Literacy is an issue that is close to Catherine Wyle’s heart. That’s one of the reasons the manager of Huntsville’s Coles bookstore aims to make her space as accessible as possible.

“I want anybody to walk in regardless of their education level or interests and ask questions without feeling intimidated,” she says, adding that some people love books and see them as a way to open up the world, while others are intimidated by books because they weren’t successful in school.

“I’m trying to close that gap,” she says. “I don’t think we should judge a person by what he or she reads.”

And if she doesn’t have something a customer is looking for, Wyle is happy to find out if anyone in town does carry it. As she puts it, “I just want to get books into people's hands. With books, you can become any type of person you want, go to any place in the world, and visit any time period. They free you.”

Coles has the same philosophy, Wyle notes, describing the company’s Love of Reading foundation, which chooses 10 Canadian schools each year to receive $150,000 toward materials for their libraries.

A supporter of the Muskoka Literacy Council, Wyle feels strongly that the world would be a different place if literacy were not such an issue. “And I don’t think people are aware of the extent of the problem,” she adds.

Wyle has been at Coles in Huntsville Place Mall since it opened in 1992, and she became manager in 1994. “I’ve put my heart and soul into it,” she says. “When you walk into our store I want you to feel welcome and comfortable.”

She treasures the relationships she has with her customers.

“I’m excited by their excitement,” she says, giving as an example the time a mother came back and teared up telling Wyle that her son had read his first full book and asked to read the next one in the series. “As a mother of two children myself, I understood how she felt.”

Growing up in Burlington as the second of four children, Wyle had a wide variety of interests, ranging from art to marine biology. “I still don’t know what I want to be,” she says with a smile.

A public librarian was one of the biggest influences in her young life. Wyle recalls, “Outside of my mother, this was the most amazing woman I had ever met. She knew about all kinds of things, and she helped everybody. She did it with such joy, really making a difference in people’s lives. I wanted to be her.”

Art, which she eventually studied at Sheridan College, was a way for the quiet young girl to escape into another world. “My mother had set up a little cubbyhole for me in the basement with a drafting table,” she recalls. “I’d lose myself for six or seven hours at a time.”

Wyle is grateful that her mother encouraged her to be her own person. Working long hours while single-handedly raising four children, her mother also somehow managed to bring the family to a cottage resort in Muskoka for one week every summer.

“It felt even more like home than home,” Wyle says, tears coming to her eyes. “I saw my mother become herself. That place was a piece of heaven.”

The connection was so strong that in 1989 Wyle moved to Muskoka and became co-owner of the same cottage resort.

Not long after, she turned her sights back to her love of books. Wyle began researching the possibility of opening a bookstore in the area and saw an ad in the paper for the Coles that was about to open. The rest is history.

“Sixteen years later I get just as excited opening a new box of books,” she says. “You never know what you might find in there.”  

For her, being manager of the bookstore is all about sharing that passion and making people’s day a little brighter.

“Each person affects others even if they don’t know it,” she says. “I hope when people leave our store, they feel better, even if it’s just for five seconds.”

Thanks to Mark Bagu for suggesting that Catherine Wyle be profiled. If there is someone you’d like to see in this space, please call Paula at 789-5541 or e-mail  pboon@metrolandnorthmedia.com.