Even after the passing of Anneke Deichmann Gichuru in February, the community is helping to keep her legacy alive by maintaining her book shed on Grand Manan.

With a population of less than 3,000, Grand Manan is a small community, and Deichmann Gichuru was an integral part of it. Anneke would often sit in a small shed near the ferry in Pettes Cove, Grand Manan, where she liked to help people choose from her book collection and share the stories behind them.

Anneke’s little white shed holds thousands of unusual and interesting books on many different topics and is now a special reminder of Anneke’s love for reading. Unlike a regular bookstore or library, the shed’s books aren’t sorted by category. You might find a former prime minister’s memoir next to a French schoolbook and a Nova Scotia magazine, making it feel more like a treasure hunt for visitors.

Anneke Deichmann Gichuru loved reading and learning her whole life. Born in 1938, she studied history and literature at the University of New Brunswick and later became a teacher in Kenya, where her husband was from. Her daughter, Wandia Gichuru, said Anneke always read to her children at bedtime and shared her passion for books. When Anneke returned to New Brunswick in the late 1990s to care for her mother, she moved into the family’s summer home on Grand Manan and put up signs saying the books were free and didn’t need to be returned. Many of the books had belonged to her mother, Erica Deichmann Gregg, a well-known potter, and to Erica’s second husband, Milton Gregg. There were over 15,000 to 20,000 books that had been sitting in storage until Anneke decided to share them with others instead of letting them gather dust.

Source: Victoria Walton, CBC