Chéticamp residents will soon have access to thousands of books and audiovisual materials. The Eastern Counties Regional Library (ECRL), along with several community partners, is developing plans to open a bilingual library in the coming months.

Kristen Muntz, a volunteer with the citizen group Community Matters, has been working on the project for over a year. She said that with the provincial resources provided by the ECRL, the community will have over 20 000 books at its disposal, as well as CDs, eBooks and computers. “It’s so exciting to have it come here,” she said. “We’re really looking forward to seeing anywhere from babies to age 100 to be able to access this library, because there’s going to be something for everyone.”

The Municipality of the County of Inverness would be funding the project as well. District 1 Councillor Alfred Poirier said the recommendation from both council and the Chief Administrative Officer was to approve the funding, and they will be voting on it on April 1st. It would be the last step before the library’s opening is officially announced. “We realized that the county would have room for another library, financially, with the ECRL,” he said. 

Eastern Counties Regional Library CEO Laura Emery is reportedly in talks with the owner of La Pirogue building, the site of a former museum on Cabot Trail Road, to see if the vacant spot would be a good fit.

The Conseil des Arts the Chéticamp, a non-profit organization tasked with preserving French language and Acadian heritage, is also a partner. “We do want to make sure that there is more representation of all the cultures that are present in our community, and in our community, we have a lot of Acadian population,” President Monique LeBlanc-Delaney said. “It would be nice if we had a quarter shelf of French books. It would be nice to see people who can help a patron come in a choose a book according to their interests and their abilities.”

At the moment, the ECRL isn’t ready to provide a timeline for the project. Councillor Poirier said he might have more details in the next couple of weeks.