Thirty-five years after her official retirement, centenarian Joyce Wilby remains not only the chief librarian in Alert Bay, but the library’s best resource — a walking, talking archive of the town’s events and people.
Born on May 21, 1925, in Victoria and raised in Vancouver, Wilby was celebrated at a birthday party last month at the local legion, with family guests including her two “kids,” age 70 and 73 and most of her four grandchildren and three great grandchildren.
“It was wonderful,” said Wilby.
Library clerk Wendy White said 66 years after Wilby started sorting books at the library, which has about 334 members who borrow about 3,900 items annually, she is far from a figurehead.
She’s the heart, soul and brains of the operation.
“This woman is literally my boss,” said White, explaining Wilby works daily at the library, an historic two-storey waterfront building that sits on pylons just off the ocean. It is open 1 p.m. to 4 p.m, Tuesday through Saturday.
“She does the payroll, the contracts, the reports, the ordering of the books, all the archiving, the business plan, the whole strategic plan, and she is the board of directors main contact,” said White, one of two part-time staff members.
Tourists who come in off the street to find out more about relatives often get a personal account from Wilby herself who either knew them or married them — yes, she was also a marriage commissioner.
Jacqueline Van Dyk, who formerly ran the Public Library Services Branch and got to know librarians across the province, said Wilby is an inspiration.
Van Dyk, currently director of Library Services for North Vancouver District Public, said she met Wilby several years ago while provincial librarian because she was curious to see a library with an annual budget of less than $25,000.
“I was impressed with the full services her library provided and, augmented by provincial services and programs, it was a truly amazing community-focused library,” she said, adding it’s humbling to think Wilby hasn’t drawn a salary for 35 years. ”Joyce is a pretty special human being and deserves to be celebrated.”
In 1948 as a young bride, Wilby accompanied her husband to Alert Bay on Cormorant Island, just off Port McNeill.
Wilby continued her part-time work as a bookkeeper and began volunteering at the Alert Bay Public Library and Museum in 1959 when it opened.
It wasn’t until the library was required to have a certain number of reference books, a telephone, and a paid employee — in order to qualify for a grant from the provincial library commission — that Wilby accepted a paycheque and took the first community librarians course offered by the province, which she did by correspondence.
“I just got caught up in it,” Wilby said of her duties at the library which has a collection of nearly 10,000 items.
Wilby saw the library through many changes including furnishing it in the 1990s with its first computer for patrons. There are now two computer stations. “It’s a very progressive community,” Wilby said of the Alert Bay area, which has a population of about 950.
“Our internet service isn’t the greatest and our finances are limited but we’re on the internet and we are involved in the inter-library loan. We don’t have all the gadgets that the larger libraries have, but I think we fulfill our mission in this village.”
The library has archived images since 1961. It digitized and put into a searchable database nearly 2,500 photographs from the late Ron E. Shuker and his newspapers from 1939 through 1960. The photos were donated by his family. A grant from the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre at the University of British Columbia helped with that work.
“My technical experts are doing most of the work, but it’s been interesting to look through them all and see what a busy, thriving community this once was when it was the centre of the fishing industry,” she said.
Much has changed these days, the size of the community shrank, as did Wilby, who joked that the requirement for the library’s next hire is that the individual be taller than she and her staff in order to reach the library’s top shelves.
Daughter Elizabeth Farrant, 73, of Port McNeill, said her mother was the first one in the family to embrace computers, which led to an interest in genealogy. “Keeping your mind open and learning is what I think Mom’s motto has been all these years,” she said.
You only have to see the three laptops on her dining room table to understand this is no average senior, said son Bill Wilby, 70, of Grand Forks, during a regular visit to see his mother. “She’s been the driving force in making sure the library continues and evolves, offering public computers for people who don’t have access,” Bill Wilby said of his mother, who has never considered leaving Alert Bay.
“It’s a really strong community,” he said. “Everybody knows her. Everybody watches for her. It couldn’t be more a better community to to get old in.”
Wilby officially retired at age 65, and given she had a pension and no mortgage, she no longer felt comfortable accepting payment for library work, but she continued as the library director.
When widowed in 1995, Wilby continued her approach of life-long learning and at the age of 73 decided to make use of the vehicle in her driveway and learned to drive, earning her licence on the first try.
Twenty-seven years later she’s still driving, even becoming a bit miffed about her most recent cognitive exam, which didn’t ask all the questions for which she studied.
Wilby maintains a personal parking space outside the library, the brass ring of perks, she figures. “If I’ve gained nothing else, I’ve gained my own parking spot,” she quipped.
That said, she now confines her driving trips to mostly Alert Bay — where the speed limit is mostly 30 km/h — and the nearly five-kilometre stretch of Cormorant Island with shorter trips to places such as Port McNeill, accessible by car ferry.
Despite arthritis pain requiring use of a walker now and then — Wilby had hip replacement at age 95 — she’s physically and mentally strong.
Farrant credits her mother’s longevity to participating in glee club, church, hospital and thrift shop auxiliaries, an interest in current affairs, Times Colonist crossword puzzles, and general positivity.
“There’s always some little project to do or something to look forward to and and she’s never been one to dwell on the negative,” said Farrant, calling her mother the “backbone” of the family and a “hard act to follow.” She said retirement is a strange concept in her family, a philosophy Wilby passed on to her kids as both are still working.
“For some people, it’s like they come to a halt in life and that’s it. I don’t think Mom has ever seen it as that, it’s just like, ‘okay, what else should we do next.’ ”
