Jean-Émile Valois has been collecting books for more than 30 years, not for his personal collection, but to give them back to populations in poorer countries. Today, he can no longer do it, but he definitely doesn’t want to add his remaining 2,000 pounds to recycling.
“The ecocentre has been lending me a warehouse for several years, but I have to empty it in the next few days,” explained the long-time volunteer during his interview with The Manic last week.
While he is saddened by the situation, Mr. Valois goes out of his way not to throw away his pallets of books. “The organizations don’t want them, they are already well stocked with books and my project with Maison ABC Côte-Nord did not work,” he says.
Far from being discouraged so easily, Jean-Émile Valois now turns to another solution: a book sale at the shopping center. From this Thursday, July 4, it will be installed at the Laflèche Shopping Center, near the restaurant Le Petit Goûter, with tables full of novels.
“People will be able to give as much as they want for each book. There is something for everyone,” adds Mr. Valois, who hopes to sell as many books as possible during these sales days.
The money raised will be used to pay for the cost of moving the books to the shopping centre. “I’ll have to rent a cube to bring all that,” says the person concerned, who started sending books to poor countries while working at the Polyvalente des Baies.
Let us recall that the novels collected by Mr. Valois were sent to several developing countries thanks to the Fondation des Parlementaires québécois. But today, it is much more complicated to send so many books elsewhere in the world.
