Future of library uncertain

Walking through Kahnawake’s library, it’s not immediately apparent it’s at risk of collapse – but if you look close enough, the signs are all there. The cracks in the drywall, the gaps between floorboards, and the openings between its baseboards and floors – all symptoms of an ageing infrastructure sinking into the ground. 

Its floors are slanted – especially so on the second storey. Shakohahiiostha McComber, an architectural engineer with the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake (MCK), placed a bottle on the floorboards to demonstrate just how significant it is. It immediately rolled toward the hallway wall. He also pointed to the lopsided gap between the hallway’s doors and the floor. The entire building has shifted.

“It’s a shame they’ve had to shut down,” McComber said, reflecting on all the students and community members who’ve been cut off from the resource.

His asset management team with the MCK met with a demolition contractor this week. They’re still in the process of exploring whether the building can be saved or not, he said, weighing the pros and cons – and costs – of repair over demolition. 

“Until we can figure out what the issue is we can't have anybody inside, and that's going to be through a series of testing,” McComber said. “It could take at least a year to two years to figure out, which isn’t good. It’s really bad, actually.”

The evacuation of staff from the building on July 17 came as a surprise. The Skawenni:io Tsi Iewennahnotáhkhwa Kahnawake Library had just reopened in March after a two-month long closure for construction aimed at fixing its crumbling structure. It was supposed to be back to business as usual. 

“It has been very stressful, but the staff is resilient,” said Melanie Phillips, coordinator of their children’s library. “We are a strong team diligently working behind the scenes at the moment.”

Staff with the MCK’s organizational development unit that reside in the building’s second floor are also working remotely in the meantime. 

The state the building finds itself in today comes following a heavy rainfall earlier last month.

“Within a week after the foundation had dropped between one and two inches around the entire perimeter, which caused a lot of structural deformation within the building,” McComber said.

Robyn Montour, general manager of Public Safety, said it was soon after that storm that library staff reached out to MCK to say there were new cracks in its walls and signs some parts of the building had shifted. Workers with the MCK arrived for an inspection, prompting the call to employees to vacate.

“We evacuated everybody as soon as we discovered that there was a problem,” Montour said. 

The engineering firm responsible for the prior construction at the library also visited soon after, carrying out another inspection. 

“They did a follow-up inspection that determined, yes, it had shifted,” Montour said. “They have to do further inspections now to determine what the cause is, and whether it's fixable. That's still ongoing.”

The library that stands next to the United Church was built back in the 1920s, McComber said, and it has a storied past. It previously was home to the church’s rectory. It was also once a Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) station, he said, as well as a band council office. The library meanwhile has occupied it since 2009. 

He’s grateful Public Security decided to evacuate staff there as soon as it did. 

“They said it was great that nobody was occupying the building because it’s moving,” McComber said the engineer told them following his inspection. “Everything happened so fast, it caught everybody off guard. Nobody expects to leave a building overnight.”

It was in the spring of last year that employees there contacted the MCK about the building’s slanted floors. It was so bad rolling chairs would slide to the centre of the second storey floor when left unattended, workers told them then.

There were no longer any uneven floors in the library by the time it reopened in March. That was until the storm last month, when workers began to notice the floors were uneven again. In some sections it was even worse than it had been prior to the construction, McComber said. 

That work involved reinforcing the building’s structure through the addition of new columns in its basement as well as a steel beam in the lobby’s ceiling. 

Seeing the state it’s in now, Phillips said what’s to come now remains a mystery.

“We are very hopeful about the future of the library. We provide a vital service to the community and visitors,” she said. “We are not hopeful about the building itself, as we have been told that it may not be repairable.”

The library’s summer book club was able to continue running thanks to the help of the Kahnawake Labour Office, which made space for them in their trailer across the street. All its other services and programming are on pause.

Those still holding onto books they need to return can do so at a later, undetermined date. No late fees are being issued.  

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This article was originally published in print on August 23 in issue 33.34 of The Eastern Door.