Teachers as People.

 

Teachers as People

It was at Dalewood Public School in St. Catharines, during my grade 7 year, that I began to realize teachers were people too who had personalities and feelings.  Seems like an obvious thing to say now but not so as a young self-centred teenager.  It was during my year at that school when I saw my homeroom teacher cry in class,  my principal exhibit an amazing sense of humour which helped set such a relaxed mood in the entire school. I no longer feared walking past the office in the same way I did at my previous school.  There were teachers with different teaching styles representing their unique personalities, that year I started to see teachers as people and it made a difference in how I approached school.  I had come a long way from the days when randomly I might see one of my teachers in public and literally wonder how do they survive outside of water,  that is to say how do they even exist outside the classroom environment? It was a surreal notion.

Probably everyone of my generation knows where they were on November 22, 1963 when it was reported to the world that President John F Kennedy had been shot in Dallas, Texas while riding in a motorcade with his wife Jacqueline.  I remember, it was a Friday, the last day of a long school week at my school, Dalewood. 

I was more than curious when in my classroom, with some 30 other fellow students, my teacher came to the front of the room late. It was clear to us all that she was very upset and that she had been crying.  She started her talk to the class in a very hesitant and quiet voice, unlike her usual more dominate style, to tell us that earlier today the American President had been shot while travelling in his motorcade.  

I can’t remember if we were dismissed early that day but it was a sombre afternoon as we all absorbed the news in our young minds, in our own ways.  It was the first time watching my teacher in tears giving us tragic news, that they after, all the stern disciplining they do, I realized they have real human emotions like real people. 

I remember my school, Dalewood, for that historic event in my life and also for all the friends and teachers I had in a very pivotal year in my life.  The principal, Mr McGregor, I’m sure he had a first name but as students we were not privy to that level of personal information.  Teachers were magical, powerful, distant creatures who only seemed to us as students to have a life or an existence during school hours. 

Mr McGregor was not only my principal but my History teacher as well.  His classroom was conveniently located next to his office the official seat of power.  This fact normally would instil fear in the hearts of most students because inside that office in some side drawer was the strap through which student folklore gave the principal an aura of mystical power. 

One of my first encounters with Mr McGregor occurred in the hallway where students were expected to walk in straight quiet lines between classes, quickly, efficiently and directly.  At one point there was a lag in my line and I took a careless moment to lean against the wall for a relaxing, lazy moment.  Mr McGregor standing at the intersection of two hallways looked out at the situation, for some reason focussed on me leaning on the wall as if I were the cause of the delay.  He walked directly and boldly up to me, stood right in front of me as I leaped to attention. We locked eyes.  Mine showed fear his complete dominance. In a loud stern voice which I remember to this day he said, “Do you know what would happen if every student in this line were to lean on this wall at the same time?”   

He paused briefly for dramatic effect, his eyes never leaving mine.  I was waiting for the answer as Moses waiting on the ten commandments with heightened anticipation. He said profoundly and in total seriousness, “Absolutely nothing!”  He then gave me a big smile, a kind pat on my shoulder and rapidly walked away as the line began to move to the next class.  I knew then I had no reason to fear the man.  He had a sense of humour.  A teacher with that sense is a beacon of hope and safety.

I think that one simple hall incident bonded me to Mr McGregor and I subsequently I was always trying to please him and so as a result did well in his class. He taught history as a story teller naturally with much humour. He presented facts in an entertaining fashion like every lesson was a spectacular bed time story.  I anticipated his classroom and watched for him in the hallways, always.

My Industrial Arts teacher, whose name I can not honestly remember, had a little different style of teaching.  He was a practical and direct individual, very mellow and relaxed yet still with expectations for student performance.  Apparently, he had no affection about giving notes in his subject.  During the first days of orientation including safety lessons on the power tools and the various ways we could lose fingers, impale ourselves or go blind, he also gave us the notebooks from the previous grade 7 graduates.  Our job was to over the next several days copy all the notes and that would serve as our study reference for the year.  No note taking after that point.  Later, I wondered on the accuracy of that method, given that the original set of notes dating back probably many years was likely not divinely inspired and after being passed on, copied and recopied several times was packed with errors. 

Despite the notes I did make an attractive wooden bowl on a lathe, a lamp that looked like a Conestoga wagon and a name plate I could place on my desk tooled in leather. Although I never became a handyman by any metric I did learn so much from that class and others during my years in school.  It saddens me to think that today these practical programs are in short supply for either gender.

In Geography class with Ms Higgins, who I remember for having so much patience with me during map orientation and cartography.  Working with an Ontario road map we had to perform various tasks based on mapping information and using our spatial ability.  I could do that part fairly well but try as I might I could never fold the map back to its original shape.  It was shameful and although some students laughed at me, my teacher gently and quietly showed me the fold lines and got me back on track with minimal loss of face.  I loved her for that small gesture of kindness and understanding.  In later life I herald the arrival of GPS maps.  Ironically, I too became a Geography teacher who used road maps in class.

Strange the things one remembers when looking back on the friends you once had and the varied experiences during a single year in school.  I recall my friend Chris who had a trained pet crow who knew to fly to school at dismissal time and meet Chris as he came out the door.  I wondered how that was even possible as I witnessed the crow perch on my friend’s extended arm and stare at me with his dark black eyes.  Chris’ tricks with his crow gave him an incredible level of status.

I marvelled at the freedom I had going to school over several kilometres with my friends by bicycle each day to a school I truly enjoyed most of those rides.  We discussed our teachers, our current “crushes” and sports.  I’m not sure school buses were even in wide use back then certainly I never road on one until becoming a teacher myself. 

Historically, I also fell in love for the first timeI with Linda Fast and Mary Jane Combe at the same time which was potentially awkward.  I knew it was true love and never once considered the idea that I might have to make a choice.  Eventually, when they discovered each other the choice was made for me and a valuable life lesson learned at the same time.

I played on the school hockey, baseball and track and field teams and was fortunate to have coaches who encouraged me during games and competitions.  Looking back I think I was exceptionally lucky to have the group of teachers and friends I did that year. Teachers who were genuine and showed their true selves and values.  I wasn’t an excellent student but I was enjoying school because they made for a positive and enjoyable school climate making it more conducive to have the desire to work, play on teams, make worthwhile projects in history and shop class and even afforded the opportunity to fall in love, however briefly.

Progressive Conservative No More

 My history with Canadian Prime Ministers and their political parties goes back to Louis St Laurent (1948-1957).  Admittedly, I don’t remember much about his term or accomplishments but I do remember John Diefenbaker, his successor into my teenage years. He won three elections and had an majority government once.  He was leader of what was called then the Progressive Conservative Party.  In his first government he appointed the first female minister in Canadian history and the first indigenous member of the Senate.  His government introduced the Canadian Bill of Rights and in the process granted the vote to First Nations and Inuit people in our North.  He reduced racial discrimination in our immigration policies.  He stood against apartheid in South Africa.  He wasn’t perfect, no leader is, but for the time he was progressive as stated in the name of his party.  He was a conservative man of integrity

The Conservative Party today is not the party of Diefenbaker.  It has sadly morphed into a sterner, harsher version of itself and has cloned some bad genes from our southern neighbours. Where Diefenbaker and conservatives were once more the champion of human rights and for native rights I can’t say that is true any more. 

In way of comparison, if President Lincoln could see what happened to his republican party today he would start a Civil War likewise, if the old guard conservatives, including Diefenbaker, could observe either Harper or Poilievre they would also be sadly disappointed in the profound devolution of the party over time.  It is not Progressive.  It is regressive.  It has lost its vigour and humanitarian zeal. It is not the party for our future.

I could vote for the old conservatives who were actually progressive.  I can not in good conscience vote for the morally bankruptcy of the conservative party as it exists today.

Hospital

 130/83  72

My hospital bed was being moved 

rapidly down a hallway 

crowded with an abundance of

Medical supplies and equipment 

in the old St Mary’s. 

I had a unique view of the ceiling tiles, 

the lights a swirl of activity, movement

And voices.

“His pulse is at 21 we have to…”

Poke, IV drip, shaved chest

Electrodes in several locations

To listen in

All graphed and recorded in “live time”

To the nurses’ station.

“We’ll see”

A hospital a sleeepless place

Beeps, snores and groans,

Nurses on the run,

Lights on, blood pressure and

Other vital signs at odd hours.

Drip, drip of the relentless

Life saving IV

Morning in a groggy fog

Looking at a new reality.

Poke your finger for sugars

Lift your tongue for your temp,

Need your index finger for oxygen

Turn to one side, take a deep breath.

Swollen feet, slow heart

Thoughts of death

Learn to lie down and pee into a 

plastic

Bottle, 

eat jello

And stare out the window eyes level with 

The flapping Canadian flag

As grey clouds skirt by my view.

After the pace maker I watch the

Tattle tale screen to a reassuring

130/83. 72

The battery lasts ten years I’m told.

Will I?

My Career as an Inventor

My Career as an Inventor

As a university student in my first year, it is safe to say that I had very weak typing skills which were somewhat of a match for my early academic essay writing skills.  Initially, I would find those ubiquitous adds for typists on the public bulletin boards in the quad at Laurier University.  I think the going rate at the time was fifty cents per page and more if the deadline was closer.  A paper due the next day, and you submit to the typist that same night, the rate might jump astronomically to $4.00 per page. 

 It was a capitalist world based on supply and demand with the urgency of time. It was a form of blackmail that worked to the advantage of the typist.  I had never studied typing as a formal subject but did practice at home with my sister’s typing books and could accomplish about 30 words per minute.  Given the rates at the time I was determined to do my own typing.  I was never motivated enough to type for other people, that was just crazy talk.

I think the biggest challenge to typing a successful paper was fitting in footnotes at the bottom of the page.  The trick was how far down the page does one type before beginning the footnote so that everything fits.  A universal question as it was a universal problem.  I resolved to crack that challenge.  I began slowly at first typing my own Anthropology, History and Geography essays at an astoundingly slow rate with many frustrations, restarts, late nights, late submissions, but at the end of the cycle, at the depth of the deepest despair there was also slow tiny baby steps of progress.  Within two short months I was already up to 33 words per minute.  

I was still making mistakes and with each mistake I had to erase using a crude ink eraser which could also quickly wear a hole through the page taking me, the typist, back to ground zero.  If only there was a way to correct the mistake without a destructive eraser and just “white-out, so to speak, the mistake and type over it.  Try as I might I could never find that solution.  Was there a way to do that? I was motivated by the cliche, “Necessity is the mother of invention.”  

If there is a need that very need would lead to an innovative solution.  Suffice it to say that idea of whiting out mistakes never came to fruition with me no matter how many angles I approached the problem from, especially when my typing speed reached 42 words per minute the pressure to White Out had diminished in my mind.  The idea of Correctional Fluid or Liquid Paper slowly died in my mind.  It was not to be.

Shortly after my mind was reeling towards the liquid paper quest I graduated from Laurier and had started teaching.  My brother-in-law at the time worked for Shell Oil and was telling me about a new concept, a two fold one in fact whereby gas stations would quickly evolve or devolve into self-serve facilities where people pumped their own gasoline at the pumps.  I thought how ridiculous.  

I had worked at various full service gas stations in my youth.  I clearly recall the day when a vehicle would drive over the alarm cord ringing a loud bell which would summon me from the depths of the station, at a run, out to the car.  I would slide up to the driver, usually a man, and address him as sir.  He would tell me how much gas?  I would start the pump running then I would run to check oil, clean all the windows and gauge the tire pressure in all tires and time that with the pump clicking off to a full tank.  All transactions were done in cash and sometimes there was even a tip.

Now my brother-in-law was telling me about self service.  I thought how is that even possible.  I guess the selling point is to think of all the money consumers will save. Think of the speed and convenience.  The add part to this was in addition to petroleum products and these so-called self serve gas stations was that they would further morph into convenience stores and sell dairy products, snack foods and other fast food items.  Never did it cross my entrepreneurial mind, me the potential inventor of Liquid Paper, that their would be any demand for these kind of services.  Never in a million years would it take off, there would be zero consumer demand.  I was on the pulse of the public.  I knew what I knew.

I think my third example which clinches my credibility as entrepreneurial inventor has to do with my days as a young father.  This is the time I verged on greatness, when I bordered on empire building, when I teetered on being just outright amazing and its when I fell from grace.  While travelling with little kids, babies in fact, they had a tendency to require a constant change in diapers among many other needs some of which linger to this day. 

 I as a young versatile young father, I was able to change a diaper in many and varied locations. Anything from my lap, to the hood of a car, the seat of a car, the floor of a public washroom, a picnic table while baby cries or sleeps in a baby stroller.  Vertically any horizontal or semi horizontal plane was fair game for diaper changing.  Still problematic as some of these locations when factoring in the hygiene factor were less than ideal.  

My mind reeled.  In fact it took me back to the days of potentially inventing White Out in my university days.  I thought, pondered in my personal think tank, wrote notes to myself on sticky note, also not yet invented yet, and finally concluded that men and women need a horizontal  platform of sturdy design in a semi-hygienic environment from which one could change a baby’s soiled diaper in relative comfort and safety for both the participating adult and baby involved.  How could this be done, where could this be done. I had the why. I had conceptualized the need but what were the details of the product.  It was within my grasp, so close, yet so far.

By the time my four children grew up and had their diapers changed on the medians of roads, on sidewalks, dining-room tables, I had no solution.  The day I walked into a public roadside washroom on an interstate highway in Northern Kentucky,  in a moment of shock and admiration, I nearly bowed to the floor and cried.  There mounted on the wall, with a name honouring some Australian marsupial, was a fold down plastic platform on which one could ceremoniously lay down a baby if in worship or sacrifice or just simply to change a diaper, off the floor and in semi hygienic placement.  I trembled.  I left that washroom a humbled man.

As I drive and think about these events in my life from Liquid paper, to self serve gas stations to public accessible baby change stations, I’m desperately looking for a place to set my new mobile cellular phone, if only there was a place to hold or set, to secure in some rational safe way such that I could safely use it and drive at the same time.  God these things are dangerous. If only there was a way!

Everything Changes

Everything Changes

While sewing curtains 

on the diningroom table

grand daughter asked, 

“Are you any good at making curtains?”

Laughing you said, “Well I used to be”

Everything changes

We drove that day for yet

another medical appointment,

the Subaru had a flat tire,

you were thankful I was there,

said I should live to 94,

we needed each other 

we make a good team

we always have, 

agreed.

Everything Changes

next morning, too, my sister texted

“Yes, I do have cancer…

so I’ll wait for a surgeon to call.”

Everything Changes

How Does that Work?

 How Does that Work?

I don’t know what got him to be the way he was

That stubborn, detached person distant from most emotions.

Perhaps, a World War, a Russian Revolution, a Global Depression,

Unemployment, loneliness and death all take their toll.

The vessel we were left with, as father, was often empty,

Puzzling and distant.

Then he would surprise and build me something 

from his wood shop, followed by a lack of interest.

After he retired from the factory where he was anti-union

Yet highly skilled, he would disappear from home for months.

One morning slurping coffee form his over-sized coffee hound

Mug, slip from harbour, take the only car and wander the continent.

Until one morning it was a chipper

“Good Morning”

Like he had never left,

Save for the few random post cards from San Diego

and Miami.

Frugal, cheap, controlling,

My mother had no say in groceries, decor, trips, or cars.

A male domain of the old school, I thought  normal

Until I knew better and saw the world.

Something more secular, as religion or males were suffocating

Influences.

Prayer for liberation was a token given to women a myth created by

Men, as the rich give it to the poor.

Finally, my mother vacationed South,

My dad on a jealous whim followed

No trust 

No love

Did I have the mark of the beast?

I saw him cry once when he lost his job and we had to move the family.

He provided as men did.

After graduation he followed me where I went.

I think he could love in he own way, in his own time

It was a slow painful process.

My resolute indelible image:

early morning slurping his strong coffee from and over-flowing

Mug into a large saucer just returned from somewhere.

I did love him too

How does that work?

One Step Forward

One Step Forward

Walking along the surging creek on a city trail

Groomed for urban walkers

A fence on my left, a demarcation between

private property

And where I stood graffitied with bright blue

Aerosol paint indicated the path forward 

to salvation, revival and redemption

Or stagnation, revisionism and status quo,

“Its not where you come from, it’s where you are going.”

Also caligraphy in bright blue,

Apt to read while trail walking.

Beside that, also in blue caps, “COVID 19”

Followed by the sign for the Greek and mathematical

symbol for pi (not found on my keyboard)

3.14 and never quits,

I paused staring at the prophetic fence

The doomsday fence

Which way forward to infinity and beyond?

Two steps backwards,

Or just where I was going that day.

The complexities of life, on a fence strewn with graffiti

One step forward, I thought.