Upcoming Events

We have very exciting things happening in the library! Your social committee, which is a committee of CUPE 960, has been hard at work planning fun events for you to attend! Don't forget that the Christmas Party is December 7th at Octaviens. Before that - we have these events to tell you about!

We've started free lunchtime yoga sessions! Our instructor, Brant, is a volunteer from PYC Yoga in Oshawa and is donating his time to help us here at OPL! Yoga meets once a week at 12:10 and 1:10 at the McLaughin Branch on Wednesdays until the end of November. Stay tuned for some updates on location and we also may try out some new dates in case people who can't make Wednesdays would like to come. It's getting a great response!

We've also started a lunchtime Book Club for OPL staff! Today we are discussing The Virgin Cure by Ami McKay. 

National Canadian Bestseller
CBA Libris Award “Book of the Year” Nominee
O Magazine July 2012 “The Books of Summer” pick
Book of the Month Club – “Blue Ribbon Pick”


“I am Moth, a girl from the lowest part of Chrystie Street, born to a slum-house mystic and the man who broke her heart.” So begins The Virgin Cure, a novel set in the tenements of lower Manhattan in the year 1871. As a young child, Moth’s father smiled, tipped his hat and walked away from her forever. The summer she turned twelve, her mother sold her as a servant to a wealthy woman, with no intention of ever seeing her again.

These betrayals lead Moth to the wild, murky world of the Bowery, filled with house-thieves, pickpockets, beggars, sideshow freaks and prostitutes, where eventually she meets Miss Everett, the owner of a brothel simply known as “The Infant School.” Miss Everett caters to gentlemen who pay dearly for companions who are “willing and clean,” and the most desirable of them all are young virgins like Moth.

 Through the friendship of Dr. Sadie, a female physician, Moth learns to question and observe the world around her, where her new friends are falling prey to the myth of the “virgin cure”–that deflowering a “fresh maid” can heal the incurable and tainted. She knows the law will not protect her, that polite society ignores her, and still she dreams of answering to no one but herself. There’s a high price for such independence, though, and no one knows that better
than a girl from Chrystie Street. – From the publisher

 “A finely crafted and remarkably researched tale.”
 --The Walrus (Canada)

 “Thought provoking and beautifully rendered…”
-Booklist

 “Strongly delineated characters and a vivid historical backdrop … [a] reflective novel, which quietly conveys fierce indignation about the savagery with which the rich prey on the poor in a world ruled by money.”
- Kirkus

 

What kind of events would you like to see at the library for staff?