Newcomers forced to use food banks

Extract: MISSISSAUGA, September 21, 2012, Can-India New The number of university graduates and middle-aged recent immigrants, many who happen to be South Asians, now make up a significant and growing segment of food bank users. The report released this week titled, “Who’s Hungry: Faces of Hunger”, points to an ever-growing number of visits between April 2011 and March 2012. According to Meghan Nicholls, Marketing and Fund developer at the Mississauga Food Bank, “Up to a third of the 65,000 people served by the food bank is made up of people new to Canada. Many of them are not unemployed but do not have enough money left over for groceries.” “We have a lot of anecdotal evidence to suggest that in the Peel region in particular, new immigrants are hit really hard. Many of these immigrants have part-time jobs as they are studying or aren’t able to find a job in their field and if they earn say $1300 a month, the average place rents at close to a $1000, forcing them to use our food bank,” she adds. continue reading

TPL's The eh List and National Posts' Look books ~~ Printed books are not dead...

Two current activities show that we are still prospering with printed books. Such a strategy, which some may call as push or pull for the printed book, is a good news for many who are not ready to read its obituary. The hype about ebook is then only true, to a point. Figures don't lie, they say--According to the Stats of TPL, printed title is the top most borrowed book: "Bestselling author Jodi Picoult’s new release in early 2011 topped the year’s adult fiction circulation charts with Sing You Home, a story that explores gay rights, coping with loss and finding love in unexpected places. The book was circulated an incredible 4,580 times in 2011!" (Source)
The good news also here is none of the following talks about e-book (aka digital, electronic book, etc.)

The eh List Author Series - Toronto Public Library

Look books: A survey of the season’s most stylish reading material Nathalie Atkinson | Sep 22, 2012 | Style | Life | National Post.

On the same shelf:

How to Read a Book by Shaykh Hamza Yusuf -- reading a book is for a) amusement, b) informational, and c) educational (reading to articulate, chewed and digested)

How to Read a Book (A Touchstone book): Mortimer J. Adler Mortimer J. Adler

The Future of Reading: Books Are Not Dead! « ALIA Information Online 2013

Library as a tool for integration

By PRADIP RODRIGUES, Can-India News, September 21, 2012 Extract:

I was at our Mississauga branch library over the weekend and as I surveyed the readers I realised that most looked South Asian, many of whom were new immigrants perusing books on resume building and writing cover letters. Others were searching and applying for jobs on the internet while others were reading technical material or studying for some exam or the other, and then I overheard a twentysomething South Asian in conversation with the librarian requesting her help in finding books about the history of Ontario with an emphasis on Toronto and Mississauga. I was intrigued, perhaps he was a research scholar, so later when I saw him hunched over a book and I enquired about his reading choice. He’s a landed immigrant who came here a little under a year ago and it was important that he understood the history and geography of his new adopted homeland. He wanted to travel across Canada with his family next year, over the summer he attended many of the free events in and around the GTA. He was on a quest to discover Canada, it’s people and history. Years ago I met an older immigrant who compared immigration to an arranged marriage. It’s the same principle. According to him, an immigrant’s home country is his or her’s first love, but something went wrong- you needed to separate and so you opted to live in a new adopted homeland which in his parlance is an arranged situation. Naturally there is an adjustment period and to be happy with this new homeland, you have to understand all aspects of it, be involved, do things together and eventually grow to love your new country. And the new immigrant in that Mississauga library was doing just that. continue reading