Toronto library apologizes after staff at east-end branch refuse to help lost girl
CTV
The Toronto Public Library is apologizing after staff at a branch in the city’s east end refused to provide a lost child with access to a telephone.
The Toronto Public Library is apologizing after staff at a branch in the city’s east end refused to provide a lost child with access to a telephone.
The incident happened last Friday.
Megan Kinch told CP24.com that her daughter Esther was let out from her P.A. Day program a couple of hours early and mistakenly jumped on the eastbound streetcar, instead of the westbound one, to go home.
Finding herself in an unfamiliar part of the city, Kinch said Esther’s first instinct was to call her mother. She walked in to a nearby library at Gerrard Street East and Broadview Avenue to borrow the phone but a staff member at the Riverdale branch refused to accommodate her request. Instead, Kinch said her daughter, who is in Grade 6, was told to use a payphone outside.
Unsure about how to use the payphone, Esther was left standing on the street corner in tears, Kinch wrote in a now-viral post on X, which has been retweeted more than 13,000 times.
A kind stranger waiting at a nearby bus stop let her daughter borrow her phone, Kinch said.
Kinch and her daughter chatted, and the Good Samaritan sent a pin indicating their location. Kinch, who is a single mom, promptly drove over and picked up Esther without incident. After a big hug and a few tears, they were on their way home.
