Andrew Nikiforuk has been documenting the closure of government libraries and the wholesale destruction of their contents. The process has been chaotic and blind:
"The fact that many materials were thrown away or given away [most of the books at Saint Andrews Biological Station] is heartbreaking to those of us who are dedicated to marine science and the history of science in Canada," said ocean pollution expert and former federal researcher Peter Wells.
The dismantling of the libraries was so chaotic that no attempt was made to retrieve books on loan. At some of the closed libraries, books were given away to staff or ended up in landfills. In Winnipeg, private consultants took away truck loads of material from the Eric Marshall Library, while some members of the public scavenged shelves for Christmas gifts.
The party which claims to revere the nation's history has been destroying it:
"We are used to narrowing and broadening of the focus of federal libraries," said one former librarian. "But previous governments never went back and destroyed what other people did. Going back and destroying everything that came before is simply vandalism."
There is a reason for the vandalism. Destroy the history and you destroy the baseline that serves as the foundation for comparison. You destroy the metric by which citizens can judge their government's performance.
We are witnesses to an information holocaust.
