The community of Alvena is hoping to save its local library, which is among six rural Saskatchewan branches slated to close amid financial pressures. The Alvena Library, located about 65 kilometres northeast of Saskatoon, shares a space with the village administration office and post office. Hollie Remenda, vice-chair of the Alvena Library Board, said it serves as a community hub where residents can gather and access resources such as books, computers and printers. “It’s more than just books. It’s a place for people to come and talk and sit and have a coffee and just enjoy,” Remenda said in an interview Wednesday. Remenda said on Oct. 21 she was notified that Wapiti Regional Library would close the Alvena branch at the end of the year. “We were shocked,” she said. She said the board wished there had been better communication and more opportunities to explore alternatives before the closure decision was made. Wapiti Regional Library will also close branches in Gronlid, Mistatim, Pilger, Prairie River and St. Benedict next month. Wapiti Regional Library CEO Tony Murphy said the closures are the result of insufficient provincial funding increases and inflationary pressures. “We’ve been struggling for years with lack of adequate provincial funding and every year when we do our budget, we have to make a variety of operational decisions to manage those funding shortfalls,” Murphy said. He said he has been warning about potential service cuts for years. “We’ve made all the cuts and found all the efficiencies that we can make and find here at the regional office and in other areas, and that the next step would inevitably be service cuts,” he said. In a statement, the Ministry of Education said libraries play an important role in Saskatchewan communities and noted the government allocated $11.7 million to public libraries in its latest budget. Wapiti Regional Library received $977,343, up from $953,890 in 2025-26, an increase of $23,453. The ministry said regional library boards also receive funding from municipalities. “The province does not provide grants to individual library branches, and local decisions, including service levels and closures, are the responsibility of the governing regional library boards,” the statement read. Murphy said the roughly $23,000 funding increase does not keep pace with inflation or address years of inadequate funding. Alvena Mayor Cole Sawitsky said he was told the library costs about $23,000 a year to operate. He estimates that, with the contributions already made by the village and the Rural Municipality of Fish Creek, the remaining funding shortfall would be about $13,000. He said more advance notice about the closure could have given the community an opportunity to fundraise. “I guarantee you the community would have got together and came up with those funds,” he said. Murphy said he admires the community’s commitment, but fundraising would not address the broader financial pressures facing the regional library system. He said Wapiti must consider service levels across the entire region and can no longer afford to subsidize communities that contribute the least toward the overall cost of library services. “This is about total operational funding, it’s never about just one branch,” he said. Community members have since launched an online petition in an effort to keep the library open. Sawitsky said residents are hoping to find a way to keep the branch from closing. “We’ll see what we can do to keep this alive, because once we lose this library, well, that’s just another thing in these small towns that is going to eliminate these small towns,” he said.
