“Many have been the needful raindrops that have filled the lake of Abbotsford Community Services.”
Abbotsford Community Services (ACS) has, in many ways, been both the organizational conscience and a substantive building block in the ever growing community life of Abbotsford. It is most fitting, therefore, on the 50th anniversary of Abbotsford Community Services ever maturing life, that a history be written of this significant organization and it be written by, Walter Paetkau, for many years the public face and backbone of ACS.
It Takes Raindrops to Fill a Lake is divided into five informative and historic sections: 1) The Formative Years, 2) Operations and Facilities, 3) Service Areas, 4) Stepping Back, Looking Forward and 5) Stories Along the Way. The judicious mixing and mingling of history, photographs, personal tales and contributions, shifting and reshaping organizational structures and various contributors to ACS makes this hefty volume (nearing 350 pages) more than worth the attentive read. Needless to say, the tome fills in many a detail about the emerging life of Abbotsford, also.
It Takes Raindrops to Fill a Lake is organized in such a way that bite sized reads can be done or longer browses and rambles across many pages can be the order of the reading day. Sections are short for those who appreciate a quicker sit, read and meditate whereas those who are more keen on information, facts and statistics will go away with their shopping cart filled to the brim. I might also add that the fine balancing of text and written pages with many a picture does add to the attractive quality of the fifty years in the telling.
The title of this compelling history speaks for its obvious reality—many have been the needful raindrops that have filled the lake of Abbotsford Community Services. The quote from the High Tory, Edmund Burke (page 282) sums up, in a succinct way and manner, the underlying vision of ACS: “Society is a partnership in every virtue and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born”. Indeed, Burke and the vision of ACS have much in common. I might also add, echoing Burke, that ACS embodies the “small platoon” that Burke held so high as an important element of the High Tory vision of the historic Anglo-Canadian way. Many a kudo to Walter, Abbotsford Community Services and the role ACS will play in the lives of “those who are to be born”. And, many a salute for the meticulous research and writing done on this book and its contribution to the life and history of Abbotsford.
-Ron Dart, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of the Fraser Valley