POSTING #117

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NOTE

Now that the spring rains have finally stopped (fingers crossed!), the next month is going to be busy as we work to complete the landscaping changes we started last fall. 

To give me some time for those gardening chores, the next Posting, number 118, will not appear until July 3rd.

I hope you will enjoy the great weather that June is going to bring us (fingers still crossed!!) and please come back on July 3rd!

A Speech I Couldn't Give

I was asked to speak on May 6th to the 2011 class of Frontier College labourer-teachers as part of their orientation training for summer assignments working with and teaching migrant workers on Ontario farms.  

Officials of the College thought that the new recruits might like to hear about some of my experiences as a labourer-teacher.

Unfortunately, a bout of acute bronchitis prevented me from speaking to the group.

I have written often about my Frontier College experiences in this blog and I thought readers might find the talk interesting.

So, here is the speech I couldn't give.

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Good evening!

It is 55 years, almost to the day, since I and 20 or so university students attended an orientation session at the Frontier College headquarters in what had once been a stately home on Sherbourne Street in Toronto.

When I was considering whether to accept an invitation to speak to you, I tried to think what I would have thought if the organizers of that 1956 orientation session had brought in an old guy from the class of 1901 to speak to us.

I think I would have been dubious about the usefulness of listening to some geezer reminisce about his experiences from the remote past.

My first inclination, therefore, was to refuse the invitation to speak---but I gave it some more thought.

I remember feeling pretty scared back in 1956 about what I was going to face as a labourer-teacher. Would I be able to cope with the work, the teaching and the living conditions in the place where I would be spending the next four months?

Perhaps you are also feeling a little scared about what you have got yourselves into.

I asked myself: What can an alumnus from the distant past say that would be relevant to the 2011 class? Is there something that I could say that would allay somewhat the natural nervousness that one has before going into the field?

In the end, I decided to talk about four things. First, the labouring part of being a labourer-teacher; then the teaching part; thirdly, the importance of stories (I'll explain more about that later on); and finally, the need to look after yourselves.

Starting with 'labouring', I didn't sleep very well the first night in that bush camp bunk house at Dog River, north of Thunder Bay. Part of the problem was that there were 39 other men snoring, snorting, and talking in their sleep, but the big problem was just nerves. I finally fell asleep--- just before, it seemed, someone came to wake us up.

That was the last night I had trouble sleeping.

After that I fell into bed exhausted from the labouring and slept soundly.

The first two weeks were the toughest---until sunburn turned into tan, blisters into calluses, and flabby, essay-writing, muscles into reasonably toned-up sinews.

I found that watching the other workers taught me a great deal about how to perform whatever task we were doing, from ditch digging to hauling logs out of the water. My first attempts were always clumsy but gradually I became more skilled.

The men noticed that I was trying to improve and they seemed to respect that.

In my orientation training I was told that the founder of Frontier College, Alfred Fitzpatrick, had said that labourer-teachers must win the respect of the workers on the point of a shovel.

I found that to be true.

I also found that I enjoyed and felt good about developing manual skills.

I think you will as well.

Let's turn  to teaching.

In some ways, I found the teaching role to be more challenging than the labouring one.

I didn't feel I was very successful with formal, class-room type language training. It was hard to keep the workers challenged when the level of English knowledge varied so greatly. Some were beginners while others in the classes were at an intermediate or advanced level.

I had more success with informal, one-on-one language coaching either during work or after dinner.

Language training techniques have progressed a great deal in the last 55 years and I am sure you will have more success than I had.

Citizenship training went better. People were eager to get Canadian citizenship and my political science background made it easy to coach them on our constitution, levels of government and so on.

As another part of the teaching role, the College had provided a 16 mm projector and I held film shows using National Film Board documentaries. In that pre-television era, the shows were very popular.

During one of the shows, the electricity, produced by the camp's diesel generators, surged and blew out the projection lamp. I had a spare but when I tried to remove the burned-out lamp I found that the surge had expanded the bulb so that it wouldn't drop out of its compartment. As I tried to figure out what to do, the audience got restless and I began to sweat.

One of my worker friends looked at the problem, went out and came back with a large screw driver. He stabbed the lamp several times until it broke. It was then an easy matter to replace the lamp.

The whole experience reminded me of a saying that was popular in the camp at that time: "The bigger the problem, the bigger the hammer."

Every few weeks the College sent in a large wooden box with donated paperback books---this informal library was well used.

Looking back, it seems to me that in addition to those efforts to provide some education and entertainment, I played a role somewhat similar to the letter writer in villages in India. Workers asked for help in understanding and responding to letters from Canadian businesses. I remember having a discussion with Lazlo, a Hungarian Refugee, about how to end a letter to a bank. I suggested ``Yours truly`` but he preferred ``Yours very truly``. He said with a big smile that the `very` made it ``nicer``. We went with the `very`.

I also found myself being the arbiter in settling bunkhouse arguments. For example, two fellows came to me with a question: ``Are the tides controlled by the moon?`` I said they were.

That brought a rejoinder: How come there are tides when there is no moon? I am not sure I convinced the loser that the moon is still there even when we can't see it.

I was pleased to learn that in addition to helping with English you will also be offering training in computer skills---I am sure that will be very popular.

I'd like to shift now to my third theme: the importance of stories.

There is a plaque in the sidewalk outside the New York City Public Library with a quotation from Muriel Rukeyser, " The universe is made of stories, not atoms".

The quotation can have many meanings but for me it means that how we understand and interact with the world is determined by the personal universe of stories that we carry around with us. The larger and more varied our collection of stories is, the richer our experience of life can be.

How do we go about collecting stories?

When I was young there was a columnist, Greg Clarke, who told wonderful stories--- humourous, sad, touching, but always entertaining---about his experiences as a soldier in World War I, and then as a journalist, a parent, and a friend.

A suspicious  reader once said to Clarke, "How come you have so many stories?"

The questioner seemed to be suggesting that Clarke made up the stories, that they had never happened.

Clarke replied that he just put himself in places where stories could happen.

By joining Frontier College, I put myself---and you are putting yourselves--- in a place where stories can happen. You could have worked in an office, a store, a restaurant or some other 'normal' summer job and that would have been fine. There would have been some stories.

But you have chosen something more challenging, and something that is therefore richer in story opportunities.

For example, in my weekly blog, Letter from Virgil, I have recounted the story told by one of the workers, Fred (not his real name), a quiet, reserved man, who had fought with the Canadian Army during World War I in the trenches in France. During artillery attacks he would dream of returning to Canada, getting married and having a family.

But during one of the attacks he was wounded and lost his manhood.

He told me about spending many angry years drinking and fighting all over North America as he tried to come to grips with his situation. In the end he was able to find something approaching a normal life. (The full story can be found here).

By the way, if you are interested in other stories about my Frontier College experiences, I suggest that you log onto my blog, Letter from Virgil, and then in the Google Custom Search box at the top of the postings enter the name of one of the three places I worked: Dog River, Tulsequah, or Kenora.

You will have your own stories and I would encourage you to capture them.  Writing them down will fix them in your memory---perhaps in a journal, or emails to friends and relatives, or as Facebook entries.

Finally, I would like to say a word about the need to look after yourselves.

When I was a labourer-teacher the world was a safer place. The sun didn't pose the hazards it does today to skin and eyes. There weren't so many noisy machines that could damage hearing. There were fewer toxic chemicals.

At our orientation we were warned about the dangers of dehydration, and about the need to keep our electrolytes up---by, for example, adding lemon juice to drinking water.

That was it, and that was perfectly adequate.

But the world has changed.

When we go south in the winter, I am always upset at the sight of migrant workers on golf courses and in residential areas working with leaf blower engines strapped to their backs but without any ear protection, spraying chemicals without face masks, and working in the bright sun without sun glasses.

I am hoping that Ontario labour standards will help protect you and the migrant workers.

Please take care of yourselves.

And have a wonderful, safe summer full of stories!

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See you on July 3rd for Posting #118 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting,  or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.