'Our hearts are bursting': Regina's Free Little Library rises up from the ashes, after Canada Day fire

Darlene Krauss is used to bringing stories to others, with her lovingly curated Free Little Library in Regina's Normanview neighbourhood.

But when a still unknown vandal or vandals torched the library on Canada Day, Krauss would find herself in a story of her own one of fear and despair seeing the destruction, that turned into hope and pleasure as people from all over the world responded with books, money and encouraging words to get the library back up and running.

"It has been overwhelming. Our hearts are bursting," Krauss said, as she and her husband prepared to reopen the dollhouse-sized library, just outside of their home on McCarthy Blvd.

"I think we have enough in it to keep the library operating for a year."

Krauss said she'd known the library was well used. The concept of the Little Free Library would see people take a book, or leave a book, and with each of the books stamped, she would hear of her books migrating across the city and enriching new readers' lives.

Still, she was surprised by the big reaction as news of the fire spread.

North Regina Little League would do a book drive, while others in the city and other Little Free Library stewards across the world also donated money and books to get Krauss's library rebuilt.

"The community support has just uplifted us and it meant so much, that we had to get it done, we had to get it back up and operational," she told CBC's Saskatchewan Weekend.

Listen to Darlene Krauss's interview with Saskatchewan Weekend host Shauna Powers here:

On Sunday afternoon, Krauss and her husband held a grand opening for the new construction.

The new library is slighly bigger than the original to accommodate some larger books, but it will still have a community seed drawer and a community bulletin board. After the couple's grim experience with arson, the library will have a few security features and also some set hours of operation.

None of the donations of money will be put toward the grand opening, Krauss stressed.

"This is out of our pocket to say thank you to the community, because the support and the people around us, the love you feel, is just amazing."