With several months of questions under our belt, I thought it would be prudent to provide an update on our Question of the Month initiative. We’ve had a huge amount of participation in the project, with Post-it notes flooding our whiteboards across several public libraries in Vaughan. In case you missed my last post about Question of the Month, here’s an excerpt:

It was Harrisburg Community Library in South Dakota that came up with Question of the Week. We’ve adapted it to suit our needs at VPL. Every month, starting in [January 2026], we will pose a new query to our customers, starting a dialogue between them. Folks who want to participate may add a Post-it with their response to the display at participating libraries. The goal is for people to see that the answers to a lot of the questions will be the same for many of them. Questions like, what do you value most about Vaughan? What is the most important thing a community should have? 

If you’re wondering why go to the trouble, it goes back to the original impetus for the project, which was to facilitate civic engagement. It’s always been one of our goals as library workers, but given the state of polarized political discourse — not just in this country but around the world — there is renewed urgency. Creating a place for community members to connect with each other in non-combative, friendly but meaningful ways is everything. This is just one of several civic engagement/election-related ideas we’ve introduced or are in the works in the lead-up to Vaughan’s Municipal Election in October 2026. Speaking of, we just held the Get Out the Vote for Kids program at Civic Centre Resource Library. It was the culmination of a lot of work, and I’m quite proud of it. For posterity, I shall give you a brief explainer. The concept behind this program was for VPL to hold a mock election. Our patrons would vote for an animal Mayor of Suburbia, with Suburbia standing in as a fictional alternative to Vaughan. I say patrons because it may have been true that kids made up the majority of our voters, but I know for a fact that adults voted and were very invested in the outcome as well. So, all of this voting took place in our “advanced voting” period before the program on April 16. On that day, I was on hand to lead a presentation on the importance of democracy, elections, and municipal elections in particular to a small group of attentive attendees. Once that was done, that small group became our election day voters, deciding a close race between Sam Beaufort the polar bear and Colette Pelton the beaver. Colette was our winner! The whole thing was a lot of fun, and I was heartened to see that over 400 people voted in our early voting. I hope at least some of our younger participants are now excited to vote in real municipal elections when they become adults. The importance of voting in all types of elections can’t be overstated.

It’s hard to measure the impact of the things we do as library workers, like Question of the Month. Quantitatively, we can count the number of Post-it notes used or the number of genuine responses, but does that tell us much about the affect it has on members of the Vaughan community? I can say that Vaughan Public Library staff members seem to appreciate it, anyway! The fervour surrounding the incredibly popular TV adaptation of Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reid has been a constant presence (and source of amusement) on our whiteboard at Civic Centre Resource Library, for example. And staff members have both contributed to that fervour and been amused by it. To me, the sheer multiplicity of responses is hopeful. The amount of people who want to engage with us and engage with the questions we’re asking — it means a lot. I’ve seen a diverse range of customers carefully writing answers, choosing a spot to place their little squares, reading the questions out loud, kids dictating their thoughts to patient parent stenographers. It’s all very wholesome, very heartwarming.

These are the questions we’ve asked so far in 2026:

January: What do you value most about your community?

February: What’s bringing you joy right now?

March: What’s the best thing you’ve read, listened to, or watched so far this year? 

April: What’s the best advice you’ve ever received? 

And below are some of the responses we’ve had (click on an image to see closer up).

I encourage you to click on the pictures and read some of our community members’ thoughts (forgiving any indelicacies). Favourite works, the things they value, the advice they’ll always remember. While reading the sticky notes posted on Woodbridge Library’s whiteboard for April’s topic of ‘the best advice you’ve ever received,’ I was struck by how much I appreciated hearing some of it. Granted, some of it seemed kind of silly, but these bits stuck out to me:

Tiny improvements can lead to a BIG change.

If it’s out of your hands, get it out of your head.

Don’t put in effort if they don’t give it back.

Surround yourself with good people.

Read as much as you can.

Finally:

One day at a time 🙂

I think that last one is good to be reminded of from time to time.

I’ll be back soon with more recommendations from our catalogue. I just wanted to pop on here and tell you how this is going. And stay tuned for next month’s question! We’ll be posting it in our libraries soon. The plan is to keep doing Question of the Month till the Vaughan Municipal Election. Talk to you all again soon. Bye for now.