississauga) for "diligence."

One might deduce that he has - now baseball season is back at least in dome-stadia so one can make the metaphor - "struck out" with Amaranth, East Garafraxa and Mono, our surrounding municipalities. This would be, however, a superficial analysis as no one person could have done more to endeavour diligently to renew appropriate library-funding than Mr. Maycock.

He is to be warmly commended for his unfailing efforts and his positive determination. Perhaps it is time, as the senior Archivist of the Dufferin County Museum and Archives (D.C.M.) suggested to me the other day, to look at a County=-wide funding formula of the Carnegie Library in Orangeville. It is clear our chief public treasure here, a sublime resource for the education, enrichment, and improvement of man citizens irrespective of age, handicap, or starting-place in the race of life despite what Mono's present Mayor may think or say ("Mayor Haddock said libraries are becoming a thing of the past . . ."). Having spent much of October, 2006, trucking and transporting the University of Toronto's (at Mississauga) into the new multi-100 million dollar Library (and Hazel McCallion Learning Centre) at Erindale Campus this comment is the acme of stupidity.

Unnoted perhaps by mayor Haddock in March was the passing of Ernest ('Ernst') Gallo, in his 90s, in California. A poor Italian-American growing up with virtually nothing during the Great Depression, the child of new immigrants to hotter, dustier, more barren parts of California, Ernest had an idea for a new business (actually one of the oldest business to Italians, and certainly Romans): winemaking.

Ernst had found a wine-making instructional brochure in the local public library and had been allowed to borrow it, to begin a business with his more entrepreneurial brother, Julio.

Since its inception during the darkest depressionary days Ernst & Julio Gallo's California winery has gone on to be the world's largest (by volume) wine-maker, a $1.2 billion-a-year industry, the maker of one-in-five bottlers of the wine which North Americans drink, and the producer of some 2.5 million bottles of wine per day. (I don't drink any more so I can't say whether it's any good or not and some of it appears fairly dubious in cardboard boxes, but it is a tremendous business success story nevertheless.).

This industry, his vision, starting unshod with next-to-nothing but an unfounded idea, obtained and ascertained its intellectual, scientific, knowledge, and material foundations at a public library.

As our Canadian industries are shuttered, taken private, bought out, or removed to Mexico or China, we - as Canadians generally, and, certainly, as citizens of Orangeville - will be presently looking for our new age, next-wave business, knowledge, and information industry or environmentally friendly ideas coming from our brilliant, motivated youth and their parents and teachers.

Should these motivated, focused, hard-working (young) people really keep encountering locked doors and uncertain schedules at 1 Mill Street, Orangeville?

We are gambling, needlessly and recklessly, our futures as "Baby-Boom"-era adults if we allow the bureaucrats and "staff" to shut that which is our public trust and duty to keep open.

As citizens we must encourage Deputy-Mayor Maycock to take his metaphorical "baseball bat" to 'walk softly' with it and to find a new more "majorleague" to be in for novel library-funding partnerships.

Rob Bredin Orangeville