Maybe you regret not having taken that job or gone on that trip. Or you don’t feel regret but wonder what a different choice would have meant. Or you simply imagine your life taking a different turn.
We asked members: If you could have one “do-over” in life, what would it be?
Cheryl Fowler (District 30 Northumberland) would care less about the little things, be braver and bolder – and laugh more.
Linda Welch (District 34 York Region) would choose an arts-related course of studies rather than the one encouraged by her parents.
Other members mentioned alternate careers, like archaeologist, veterinarian, doctor or football coach. Others regretted not taking an opportunity to work in a different country, get braces as an adult or buy a hobby farm. Some wished they’d been more confident, or had opportunities that weren’t open to women at the time.
Here are some others:
David Pyper (District 40 Brant) would have loved to have entered politics. “Politics is an important sector that needs people who are involved and want to make things better,” he says.
He’s always had leadership roles in politics at various levels. He’s been approached to run for office at local, provincial and federal levels. But when he was younger, it never seemed to be the right time to run, and as he got older, he didn’t want to take on all the electioneering. Now retired, it’s one thing he feels he missed out on.
Having said that, he loved teaching and was happy with his roles as teacher, school principal and superintendent in the public system – a role that is about half politics, he notes.
Eileen Schwartz (District 16 City of Toronto) started teaching at 50 and wouldn’t have chosen any other career. She just wishes she had started earlier. The reason for the delay? Schwartz had her BA, but after marrying she had four children in quick succession. “In those days, I was the one taking care of the kids, and my husband made the money,” she says. It was always in the back of her mind to teach, but she couldn’t make it happen because of childcare costs.
In the meantime, she did everything she could to be in education. She took a course at the synagogue so she could teach in her children’s religious school. She was the school’s librarian. She was president of the parent/teacher organization at another school.
When her youngest son was 17, Schwartz took a year-long teacher apprenticeship program that allowed her to be a supply teacher. She then got into York University in Toronto to make it official. “Part of my time was spent working in schools I already knew from the apprenticeship program,” she says. “One of them offered me a job at the end of the school year. I ended up being there for 10 years, teaching grade 6 and concentrating on children with learning disabilities and later ESL.”
Schwartz went on to get her master’s, then a doctorate at 67. Now retired and 82, she is thinking about what to do next.
Gary O’Dwyer (District 30 Northumberland) played a lot of baseball in his youth, and given the opportunity might have gone further. But practical reasons stopped him. “There weren’t many opportunities for Canadian kids to play baseball,” he explains. “If you didn’t make it to the major leagues, you might become a permanent triple A player, and the pay wasn’t great. And you’d just have a high school education.”
O’Dwyer doesn’t have any regrets and considers himself lucky with a career that he “stumbled into.” He spent his high school years in a seminary boarding school but left the calling when he graduated. He majored in history at university, simply because the timetable fit his part-time job and he had grown up talking politics and history with his family.
After university, he decided to teach until he figured out what he wanted to do. “It turned out I had developed a real passion for teaching and truly loved my job,” he says.
After retiring, he was part of a small church community that broke away from the Roman Catholic Church. He took up his studies again and was ordained, becoming pastor of the new church.
He’s still a huge baseball fan and loves going to spring training with his youngest daughter.
If Sholom Glouberman (District 16 City of Toronto) could go back in time, he’d become an astronaut. “I’d love a chance to look at the Earth from above and meet the other crazy people who want to get away from the hurly-burly of everyday life on Earth,” he says.
Glouberman taught philosophy and is fascinated by advances in the field over the centuries. He says the astonishing view of Earth from space gives a sense of where we are in the world and what humanity has accomplished.
Now retired, he’s just finished writing his fifth book. It’s a novel about the rise of individualism and how that’s affected many different fields, especially medicine. “Just as much of our knowledge is collective, so is a great deal of our health. We’ve lost sight of the social aspects of health, and that seems to me to be a terrible mistake.”
Dale “Spike” Adams (District 15 Halton) never misses watching the Olympics, and that relates to his do-over: “Compete in the Olympic Games.”
Adams started wrestling in high school and set out to make it his career. He was a member of Canada’s national wrestling team from 1980 to 1984 and was alternate at the 1980 Moscow Olympics, the year the Games were boycotted to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
On the way to the trials that would decide who went to the 1984 Olympics, a dump truck hit Adams’s car. He made it to the match with no time to warm up and lost trying to avoid a tie. Then while finishing his master’s degree in 1987, he was attacked by three men in a parking lot and required knee reconstruction. “You cannot make this stuff up,” he says. Complications meant weeks in the hospital, followed by more medical procedures over two years. He tried to come back for the 1988 Olympics but couldn’t bend his right knee past 90 degrees. The Olympic dream was gone.
After various jobs, Adams finished teachers’ college and joined the Halton District School Board in 1989. He retired as program leader and head of athletics, technology and HALE (healthy active living education) and has mentored thousands of successful athletes and coaches.
“Everybody has a few regrets, but I’ve had a great life,” he says. “And the Olympic spirit lives on!”
What’s your “do-over”?
“Build homes.” —Michael Creaghan (District 13 Hamilton-Wentworth, Haldimand)
“Have the opportunity to choose any career. The School of Forestry at U of T, for example, did not admit women until 1980.” —Sylvia Cowls (District 34 York Region)
“[Become] a famous singer.” —Coral Eling (District 24 Scarborough and East York)
“Work in construction.” —Terry Shaw (District 26 Kenora)
“Teach overseas.” —Laura Lee Millard-Smith (District 17 Simcoe County)
“Stay in my first job after leaving school.” —Lionel Rudd (District 4 Sudbury, Manitoulin)
“I would try working as an officer on a freighter navigating the world.” —Kent Brown (District 14 Niagara)
“Start flying earlier.” —James Brian McKinley (District 31 Wellington)
“I had a chance to get into radio when I was in university. I didn’t take it because I worried my mom wouldn’t approve. To this day, I wonder what would have happened if I’d had the courage to ask her opinion. I might have become a star radio personality on a major-market radio station!” —Marvin Sandomirsky (District 28 Region of Durham)
