I’d like to think that city councillor Diane Holmes will succeed in her efforts to persuade the decision-makers to keep the Main Branch of the Ottawa Library in the city’s centre.
But I fear that we’re about to see another of the curious short-sighted decisions that Ottawa is noted for, for instance moving the central railway station to Alta Vista or locating the city’s hockey rink/entertainment centre somewhere near Stittsville.
I wonder whether the decision-makers ever spend time in the library’s Main Branch. I’m retired from one career, and now do freelance writing and editing, and as a result I’m in the library’s Main Branch a couple of times a week.
Many of the patrons are people who work in area office buildings. Most of the remainder are Centretown residents, including many new Canadians, and they seem to go to and from the library as I do, on foot. None of these thousands of people want to see the library relocate to the Bayview snow dump.
If the library must be moved from its present superb location, surely it’s in Ottawa’s long-term interests to find a central location for it, for example the former Union Station or the former Ottawa Technical High School.

Terry Sheehan,
Arthur Street