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From the efforts of its first librarian who ensured immigrants could access books in their own languages, to the present day as an active community hub, the library has been responsible for many groundbreaking Canadian firsts. The Regina Public Library implemented the country's first fully automated library system, established the first writer-in-residence program, pioneered English as a Second Language classes, hosted Indigenous storytelling circles, and was instrumental in developing a single, one-card system for all of Saskatchewan. With contributions from community members, Biblio Files covers the library's entire history and demonstrates why it is such a beloved and necessary institution.

This autobiography tells the story of an indefatigable spirit who survived the Second World War, a doomed marriage, the murder of her father, rape, and the almost endless consternation of family problems. Author Dr. Nina Murray was born in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1913. As a child, she found herself part of the first of the Diaspora that marked the modern age. The Communist revolution stripped her family, Russian nobility, of their land, money, privilege, and title. Blessed with parents who were determined to overcome the devastating reversal of their fortunes, she found herself in England in the 1920's. There, she began the transformation from Russian Princess to professional English woman, and earned her medical degree in 1937. On her journey, Murray finds her life's love in her work, her daughter and an eight-year marriage to a Canadian admiral, and crosses the paths of other fascinating lives_some very well-known, others quite outrageous. Dr. Murray's story offers a valuable lesson to immigrants in any country, at any age, and deals with the necessity of absorbing one's new surroundings while clinging to one's roots.

Perched on the shores of the Tacoma Narrows, the community of Salmon Beach overlooks the spectacular Tacoma Narrows Bridge. Built as a series of fishing shacks on the beach, Salmon Beach took on a more permanentflavor after Henry O. Foss towed his two-story boathouse from the city to the tidelands south of Point Defiance. After electricity was introduced in 1934, more comfortable cottages were built in this fishing community. From summer beach camping to an isolated refuge in the middle of a city, a haven for rumrunners during Prohibition to the counterculture enclave of the 1960s, the community of Salmon Beach has weathered fires, evictions, landslides,and government caprice to become the unique neighborhood of Tacoma it is today.