Enjoy a holiday of reading @yourlibrary

February is the month of celebrating love and friendship that isn’t exclusive to Valentine’s Day.

Appropriately, February is declared Heart Month for the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada. Come to the library for a great selection of cookbooks and magazines that feature heart-healthy recipes and meal ideas.

Need some inspiration for that special, heart-healthy Valentine meal? Anne Lindsay is but one who has written many healthy eating cookbooks including The Lighthearted Cookbook: Recipes for Healthy Heart Cooking and Low-Cholesterol Cuisine. Many more cookbooks are found in the Dewey Decimal 641.5 section of the library.

February 15 is National Flag of Canada Day. It marks the day in 1965 when our unique red and white maple leaf flag was first raised over Parliament Hill in Ottawa. To find out more interesting facts about our flag, check out the 929.29 sections of the library where Rick Archbold’s I Stand For Canada: The Story of the Maple Leaf Flag, Maxine Trottier’s Our Canadian Flag, and other titles on the subject can be found.

In Caroline Parry’s Let’s Celebrate!: Canada’s Special Days learn about the Chinese New Year. Chinese New Year is the longest and most important celebration in the Chinese calendar. Chinese months are reckoned by the lunar calendar, with each month beginning on the darkest day. New Year festivities traditionally start on the first day of the month and continue until the 15th, when the moon is brightest.

The Chinese year 4706, the year of the rat, began on Feb. 7. Legend has it that in ancient times, Buddha asked all the animals to meet him on Chinese New Year. Twelve came, and Buddha named a year after each one. He announced that the people born in each animal’s year would have some of that animal’s personality. Those born in rat years tend to be leaders, pioneers and conquerors. They are charming, passionate, charismatic, practical and hard-working. Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Affleck, Samuel L. Jackson, William Shakespeare and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart were all born in the year of the rat.

Family Day is the name of a statutory holiday in the provinces of Ontario, Alberta and Saskatchewan. It is celebrated on the third Monday in February each year. The holiday was first celebrated in 1990. Alberta was the only province in Canada to have a statutory holiday in February, until it was proposed in Saskatchewan in 2007 and Ontario in 2008.

The holiday was proclaimed by Alberta Premier Don Getty, in response to a drug scandal involving his son, Dale Getty, who had been arrested for possession of cocaine and was revealed to have cocaine addiction. Premier Getty was obviously embarrassed by the revelation and admitted publicly that he had neglected his family, saying that it was important for all Albertans to take more care with their families too.

Love, kindness and friendship can be shown in many ways including volunteering. The library is very lucky to be the recipient of the goodwill of many that donate resources and time on a regular basis, including those that serve on the Library board and the Friends of the Library board. Our community is greatly enriched and made a great place to live through the generosity of volunteers.