| Year |
Details |
|
| 1921 |
New Toronto Association Public Library is organized, 18 March. A volunteer-run library is located at 86 Lake Shore Road at the northeast corner of Sixth Street (in a small room in the rear of the New Toronto Municipal Office and in the same building as the Public Utilities Commission). |
| 1923 |
Assets of the New Toronto Association Public Library are transferred to the municipally-supported New Toronto Public Library Board, established on 9 February. |
| 1927 |
W. (Walter) Grayson Brown, architect, is hired to design a new library, 3 June. Town of New Toronto Council agrees on 19 August to issue debentures of $15,000 for a library building. New Toronto contractor David P. Gourlie is granted the contract on 22 August to building the library for $14,124. Construction begins in October on a site acquired from William G. Jackson and Alexander Keith. |
| 1928 |
New Toronto Public Library is officially opened on the west side of Eleventh Street, south of Lake Shore Road, 9 February. |
| 1941 |
Ina M. Keesee Children’s Library is opened, 22 June. As well as serving as the secretary-treasurer of New Toronto Public Library Board from 1921 until her death in 1956, Mrs. Keesee was the regent of the Lakeshore Chapter, Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire, formed in March 1937 with the primary aim “to assist in the building of a Children’s Library”. Fundraising produced donations of $6,131.27, including $1,400 from the IODE; the town contributed the balance of $7,500. |
| 1954 |
Reference and reading room wing addition, built at a cost of $43,000, is officially opened, 5 May. New Toronto is “pronounced the best small library in the province and its reference section the finest anywhere in a library of its size”. Ontario Library Review, 38 (August 1954), 219. |
| 1967 |
New Toronto Public Library Board is taken over by the Etobicoke Public Library Board with the amalgamation of the Towns of New Toronto, Mimico and Long Branch with the Township of Etobicoke to become the Borough of Etobicoke. |
| 1984 |
Etobicoke Public Library Board rejects a plan to close Long Branch and New Toronto branches, and replace them with one larger facility. |
| 1993 |
The 1928 library, and the 1941 and 1954 additions, are demolished. |
| 1994 |
New building is officially opened, 3 November. Moffat Kinoshita Architects. Recipient of a City of Etobicoke Urban Design Award, March 1996. |
| 1998 |
New Toronto Branch becomes part of the Toronto Public Library with municipal amalgamation, 1 January. |
| 2005 |
Hours open per week increased from 37 hours to 40 hours, 6 September. |
| 2006 |
Closed 25 June for repainting, new carpet and shelf ends; landscaping done by Etobicoke Horticultural Society; enlarged Teen Zone with seating. reopened 11 July. |
| 2014 |
Closed 10 February for RFID installation. Reopened 18 February. |
| 2014 |
Design Excellence Award (Ontario Association of Architects). |
