The Ralph Pickard Bell library just took a giant step closer to a renewal project that has been in the works for years. On Tuesday afternoon, dignitaries, media, and members of the Mount Allison community gathered for a joint announcement from the provincial and federal governments of a combined $36 million in funding to help make the renovation a reality.

MP for Beauséjour and federal minister of infrastructure Dominic Leblanc announced $26 million towards the project coming from the green infrastructure stream of the Canada-New Brunswick bilateral infrastructure agreement.

“There were a number of hundreds of millions of dollars that had not been allocated in the existing Canada-New Brunswick agreement,” said Leblanc after the announcement on Tuesday. “This is one example of the decisions that we made with the government of New Brunswick to access that funding, to do important infrastructure projects around the province.”

Leblanc says the project fits under the green infrastructure stream since the renovations will make the Ralph Pickard Bell Library “world-leading in terms of its environmental footprint.”

Two of New Brunswick’s provincial ministers also attended Tuesday. Minister of Health and Mount Allision alumnus Bruce Fitch was there, along with Post-Secondary Education minister Trevor Holder, who announced New Brunswick’s contribution to the project.

“I’m incredibly proud to announce today a $10 million commitment from the provincial government to support the programming needs here at Mount Allison University,” said Holder, to applause from those gathered.

With the total cost of the retrofit roughly projected at about $65 million, Mount Allison will still have a hefty sum–about $30 million–to fundraise. A news release from the university says it will “raise the remainder of project costs through a combination of philanthropic support and operational funding.”

A major renovation of the RP Bell library has been in the works since 2017, when Mount Allison launched its “Vision 2025” committee, which hosted focus groups and surveys to come up with a list of guiding principles for the project. Then in January 2020, a new president’s committee was struck to move the project along, right before the COVID-19 pandemic struck Canada. Another round of university and wider community consultations took place in December 2020, and by March 2021 architects were working on functional plans for the renovation.

While the planning has been happening since 2017, the genesis of Tuesday’s $36 million public funding announcement seems to have occurred over a dinner at the home of Mount Allison president Dr. Jean Paul Boudreau.

“I remember a dinner we had… it’s almost two years ago, where Dr. Boudreau had a number of colleagues, including Premier Higgs join with people like John Bragg and other business leaders,” recalled Leblanc on Tuesday. “I spoke to John Bragg—who’s in Hawaii—I spoke to him yesterday to share this fantastic news with him. But that, for me, was the genesis of understanding, Jean-Paul, your remarkable vision for innovation and learning at Mount Allison. It took us a bit of time, but we’re here today. And it’s a very, very important announcement for me personally as the Member of Parliament for Beauséjour.”

Minister Trevor Holder also recalled the dinner in question, with not only billionaire John Bragg and Premier Blaine Higgs in attendance, but also former New Brunswick premier Frank McKenna. Both McKenna and Bragg have made significant charitable donations to Mount Allison, and are inaugural founders of the Frank McKenna School of Philosophy, Politics, & Economics.

“We certainly had a lengthy discussion about the opportunity here at Mount Allison,” recalled Holder. “But also the opportunities in this province to start lining up our post secondary education with our labour market demands.”

Dr. Jean Paul Boudreau also recalled the dinner, which he says took place August 18, 2021.

“I’m so glad that I cooked that salmon that night for you,” said Boudreau, to laughter from the audience, “because it proved to be quite prophetic for today.”

Mount Allison’s announcement says the renewed building would, “offer a new hub for innovation” and also “provide opportunities for businesses and employers to connect with students and faculty, as well as community members.”

The full house at the announcement Tuesday meant that Tantramar’s full slate of political representatives were in the room. In addition to Beauséjour MP Dominic Leblanc, MLA Megan Mitton and Tantramar Mayor Andrew Black were both on hand. Mitton said she was excited to see what would come of the announcement. “I know there’s a lot of work ahead,” said Mitton. “Like where to put all those books while they do the renovations? But it’s a good problem to have.”

Tantramar mayor Andrew Black, Memramcook-Tantramar MLA Megan Mitton, and Beauséjour MP Dominic Leblanc at the Owens Art Gallery on January 17, 2023. Photo: Erica Butler

Mayor Black said he was pleased to hear about innovation and entrepreneurship in the announcement. “There has been lots of activity within the town of Sackville that stems from the incubation work that’s done at Mount Allison,” said Black. “And I’m very hopeful that that will continue.”

President Boudreau says the plans for the renovated building also include opening a physical connection to the Sackville community. Boudreau says the plan is to “open up” the rear of the building on York Street, so the library can both face the academic quad on campus, and the community of Sackville. “We think that’s really important,” says Boudreau, “because the energy and the passion between the work in the library and the work of our community, we think are perfectly synergistic. So the opportunity to open the back of the library to the community is important. We think it sends a very strong message for our commitment to our community.”

The talk of community and business focussed spaced will not take away from the Ralph Pickard Bell’s role as a “top-knotch” research library. “It will remains a very important research-based library for our students, our faculty, and for the scholars from our campus community and from around the world who come and see this as a beautiful repository of really important materials.”

“We have phenomenal collection, our archival materials are second to none. And we want to celebrate that and showcase that,” said Boudreau. “And what better way to do that than to create a new beautiful, innovative 21st century space to host this great library of ours.”

Dean of Libraries Rachel Rubin in the Ralph Pickard Bell library. Photo: Erica Butler

Rachel Rubin is the relatively new Dean of Libraries at Mount Allison, and says she’s absolutely thrilled with the funding announcement. “This is such an amazing opportunity for Mount Allison, for the community, for our region,” says Rubin. “So I’m just delighted.”

Rubin says she expects the project to transform the space immediately as one walks into the Ralph Pickard Bell. “We want to make this space really dynamic, with both traditional library services, research help, student learning, student engagement, student success, and also sort of new and creative opportunities like digital humanities, a business incubator and things like that.”

The reworking of the space will mean that some more of the Ralph Pickard Bell’s extensive collection could be stored off site, but still retrievable and available, says Rubin.

“As anyone who is a student or faculty member knows, the way that we access and find and store and retrieve information is changing,” says Rubin. “Some of that information is still absolutely, critically, in a physical material, so things in our archives, things in our special collections, print materials that support some of our departments.”

But many resources are also available digitally, says Rubin.

“What we’ll end up doing is focusing on those high-use and really specialized materials here in the library,” says Rubin, “and then we’ll have offsite shelving, so that we’ll be able to retrieve [materials], just as we’re doing now with Novanet and [inter-library loans] and other resource sharing… We’ll be able to turn around those other materials and get them back here for our users.”

Beyond the print and digital materials that make the library, Rubin says the library is “also about the way that knowledge that we find is applied.”

In her career Rubin has seen a number of library renovations, and so she’s familiar with what might be to come.

“You’ll see collaboration spaces, you’ll see technology, you’ll see maker-spaces where students are actually sort of prototyping the things that they’re learning,” says Rubin.

“To me, one of the reasons I love libraries is that they’re by nature interdisciplinary,” says Rubin. “So as students and faculty from multiple units are coming together, this is the natural place for them to do that sort of interdisciplinary discovery and creation.”

Rubin is new to Sackville and Mount Allison, having started as Dean of Libraries and Archives in August 2022. But that doesn’t mean she’s not sensitive to the existing Ralph Pickard Bell library, and the relationship students, faculty and community members have with it.

“I think anytime we talk about making changes to a space that is meaningful to a community, it’s really important to acknowledge and retain what it is that’s special, and what it is that’s unique,” says Rubin. “So we have some incredible Special Collections, for example. We have an incredible archive. We have some incredible expertise. Thinking about what the library could be doesn’t mean letting go of what the library is really great at. And so as we move forward, I think it’s important to keep that in mind. As we plan, we want to retain what is powerful and magical about the library now, and look at ways of maintaining that into the future.”

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