The Brights Grove Library/Community Hub project, which was essentially erased in Mike Bradley's November 2025 budget communique, is actually still fighting to survive after many ups and downs! Arguments over cost, communication, and value have unfortunately muddied the waters. The project essentially involves adding a community room—with a small kitchen—increasing much needed space and accessibility […]
The Brights Grove Library/Community Hub project, which was essentially erased in Mike Bradley's November 2025 budget communique, is actually still fighting to survive after many ups and downs! Arguments over cost, communication, and value have unfortunately muddied the waters.
The project essentially involves adding a community room—with a small kitchen—increasing much needed space and accessibility in this popular library (the historic Faethorne House). It would also move the Gallery in the Grove to the main floor.
The Gallery in the Grove is a volunteer-run gallery which provides art scholarships to continuing high school graduates and free art instruction to Grade Six students across the county. GITG also offers 4–6 carefully selected shows of regional artists' work for sale each year and presents its popular Gifts of the Season show of local artisanal work prior to Christmas.
These well-curated arts and crafts fill the two galleries and bring in $9,000–$10,000 to support the mandate. Art workshops have been added to the program and have been very popular, further utilizing the small space. GITG also sponsors out-of-town bus trips for fun and educational opportunities in other towns.
Libraries are a free depository of much of the world's knowledge and are our most cost-effective public resource—a resource of history and truth as well as great novels, biographies, magazines, videos, and movies. They provide critical, high-quality e-learning support and access to digital resources.
The MAKERSPACE program offers the opportunity to create intellectual and physical materials using resources such as computers, 3D printers, and audio and video capture. Technology today is almost a core right, and the Brights Grove Library is well located between two respected schools.
COMMUNITY ROOM/SMALL KITCHEN
This is the most exciting part of the entire proposal and something a community like Brights Grove will applaud and utilize. I can see the room's big windows, offering a sweeping view of Wildwood Park and Lake Huron, being rented out not only for civic meetings, various groups, and receptions, but for birthday parties and even small weddings. So it will "give back" financially as well as being a fun, cultural meeting place for people of all ages.
I am an amateur artist and enjoy the large community of like-minded people in Lambton County. My out-of-town friends cannot believe the ambiance of beach-side Brights Grove as we take them down the long, beautiful "Old" Lakeshore road that ends at Mike Weir Beach—where they can see better sunsets than Key West has to offer!
They have stopped asking about the "mercury in the river" and now wonder how "a little town like this" (Sarnia) got such an amazing Canadian Art Collection as the one now appropriately cared for by the Judith and Norman Alix Art Gallery.
Of course, we would all like to see a successful downtown area, but communities to the east along Lake Huron are where homes that enlarge our population and tax base are being built.
Perhaps the "dissenters" to this plan should visit other parts of Lambton County. I would be glad to treat our Mayor to a glass of wine at Skeeters rather than his usual haunt at the corner of Front and George!
Respectfully,
Sylvia Foreman
