One month after her city-wide trek to all 100 Toronto libraries, Marci Stepak is still processing her whirlwind of a walk. In April, the Toronto writer set out to walk to every Toronto Public Library branch in 10 days—a quest she called Every Library T.O. The walk was in honour of Stepak’s late mother Eunice, a lifelong library lover.
“The seed for this walk was my mom bringing me to the library as a kid,” Stepak says. “My mom must have racked up hundreds and hundreds of dollars of late fees. Whatever the maximum amount of books to bring home was, we were both doing that.”
What Stepak thought would be a quiet, solitary excursion turned out to be a joyful community event—capturing the hearts of strangers, friends, and library enthusiasts across the city. Library staff at many branches eagerly awaited Stepak’s arrival, greeting her with signs, snacks, and of course, books. And when the physical demands of the walk became too much, (Stepak was walking an average of 37,000 steps each day!), her community stepped in, helping her reach her goal of walking to every branch.
300km later, on April 17, she completed the walk at the Toronto Reference Library, raising over $10,000 in support of the TPL’s programming for seniors—initiatives that Stepak’s mother herself relied on before her passing.
Stepak’s walk was a reminder of just how vital public libraries are. For many community members, especially seniors, newcomers, and teens, libraries are some of the only free, accessible public spaces left in the city. At a time when so many are longing for offline connection, Every Library T.O. was a refreshing and uplifting initiative, reminding everyone who followed along to give their local library a little more love.
We connected with Stepak as she reflected on the challenges and highlights of Every Library T.O, her journey with grief, and her plans for next year’s walk.
It’s been about a month since you finished your walk, and it was a pretty physically demanding experience for you. Have you had a chance to recover since then?
I ended up getting shin splints just after the halfway point. Luckily, I have a chiropractor and a physio, and so I got a lot of treatment. I was really lucky. And, yeah, I feel like I’m all recovered. I went out on Mother’s Day in honour of my mom, I did a books and bagel crawl of the city. It was around 20 kilometers, and I was fine.
As you mentioned, you ran into some challenges during the walk. Can you share what happened, and how you made the call to bring in others to help you finish the walk?
When I started the walk, I thought it was me doing this really solitary, quiet walk to a very solitary, quiet place—libraries. And it was all wrong. Libraries are not solitary, they’re not quiet. And the walk wasn’t either, it turns out. So when I got the shin splints, my physio advised me that I could still keep walking. But he did tell me I needed to slow down considerably. By that point, I realized that there were a lot of people who were into the walk. Strangers and friends, colleagues had already come to join me. So I just decided to ask if people would want to step in and be pinch-hitters and do some of the branches for me. I would continue to go to every single branch regardless. Sometimes it meant I was going to take public transit to get there, or drive or rely on rides, but I still wanted the steps to be done, even if I couldn’t personally do them. So I just put out a call on social media, and asked if anyone could jump in. And the first person who replied was my first boyfriend. The next day he walked to five branches in Scarborough. And then strangers stepped in and coworkers. I still walked every day, and I just would do as much as I could. It was a good compromise.
That’s beautiful. This all began out of a place of grief, but then it snowballed into something more joyful. Why do you think the walk resonated with so many people?
I’ve been trying to figure that out myself, to be honest. I think that the libraries are like this connective thread for a lot of people, that everyone seems to have a library story, whether it’s something that they did when they were a kid, or they have a memory with their family, or coming here as a newcomer and this was a safe place. So many people shared a story like that with me. Other people connected to the grief. I think that the other part of it was about this idea of connection and community. I was trying to raise funds for the TPL programs that are in support of seniors tackling loneliness, but I’m fairly certain that loneliness isn’t just an issue faced among seniors. I think that people felt like this was like a really interesting, joyful—to use your word, and one that I’ve used a lot too—way to connect with other people.
I think a lot of the conversations about loneliness now are relevant for both younger and older generations. A lack of third spaces is a big part of that. Was that something you were thinking about during the walk?
100%. I think one of the reasons why there’s this lack of connection is a lack of third spaces. There’s very few spaces left where they’re truly a third space. They’re completely accessible, they’re free of charge, and they’re a welcoming space for everybody. And I think that libraries offer that. Books might be the vessel, the thing that brings you to the library, but past that, they’re community spaces. My experiences with libraries growing up were, you go in and you’re really quiet, and if you weren’t, you were going to get shushed. So one of the questions I asked a lot of the librarians was, is this a shush branch or a no-shush branch? And none of them were shush branches anymore. They want people to come in and feel welcome and talk with one another, talk to the librarians. I think that’s the true definition of what a third space can offer.
What is something you wish more people appreciated about libraries?
There is a wealth of services and events there. Most of them are free of charge. It gives you an opportunity to remain curious. Maybe you don’t want to double down and buy thousands of dollars of photography equipment, but you can go and take a two-hour workshop and discover is this something I’m even interested in? They have author events. They have writing events. They have so many events there that I didn’t know about. They have lending libraries. They have musical instruments you can rent. The main thing that I know about the programs and services is that I don’t even know all of them, because there’s tons of them.
I heard that you want to plan something else to carry on the momentum from this walk. Is that still in the works?
I’m going to have to figure out the details, but I’m planning on a picnic this summer. The walk was so magical. Sometimes I would meet someone who would just come out for the afternoon, and we would just talk for four hours, and those conversations were in-depth, and I might not ever see those people again, and that’s completely fine. But I also think that there’s an opportunity to stay connected to people, or just have an opportunity for like-minded people to get together. So I’m planning a picnic this summer, and then I’m also slowly planning next year’s walk, which will look different. I’m going to spread it out so that it’s maybe something like 100 branches in 100 days, and I really get to tap in and try the programs and services that are available for everyone.
In the time since the walk ended, have you had a chance to process the emotions of those 10 days and what it meant to you?
It wasn’t like anything I thought it was going to be. And my initial thoughts for the first few days after, were like, fuck. I can’t believe my mom isn’t here. There’s literally not a single person in the world who would have loved every single part of this more than the person who wasn’t there. So that is the part that I’m still grappling with. But I also think my mom was a person who showed up for life. Maybe she had a hand in creating this once-in-a-lifetime, truly magical experience for me. It really was quite life-altering in the really amazing, magical ways. So I’m remaining curious about what happens next. And that curiosity, it gives me energy. I think that energy needs somewhere to go. When I started the walk, it was like I needed somewhere for my grief to go. And now I feel like it’s created this huge energy, and I’m really curious to see what happens.
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