My next stop was Olds, an hour north of Calgary. I parked the car on the main street of Olds, not quite sure where to find Project Read Soon. Walking to the nearest intersection, I looked up and saw the welcoming and familiar literacy symbol in a second floor window of an old brick building on the corner of the street.

I found the front of the building and was surprised to hear music as I pulled open the door that lead to the second floor. It was piano music, coming from the top of the long flight of stairs in front of me.

IDA STANLEYTOBER greeted me on the landing. "There are o steps," she told me as I took a minute to catch my breath.

"Definitely not what one would call an 'easily accessible' building!" I responded.

Ida laughed and said, "Well, for $100 a month, I guess I can't have everything."

For $100 Ida has a small but quite workable office. There is a corner area for storage, then a room about 10 feet square, for Ida's desk and bookshelves. "It's amazing what you can find at garage sales," Ida said without embarrassment, nodding to the furniture in her office. To complete the picture, she told me that the bathroom is down the hall, shared by the people who work for the trucking company in the office next door and with the music teachers. Music teachers - that explained the music I'd heard. Most of the time that Ida is in her office, there are music lessons being taught - piano, guitar and flute lessons. The walls between the offices are not thick and even though I was very conscious of what often sounded like "banging" on the piano, Ida had obviously grown quite accustomed to it.

We rearranged a few pieces of furniture so that we could sit at a little table under the window. When I discovered that the batteries had gone dead in my tape recorder, Ida jumped up and found a little tape recorder that she sometimes uses with her students. There was only one already well-used wall jack so Ida found an extension cord and crossed her fingers that we wouldn't blow a fuse.

"Being resourceful just comes with the way I was raised," Ida said lightly. "We didn't have much when I was growing up on the farm but we always seemed to manage." Ida's innate ability to "find a way" has helped her in developing a truly active rural program.

"The Mountain view Home Help Services down the street lets me use their photocopier," Ida told me. "The libraries in Olds and Oldsbury let me use their meeting rooms and VCR equipment when I do tutor training. I don't have mail delivery so I pick up the mail everyday at the post office three blocks down the street. If I ever quit this job, I'm sure I'd gain weight; running up and down those stairs three and four times a day is pretty good exercise!"

Ida contends that having her resources spread out around town has actually been good for her program. It has given her the opportunity to get out into the community to talk about literacy. She "spreads the word" wherever she goes, carrying literacy logo pins and T-shirts along just in case someone wants to help support the cause. Reaching out and spreading the word has obviously been a successful approach for Project Read Soon. Last year, Ida and her committee members raised over $14,000 (over and above their government gram) with much of the money earned in small donations.