Teachers

In my career as a student, I have had some great teachers and truly some great duds. I remember most of them from poodle-skirted Miss Davidson in grade 1 to Stoner Haven in SFU. Dan Doyle comes to mind first but of course he had a chance to influence kids the most as he coached football. I spent from grade 7 to 13 with Dan, in biology classes as well as football, and don't remember a cross word yet he was able to inspire kids to work hard.  In those days students weren't advanced from grade to grade unless they did the work and passed, so starting in junior high, we shared the classroom with guys that already had 5 o'clock shadow in the morning. Some graduated from junior high to jail.
 
Como Lake High School was a tough place in the 50s and 60s, or were the kids tougher? The principal, Cam MacKenzie, fond of big cigars, took the fights and class skipping in his stride and was often seen at the near-by pool hall herding the boys back to school after lunch. It seemed to me that he knew everyone of the 800 or so kids and their circumstances. I last saw MacKenzie a few years after I had left and he predicted that I would become a teacher which I fervently denied at the time. He knew.
 
In the late 1950s and early 60s, when I was in high school, some of the teachers were veterans of WW II and those days were still fresh in their mind. Mr. Cronkite, was a math teacher in junior high but had been involved in the allied landing into Italy. He was a tall, well built man with a nose that had been broken once or twice, but smiled a lot and could be counted on to tell some war stories. I suppose he became a teacher through some veterans' program. He caught the attention of us boys when he arrived at school with a brand new 1959 Buick. The last time that I saw Cronkite was in the summer of 1959 or 1960, working as a roust-about a the PNE, needing to augment his teacher's wages.  
 
The teachers that were able to attract attention, mine at least, had interesting pasts. Mr. Ferguson, a little pompous in the British way, with a narrow, well trimmed moustache, had been involved in an archaeological dig in Marpole. When the tram lines were built in the early years of the last century, a large midden was uncovered. Ferguson had a beautiful collection of arrowheads from there. Vera Lightall had been a child of missionaries in China during the Boxer Rebellion. She was full of stories about the working conditions of children in China at that time. Mr. Meuldyk, from Belgium, taught French and Economics, and travelled extensively in Europe during his holidays. He was a little eccentric in that he took it as a personal affront if a student yawned during class and would be moved to tears by Edith Piaf music. Mrs. Waldy ran away with a student.
 
Teachers, like many people in those post war decades were colourful. Politically Correct (PC) hadn't been invented because people believed in saying it the way they saw it.
When, many years later, I found my way into teaching, it was in Coquitlam school district. Some of these interesting people now became colleagues. Indeed, Doug Grant
who was principal at Como Lake after Cam MacKenzie, was the principal at my first school, Dr. Charles Best Secondary. He was really a captain of the ship without micro-managing. Interestingly, Charles Best was built on the site of the old dump where I spent some time in my youth and had a close call with firearms.