Books Discarded by School Get New Lease on Life

Hundreds of books that were thrown out by St-Willibrord Elementary School in Châteauguay will be given new life thanks to Châteauguay resident Pat Fallon who decided to retrieve and distribute them for free.

Translation Amanda Bennett

Pat Fallon’s Châteauguay home became a “book buffet” this past week. A friend contacted him on August 18th to let him know that a huge quantity of books could be found in the container behind St-Willibrord in case he wanted to retrieve some for his nephews.

“I jumped to my van, drove to the school. There were already a couple people there bringing out books and no one wanted to jump into the dumpster, so I said I’ll go in and I jumped over into the dumpster, I was handing them boxes, books and bags.”

He then filled his truck and brought the books home.  

Mr. Fallon made a social media post inviting people to come get some books. “People were coming until 9 o’clock. I had books all over the lawn, French and English,” he explained. The next morning, he opened the doors to his home once again and was inundated with messages about the books. “I had close to a hundred messages. People were coming from Howick, from Sainte-Martine, people were coming from the West Island. People for daycare, schools, people who lost books in the flood a couple weeks ago came and got books for their kids,” he listed, so pleased that the books found new homes.

When the newspaper visited on the morning of August 20, people were still rummaging through the dozen or so remaining boxes. A teacher who works for the New Frontiers school board was on hand at the request of her principal to see if any of the books might be of interest to their students.

“Thank you for what you did for the community, it was really kind and generous of you,” said one woman who was leaving with a bag full of books.

A controversial decision

Initially, Pat Fallon did not specify which school was involved, but the news quickly spread on social networks. Many people criticized the school for getting rid of the books in this way. “Why throw them away? There are lots of families who could have used them for their children. There are so many organizations to whom the books could have been donated rather than just throwing them away,” said one member of the public on the school’s Facebook page. The school explained its decision in a Facebook post on August 19.

An Issue of Space

Library books. Dumpster. It looks bad … but we can explain. We need more room, and are converting our library into much-needed classroom space. This means we had to remove books that were outdated, duplicates, damaged, or just not popular with our students,” she wrote.

The school says it has recycled what it could and books have been set aside for students’ families to take home. The elementary school says it still has books and encourages reading. The library service will take the form of a mobile library.

At the time of going to press, the New Frontiers School Board had not responded to our request for information.