A great story about public library partnerships and First Nations.
Thunder Bay’s evolution: 10 stories of people making a difference in Northern Ontario
“John Pateman, the librarian
One of the most important arenas of reconciliation in Thunder Bay is the public library, which, like the police, city government and local universities and colleges, signed on to a 2018 accord against racism and colonialism. Chief librarian John Pateman, a Briton of Romany descent, says the discrimination his ancestors faced has made him a passionate advocate against racism, which is why he came to Thunder Bay in 2012. He told The Globe’s Gloria Galloway that the library “is a very seditious organization because we can engineer social change in a very quiet way. Which is the way we [librarians] like to work.””