Every book has a story contained in its pages, but a particular copy of Camping And Woodcraft has a story outside the cover as well.
The outdoorsmanship manual was authored by Horace Kephart in 1965. It was on the shelf of the Vancouver Island Regional Library's Courtenay branch during the early 1980s. Someone checked it out and it promptly disappeared into the wilderness of time. While some may click their tongues and consider that library client a thief, the truth of his borrowing was revealed this week, many decades and area codes away, when the book was dropped in the return slot of the Bob Harkins branch of the Prince George Public Library.
"Perhaps those wilderness skills learned from the text helped our honest patron establish himself in the north," said Andrea Palmer, spokesperson for the Prince George library. "A patron returned a deteriorating, dog-eared and water-stained copy of Camping and Woodcraft...with instructions that it would need to be sent to its original home branch in Courtenay."
But there was more. It was in such a worn condition it had to be bound. The patron chose, perhaps symbolically, industrial flagging tape. It also helped contain what was inside the pages of the battered book.
"The book was opened and Prince George Public Library staff found a note from the borrower and $100 in crisp $20 bills with instructions to forward this money to Courtenay, in part to cover overdue fees," Palmer said.
It's not quite that simple, down in Courtenay. While the book is en route by mail, that town's library general manager Colleen Nelson has time to ponder what to do about the incoming money. The Courtnenay library charges only 30 cents per day for late books, and the maximum allowable charge is $10. The sender sent $90 more than that.
"I actually can't wait to talk to this customer. I really want to hear all about this story," Nelson said.
Not only has the patron returned a long-overdue book, he also provided a rare book. Camping and Woodcraft is out of print, but Nelson discovered rave reviews for the once venerable volume.
"Google Books gave it five stars out of five and called it a 'must-read,'" she said. "We now have a rare copy. It is not a good copy, it is in disrepair, so the customer obviously used it well, but we will be keeping it somewhere in the library because it is such a special story."
Rare returns do happen in B.C., said Nelson, but the honest patron estimated the length of time at about 30 years. The old filing system no longer shows when it might have last been checked out, and there are no other copies in the Courtenay stacks.
"And it is a little bit special, too, that it was returned to another library in the hopes it would get passed back to us," Nelson said. "Is that where the customer now lives, or was he just passing through Prince George? Was this something a relative checked out and it was found by a younger generation during a cleanup of stuff? Was it believed to be returned already but then found during a move or a cleaning? I'm so excited to find out. This just shows it is never too late to do the right thing."
This isn't the first time the Prince George library has dealt with a long overdue book. In 2010, a junior paperback, with its original Prince George Public Library loan card still inside, was returned 33 years and four months late. It had been checked out with a due date of March 5, 1977.
