Always nice to see a fellow Canadian around. And in my geographic area, too!
1) The BC Library is actually pretty well stocked (
top 10 in the list!) and if something I'm interested when browsing the featured/new arrivals listings is not in, there's usually plenty of older titles available on my wishlist to make up for it, or I just hit the Advanced Search and tell it to only show me stuff that's not checked out.
When I do have to wait on a title I really want to read as soon as possible, it generally takes about 1-3 weeks for the hold notification to arrive, even if there are 2 people ahead of me in line.
The Overdrive system which manages e-book loans lets you set the checkout time, and I have mine at 7 days, and for ePub and PDF format books, you can return them early using the ADE software, which I do quite frequently (stuff that looked promising doesn't always turn out to be all that interesting, unfortunately).
If your library seems poorly stocked, then you might want to consider getting a card from the
Philadelphia Free Library, which allows out-of-county patrons to use its digital library for an annual fee of $15.
And depending on where you live, you may be able to get extra cards for other libraries in area which have access to better e-book collections.
Technically as someone who also holds a Fraser Valley Regional Library card, I could go get one across the border for Whatcom County, who've got a reciprocal lending agreement and their own e-catalogue, though they don't have nearly as much stuff. It's different stuff, though, and one day I might try it.
2) There's a not-widely-broadcast trick that Nook users can do, where since the B&N-DRM copy-restriction scheme basically works like a glorified username/password combo, people who really trust each other can put their books on each others' Nooks.
What you do is you transfer your pre-downloaded e-book files directly to your aunt's Nook using the USB cable and then when you try to open it and it prompts you for authorization, either you or she put in her name and credit card # to unlock the book for reading on your Nook, and vice versa when she lets you share her books.
After the first time, the Nook is supposed to store a hash of the name/CC info so that it can unlock future books from the same account, although you may have to re-enter the unlock code at some point. This is described a bit in the manual, and people over on the Nook forum have reported success in doing so.
Hope this helps, and welcome to MobileRead!
ETA: I should point out that the B&N book-swapping trick only works on B&N-DRM books.
For ADE-DRM books such as you get at Sony and Kobo and elsewhere, you have the option of registering your respective Nooks both to the same Adobe Digital Editions ID, and then they'll be able to accept any ADE-DRMed books authorized for that account, regardless of how far apart you might be located. Adobe allows up to 6 devices per ID.