About Us
The Fraser-Hickson Institute, a registered non-profit organization, was established in 1870 according to Hugh Fraser’s will, as a free library, museum and gallery. It opened its doors in 1885 as one of Montreal’s first libraries and for more than 70 years operated out of a building known as Burnside Hall at the corner of University and René-Levesque.
In 1956 the Library received an extraordinary bequest of $1million from Montreal professor J.W.A. Hickson. Three years later, the Library moved into a large building of its own design on Kensington Avenue in NDG. In February 2007, the library closed when the building was sold to a private school. Its extensive collection of over 100,000 books and other materials now live in a controlled environment in the basement of the Institute’s offices in Montreal West. The library operates a Special Home Delivery Service for the homebound. Our search for a new, permanent location continues and we look forward to updating you on our progression.
The Fraser-Hickson has a long history serving the community in Montreal. If you are interested in the history of the Fraser-Hickson Institute or the Fraser-Hickson Library, suggested reading is The Fraser Hickson Library: an informal history by Edgar C. Moodey (ISBN: 0-85157-233-2), published by Clive Bingley (London) in 1977. Several copies of this publication are available at the library. Provided below is the Forward from this book (written by Edgar Andrew Collard).
It is a rare achievement to be able to write the history of an institution with as much vividness as the life of a person. Yet this is what Edgar C. Moodey has been able to do in this history of the Fraser-Hickson Institute. It is not the stiff and arid "institutional history" - putting down on the record the essential facts for reference purposes in years to come. The story he tells has all the human qualities, the insights into human experience, that give biography its power to hold the reader's attention. After all, a library is a particularly human thing - a living thing with a soul of its own, needing nutriment, adjustments to changing realities, and a sense of fulfilment. The story of the Fraser-Hickson Institute has all the human elements of vision, struggle, conflict, determination, doubt, frustration, hope, courage and service.
Yet, through all the flux of time, as Mr. Moodey's narrative reveals, the Fraser-Hickson Institute has adhered to one unalterable purpose: to provide a free public library, and to provide it with a free spirit. For many years it was, in fact, the only free public library in Montreal; and it has resisted all pressures and propositions that would have subjected it to control by other organizations or interests.
The resolution to maintain a free public library, administered in the spirit of freedom, was seldom easy. At times its functions dwindled with its resources, but the best was done that circumstances would allow. The hope was kept alive that better days would somehow come. And come they did when the legacy of Dr. J. W. A. Hickson carried to new realization the original aim of Hugh Fraser.
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