Our mom was the consummate educational professional.
She entered teaching after studying at North Bay Teachers’ College (in those days called “normal school”) during the Second World War, and when she graduated in 1943 she was only allowed to teach in a rural area. She applied for three positions and was accepted by all three. She chose a one-room school with eight grades, called Harmony, on St. Joseph Island, in the northwestern part of Lake Huron. Mom was thrilled – one of her dreams was to live on that island one day.
Mom describes that first year as “difficult.” Her only curriculum-planning resource was the Little Grey Program Book of Studies, which was very limited, so Mom worked long hours after school and in the evenings producing “seatwork” using her trusty hectograph duplicator.
But those early years weren’t all dedicated to work. There happened to be a handsome, musical, gregarious young man named John McMaster who worked the family farm next door to where Mom boarded. It wasn’t long before they were attending parties together, where John played guitar or piano in the band, and walking to church on Sundays. Their brief courtship led to their marriage in August 1944, and they remained happily married until 2012, when my dad passed away at the age of 90.
In June 1945, Mom realized she was pregnant. She left teaching and began her new full-time job as Mother. Four more children followed Marianne’s birth: Pat in 1948, the twins Beth (me!) and Bill in 1949, and Kathleen in 1952. With the three-babies-in-one-year event, Dad became quite the cook and caregiver, and he was so thrilled when the new wringer washing machine arrived.
In 1955, when Bill and I started grade 1, Mom returned to her first love: teaching children.
Discrimination against married women being in the classroom was still prevalent, but Mom, with Dad’s help, was able to meet the board’s demands, including that Mom and Dad hire a housekeeper. They agreed, and she was back in a one-room school called Jocelyn, where she taught for two years. My dad became Mr. Mom, and we loved being greeted by a warm house, yummy-smelling food and the radio blasting out country tunes after our mile-and-a-half trek home from school.
A welcome change arrived when the St. Joseph and Jocelyn school boards fashioned two schools as grades 1 to 4 and two as 5 to 8. Mom spent seven happy years at the grade 1 to 4 level developing curricula, providing age-appropriate materials, designing learning centres that engaged students when assignments were complete, and encouraging peer support. Her goal was to have a happy, motivating learning environment where students were encouraged and well supported according to their developmental abilities.
In 1964, Mom began teaching in Richards Landing village school on St. Joseph Island, in the grades 2 and 3 classroom. During those two years, she pursued Primary Methods 1 and 2 courses in the summer, which certainly equipped her well for what was ahead.
In 1966, school boards across the area amalgamated to form the Central Algoma Board of Education and advertised for a program consultant in the language arts area. Needless to say, Mom was a great fit but had to agree to take a one-month board-paid course in Toronto called Teaching Reading, offered by what is now the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education – OISE.
And so began her 18 years as a consultant until she retired in 1984.
Her travels took her into six public schools and a one-room school in the Rydal Bank area north of Bruce Mines, a community on the shores of Lake Huron, assessing the reading programs and recommending many important changes, in terms of age-appropriate materials especially, and unique methods to help children learn to read and write.
In 1967, Mom returned to Toronto to take the Primary Methods Specialist Course. That enabled her to focus on special education as well as establish kindergartens beyond the single existing one in Thessalon, a town on the northern shore of Lake Huron east of Bruce Mines, and introduce active language experience programs with an emphasis on learning centres in Sault Ste. Marie and Central Algoma schools.
In 1973, Mom joined me on staff in the village school in Richards Landing, where she taught in 1964, taking on the grade 4 assignment so she could explore firsthand the benefits of the language-based activity centre approach.
That year, she says, was a highlight of her career! When I asked Mom why, she told me that she recognized that her methods worked and her advice to teachers was sound. She went on to say how she engaged the students in child-centred learning, working cooperatively in small groups researching a topic of their choosing and then making a presentation to the class. Students teaching students. She was so inspired by how much they learned.
In 1974, with the help of Christine Nash, a clinical psychologist with the Sudbury Resource Centre and OISE, Mom opened the first junior kindergarten in Thessalon. This effort spread over the years to the whole area and even into Sault Ste. Marie.
In 1977, Mom was surprised and delighted to receive Queen Elizabeth’s Silver Jubilee Medal, cited as “an expression of appreciation of worth and devoted service in education and of the esteem in which one is held by her associates.” Quite an honour for a career that spanned over 41 years with 10 years off to care for the five of us.
In late spring 2018, Mom moved from the Trefry Centre on St. Joseph Island to Pathways Retirement Residence in the Soo because she required more assistance. Since 2023, she has lived in the F. J. Davey Home, in full care, and is thriving with the TLC from the second-floor Cedar staff.
Mom spends her days doing 250-piece puzzles, playing games on her iPad, reading news and weather reports, and texting my sister and me. She maintains her interest in RTOERO through Renaissance magazine.
What is the one thing she learned about life through her remarkable career? “Everyone thrives when they are properly supported, even the incarcerated, and seeing widespread evidence of that amongst staff and students alike kept me motivated every day.”
