I
was
born
in
Saskatchewan
in
1952,
and
grew
up
in
Ontario
and
in
Zambia (southern
Africa), which was still Northern
Rhodesia when
I first arrived there at the age of nine.
I
travelled extensively from childhood to my mid-thirties
and visited about 35 countries, including one complete round-the-world
trip which lasted for two years, and I had lived and worked on four
continents before marrying Deborah and settling down here in Ontario
twenty-three
years ago. Deborah and I continued to travel together on our
summer vacations from teaching, bringing my tally to well over 50 countries.
We plan to visit many more in retirement.
In my late teens, I trained as a radio operator in the
Canadian army, but I requested and received a voluntary honourable
discharge when I discovered that because of my childhood presence in
various foreign countries (Africa, Israel, Europe), they would not
grant me the security
clearance I would need to be posted overseas! What an example of
"military intelligence". You would have thought that with my
travel
experience and lower potential for culture shock, I'd have been at the
top of their list for foreign assignment. I was one of the top
graduates in my basic training platoon, second choice for the
Commandant's Shield award (I had one black mark for missing the bus
back to base while playing sheepdog to a drunken mate...admittedly, I
was drunk myself, but at least I was ambulatory), but they lost me when
they fenced in my
future. "Seeing the world"
was one of their top recruitment lures, and the main reason I'd quit
high school to join the army in the first
place, but they seemed to have some lingering "cold war" mentality,
even in the early '70's.
I worked at a great variety
of jobs through my twenties and
early thirties. I sold pianos and organs, and vacuum cleaners, and worked in
retail department stores, sporting goods and book stores. I
worked in factories
building mattresses, kitchen cabinets and travel trailers, and framed
new buildings. I
learned insurance underwriting as an "executive trainee". I
co-ran a
summer youth hostel. I worked the front desk, switchboard, and did the
nightly audit in five
different hotels. I worked in restaurants, garages and car
dealerships. I was a cabaret "bouncer" (I was better at patiently
talking the drunks out of the room than "bouncing" them, mind you, in
contrast to some of my knuckle-busting colleagues), and a music teacher
and
performer: I spent three years being a travelling
country
rock musician plus two more as a music teacher in my own private
studio.
I was a
roughneck on an oil
rig, crew for a water driller, and an oilfield well logger and dynamite
delivery
trucker. I taught
ESL in Vienna, Austria one winter, and in Japan the following summer,
and taught a
business management skills curriculum at an adult night school in
Toronto.
In between jobs, I finished my
high school with marks in the nineties - quite a contrast to the
earlier marks I was earning when I hated high school and dropped out to
join the army. Then, in fits and starts, I enrolled in different
college and university programs, hunting for what I'd most like to do
for a career: pre-med, commerce, fine arts and literature, a year at a
jazz college, etc. I finally earned
a university degree, graduating cum distinctione from
the University of
Alberta with a B.A. in English
and Drama (Playwriting). I was invited into the two-year Master
of Fine Arts program in playwriting but I gave up on that at the
conclusion of my first year, once I realized
how little playwrights in Canada earn, on average. Financial
well-being depended too heavily on a small and fickle market, and at
the time my vision of the future featured me as sole male breadwinner
of a household with children and a mortgage - and in the early 80's, a
time of high interest rates, a mortgage was a really big deal. It
didn't occur to
me at that age that a future wife might be a partner
breadwinner. If it had, I might have continued in that path. I
enjoyed writing, and still do.
My career, in summation: Slowly
I began to realize that apart from writing, the jobs I'd enjoyed the
most were teaching ESL
to adults and music to kids. I was accepted into the
University of Toronto Faculty of Ed in 1987. I made Michael Fullan's Dean's
Honour
List
that
yearand earned my B. Ed, specializing in
Junior/Intermediate English, plus
Instrumental
Music plus Senior Basic Industrial Arts; with those diverse
qualifications in addition to my international travel and work
experience,
plus
the fact that I was a male teacher willing to teach in an elementary
classroom,
I got hired in a heartbeat by the former Scarborough Board of
Education. I continued learning new curriculum and became formally
qualified to
teach ESL, and also became a Computers in the Classroom specialist.
Since
then
I've been a music specialist for a whole school, a grade 5 teacher, a grade 3 teacher for
four years in two schools, a grade 7/8 math/science teacher and
computer lab
specialist in two schools, and
operated two grade 7/8 Design and Technology centres for a total of
nine years. This
was absolutely the most exciting and pleasant job I've ever held in
teaching - as I always describe it, "the best job in the system".
One of those assignments was a seven year stint in a school where a
close personal friend, Greg Martin, was principal. He had a
larger vision of the educational needs of his clientele than most
principals of senior schools, and worked hard to keep his technology
centre open even as they were shut down in similar schools. I was
his teaching union steward as well as his D&T teacher, and we had a
good partnership. Our friendship continues to this day.
However in 2002, panicked by an end-of-June
announcement of
the closing of
my D&T centre due to neo-conservative funding
cut-backs (a decision which was subsequently reversed by the school
board), I signed up for my Principal's Qualification
courses, with Greg's encouragement. Two years later I found
myself
serving as vice-principal at a school where I had been
a rookie teacher at the beginning of my public school teaching career,
and teaching ESL at all grade levels and "music appreciation" to the
grade 7's and 8's - that's music for the kids who hate music, or who
can't
focus and behave well enough to be included in the band.
It was a challenge, but I designed a program that they enjoyed, with an
immersion in modern musicals, historical and classical music.
Being a rookie VP there was a weird and difficult situation, caught in
a state of constant conflict between a Thatcherite principal and a
strong union-oriented staff, most of whom I'd worked with as a rookie
teacher. Coming into administration straight out of a decade of
service as a union steward made it even more uncomfortable: I related
to the teachers and wanted to support them as much as possible so that
they in turn would deliver the best possible programming for the kids;
I was trusted and became friendly with most of them as well as with the
union steward on staff, but I was castigated by my principal for
sympathizing and connecting with them on that level, and my effort was
pinched off, limited.
I spent the next two years as vice-principal at a
senior school where I was
also the computer lab and AV guy, and taught
English, math, art, music, dance and drama to a split grade 7/8 class
of 28 students that included fifteen ESL students with a wide
assortment of mother tongues, at varying stages of fluency in English -
several with no English at all. I
really loved that class, but that really was too heavy a workload for
one person. It was hard on my health, and an injustice to the
students, in particular the ESL kids.
If you want to what I really think about my years in teaching versus
school administration, click here.
In September
of 2008 I began my final administrative role as vice-principal at Cedar
Drive P. S.,
working for someone I really liked, Principal Karen Robertson.
That was a
terrific school with a wonderful staff, and that's where I closed out
my public school teaching career, and retired 18 months later - a few
years early for me, admittedly, but it was Deborah's official
retirement date and we could well afford it, so we decided to retire
together, escape
the Toronto winter and go travelling
again. Friends and staff from Cedar
Drive and several of my earlier schools, who have huge hearts, threw us
a memorable send-off and made
generous donations to two of our favourite charities. I left on a high note, and I
didn't look back...it was
fun, but now it's done. Or as we used to say when I was young,
"it's been a slice..."
Travel:
Deb
and
I like to travel.
We went back to my childhood stomping grounds in southern Africa in '96
for a six week visit to Zambia,
Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Pretoria and Durban in South Africa.
We've also
travelled
together
to
Maui,
Mexico,
Nova
Scotia, Cape Breton and PEI, Alberta and B.C., Florida,
Grand
Cayman, the Dominican
Republic and many places in between. In
the summer of 2000 we went to Singapore,
Indonesia (Bali/Java), Chiang Mai in northern Thailand, an island off
the
coast of Malaysia, and even Laos, sort of...
Before I met Deborah, I had already travelled in
central, east, west and north
Africa, Israel, several visits to much of Europe and the U.K.,
Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka, Korea and Japan, and the west coast of
the U.S.A. My international travels, beginning with my
childhood, were a strong foundation for my skills and insight
into the needs of my ESL students. This past winter we stayed in the
Florida Everglades and Keys for three months on a 22' sailboat.
On the horizon: Zanzibar, Capetown, New Zealand and Australia, the
South Pacific, and Central and South America. And perhaps parts
of Europe and the Mediterranean, including some sailing destinations.
Recreation:
Sailing: Deb and I sail out of Highland
Yacht
Club. Some of the boats we've owned in the past can be seen here.
This year we sail Awelyn, a Mirage 27, and
Tiger Moth, a trailerable
Hullmaster 22. We cruised the North
Channel in
2004 on our CS22,
and plan to return there some day. We took the
Cruising Trophy two years in a row at the annual C&C Regatta at the
National Yacht Club in our 25' C&C Redline, which now sails out of
North
Rustico in P.E.I., and I've crewed on
larger racing sailboats for three seasons in previous years.
This
past winter we took our Hullmaster, Tiger Moth, to the 10,000 Islands
just
north of the Everglades in Florida, to Cayo Costa near Fort Myers, and
on the Atlantic side of the Florida Keys: Marathon, Big Pine Key, Bahia
Honda, etc - the "Middle Keys", as they're called. I described
the three months in a travel
blog, with photos that you can click on to enlarge. We stayed for
two months at a marina in Marathon, which has a wonderful small town
atmosphere, and we also stayed on a Union 36 in Boot Key Harbour for
two weeks.
Tennis
and
Fitness:
I play
tennis
all
summer
at
the
Scarborough
Bluffs
Tennis Club. I used to try to keep in shape through the
winter by occasionally jogging, weight-training and
swimming at Variety
Village, and by curling in a mixed league at East York Curling Club
every Friday. Now that I'm retired and able to winter in places
without snow,
I'm more likely just to walk or ride a bike. For rainy days in
the summer months, I've found a local weight room that I can join for
one month intervals whenever it is convenient to my schedule of travel
and other activities.
Scuba: I enjoyed scuba, and I trained
to PADI Rescue Diver
level. I have about 150 recorded dives
in my log book. I
took a hiatus
from diving during my years in school administration, but I'm hoping to
return to it in retirement. I have
explored many wrecks in Parry Sound, Tobermory and Brockville, as well
as
many
tropical dive sites - Cozumel, Grand Cayman, Bali, Malaysia, and
others. I've enjoyed some wonderful diving off the coast of Victoria,
and near Nanaimo, in British
Columbia. Deborah became certified in Singapore, and she dives with me
occasionally when we're in
warm southern waters, but she prefers to snorkel.
