Zoé Vallé Memorial Library

63 Regent Street in Chester, Nova Scotia

The Zoé Vallé Memorial Library is the oldest community library in Canada, still operating as it was when it was founded in 1928. For 24 years after 1903, it was the summer home of Zoé Vallé Lightfoot, who lived in Manhattan at the time. It was given, in trust, to the Municipality of the District of Chester to be a free public library for the community, in memory of Zoé. Now a municipally-designated heritage site and listed on the Canadian Register of Historic Places, the Library is beginning to take on importance as an informal ‘museum’, preserving a significant example of how local and summer residents alike have ensured, through the love of place and generosity, that the spirit of Chester’s fascinating past lives on in the present, for one and all to experience.