WATCH ABOVE: The Atwater Library is hosting a special event to celebrate Quebec’s English language writers. Global’s Peter Anthony Holder was there.
MONTREAL – Quebec has a strong history of English writers, and an exhibit at The Atwater Library in Westmount proudly has a taste of it on display. Called AWE, an acronym for Atwater Writers Exhibition, the display features some of the works and personal effects of great Quebec writers.
The exhibit, which organizers hope will run through the summer and beyond, is just a small part of what they would like to see in the future. The goal is to one day have a permanent Montreal Writers Museum at The Atwater Library.
There have been a few events leading up to this exhibit since late autumn, but Thursday night was the launch, complete with a 5-à-7 hosted by Montreal Gazette cartoonist, Terry Mosher.
The event was a bit of a homecoming for Mosher, since as an eight-year-old The Westmount Library was his first library. He was genuinely thrilled to be able to help out in a building that for him held such fond memories.
Many of those in attendance were members of Montreal’s literati and writing community, eager to acknowledge this history and the works of some of their own. In putting together the exhibit, Project Coordinator Elise Moser says she worked hard to make sure there was a broad representation of talent from, as she called them, some of the titans of English writing, such as Irving Layton, Leonard Cohen or Mordecai Richler, to the lesser known talents.
“You don’t get a whole community out of a couple of ‘titans.’ You need everybody else who’s doing everything around them. And I wanted to try to make sure that that development was represented,” said Mosher.
The project was put together with the help of some funding from the Community Cultural Action Fund (CCAF) of Canadian Heritage and can be seen at the Atwater Library, located at 1200 Atwater Avenue in Westmount.
Comments