08/26/2026
A true icon 💕
What does Dolly Parton have to do with Eastern Manitoba? More than you might think!
Most of us know Dolly for "Jolene", "9 to 5" and "I Will Always Love You". But one of her biggest legacies has nothing to do with music.
In 1995, she started Dolly Parton's Imagination Library, inspired in part by her father, who could not read or write. The idea was simple: mail children a free, age-appropriate book every month from birth until age five, regardless of their family’s income.
Eventually, that idea travelled a very long way north.
Canada became the Imagination Library's first international expansion in 2006. Today, hundreds of local partners help deliver the program across the country.
And that includes our part of Manitoba! In Pinawa, the public library became an Imagination Library partner in late 2023. A year later, it was celebrating the program's first anniversary and inviting every local family with a child under five to sign up for free monthly books.
Down the road, children in the RM of Whitemouth can participate too, with the Whitemouth Library helping cover the local costs through donations. The Winnipeg River Area Lions have also taken part in helping kids in the region access books through the initiative — the Lions just celebrated their first year of sponsoring children in Powerview-Pine Falls.
Head west and you'll find another chapter of the story. The hugely successful The Big Beausejour Book Sale helps sponsor the Imagination Library for children in Beausejour, Brokenhead, Garson and Tyndall. Interestingly, that same book sale draws readers from across northeastern Manitoba — including Lac du Bonnet, Pinawa and Powerview-Pine Falls.
The Manitoba connection actually runs much deeper.
In 2013, a major expansion brought Dolly's program to 55 Manitoba First Nations.
So no, Dolly Parton never came strolling down Park Avenue in Lac du Bonnet. But an idea she started in rural Tennessee has made its way into homes throughout Manitoba — including communities right here in the Eastman region.
There's something rather fitting about that. A woman who grew up with very little in the mountains of Tennessee decided that where a child lives shouldn't determine whether that child grows up surrounded by books.
Thirty years later, some of those books are arriving in mailboxes among the rocks, rivers and forests of eastern Manitoba.
Turns out Dolly wasn't quite as far from Lac du Bonnet as you might think. 📚❤️
