I didn’t cover library cuts in my most recent letter to Premier Campbell. This isn’t because I’m inured to the cuts. It’s because I can’t order my librarian-related thoughts into a coherent argument.

My high school librarian’s name was Elizabeth Hutton, and she was a huge part of why and how I became a writer. Here’s why:

1. Unlike the English teachers in my school, she was not required to teach me how to combine “the dog was red” and “the dog was big” into “the dog was big and red.” (I’m serious. We did pages of those. In grade 12.)

2. She’d lived in Africa. That was cool.

3. She showed me poems by Evelyn Lau. I’m guessing that if our principal had read Evelyn Lau’s poems, he would have whipped that book out of the school library before you could sentence-combine “that book is profound” and “that book is censored.”

4. She convinced me that my poems were wonderful. (This was untrue. However, as a beginning writer, confidence is everything.)

5. She wore long skirts and big pendants, which seemed very artsy and creative. I am still waiting for the courage to emulate these.

6. She made chapbooks of student writing. I still have them, although they are now excruciatingly embarrassing.

7. She suggested that not every page of poetry be surrounded by a fancy scrolled border, a useful piece of advice if I’ve ever heard one.

8. She taught me advanced placement English several afternoons a week for months, some (all?) of which must have been on her own time.

9. She taught me to answer multiple choice questions, possibly a skill even more useful than knowing when to delete a scrolled border.

10. She thought I could be a writer. Not an English teacher, an editor, an advertising copywriter, a newspaper reporter, or any other job I used to tell people I was considering, in order to seem like a reasonable and respectable human being. She thought I could be a writer. And, if you’ll refer back to point number 4, confidence is everything.

Did she work part-time or full-time? I don’t know anymore. But I do know that the doors to the library were always open whenever I needed to hide, escape math class, watch my friend Michelle sleep off a hangover, or secretly talk to the extremely eccentric but rather cool guy who played D&D in the corner. Oh… or read. I did that, too.

Now… do you think Premier Campbell would find any of these reasons persuasive?