September 7, 1956

1089 Homes Street

Victoria, B.C.
Sept 7, 1956

Hello dear,

Jack Short has just finished the evening rebroadcast of today's recess so I can now lie back and say hello from my downy bed.  You can tell Bill that Princess Street did a dandy six furlong sprint today. Unfortunately they forgot to tell him the race was a mile and seventy yards and he ran out of gas coming into the stretch.  Honour, an Irish-bred, won by four.

You seem to be getting into all sorts of entertaining situations now that you are back in the wilds. For heaven's sake take care of yourself.  I can't see much percentage in marrying a fried and frazzled female. 

From the gloomy sound of the teacher situation it doesn't sound very promising for Christmas, does it? It is only a little over a week since your departure yet it seems like eons of time has elapsed.  I haven't been so lonely in a long while. Four months is a far distant looking period of time.

You have a pretty heavy teaching load starting at you from the look of the courses you showed me.  How much counselling time do you have?

I don't know if I will be able to fit in here or not.  In some respects it is fine and in others it no so hot.  On the positive side the kids are for the most part quite good although there are one or two over 17 according to my calculations but we have him because he is an epileptic and there is someone educationally retarded although needless to say he is superior to most of the kids.  He momentarily blacks out quite frequently according to him and to his records.  He has also had several grand mal seizures since Christmas so ?!  I also have a diabetic and a polio child plus another who has had TB and club foot.  I can see I took the wrong courses this summer.  I should have taken some pre-med work.

Mr. McMichael, on opening day  in the gymn informed all the assembled 960 students about the general class, why it was there and who was being placed in the class.  Naturally I was ecstatic with joy when he said the students in in class were boys and girls who were hopelessly lost last year. Although he is nice enough to me personally, he hasn't much understanding of the purpose of the course or what I am supposed to be doing.  I think he will be happy to leave me alone as long as I can keep these kids out of his hair.  Quite a few teachers have remarked already about the -dumb bunnies- the morons-and so on in no encouraging terms. However I have also had some encouragement from some of the others and I think the teachers who are giving them Home Ec and Shop are going to do a good job with them.

At the present time I have practically no materials to work with and it is very difficult to get the teaching programme rolling.  At least last year I had enough friends to turn to for resources for picture displays and so on.  My room is a pretty shabby sight as yet.  Maybe next week I can get something started.

One other thing I will have to get used to is that the school is locked after four thirty and while it is possible to stay later than this, it is not possible to get back in the evenings.  This is a little inconvenient but I do have a desk here so I can do most of my work here at home.  Naturally with this arrangement one does not get to know the other teachers very quickly, in fact I only know about a half dozen so far.

You say your Aunt Betty will be teaching a class of severely retarded in Grande Prairie.  Infosfar as materials go, she can have the Special Class Teacher magazines. Also she can have this copy of the Journal of Mental Deficiency if she wants it.  She might find it profitable to join the association.  If she wants I can send her a lengthy bibliography of books put out by the National Society for Exceptional Children.  It covers a tremendous range in this field.  A good resource person is Mrs Rose of Syracuse NY.

I hope I have been of some help.  I realize now how some of the people I asked for help must have felt-completely inadequate.

By the way, I received my marks back from Syracuse and I received top grades in both courses as I was led to believe before I left. Makes you think, doesn't it?

Well, my 'love' it is now 12:45 so I think I will jpin Morpheus in a quick round of snooze.

Goodnight.

Love, George

Undated

Somehow this letter is missing page 1 and 3

...do you have more faith in me than I have?

At any rate we will discuss all these things when I pull into the big city next week.

A short recap of the events of the past week and then to the local postal service.

The courses terminated in a blaze of gobbledy-gook but I managed to withstand the onslaught fairly well. On the final day as I was leaving I thanked the instructor and told him I would be unable to attend the farewell ceremony in the afternoon and to my surprise he said that it would be perfectly alright and he said he had enjoyed my presence in the class and further, if I ever wanted a job in California he would be please to sign me up.  Wonders never cease.

I went directly to Toronto with another teacher whose home is there,  He invited me to his home while I was maneuvering for a new vehicle. I accepted and had a fine time while trying to make a deal.  I ended up with a big fat debt to last for the next two years and a Pontiac Station Wagon.  I did quite well on the trade-in though inasmuch as Jezebel was dripping oil and grease from every pore, her transmission and clutch were in sad repair, her starting mechanism was recalcitrant, her fuel-tank was leaking and, in general, she was a very unhappy old lady.  It is quite a treat to pace along the highway in sound machine for a change.

August 3, 1956

You probably won't be able to reach me by
return mail so if you write to
Delhi Ont c//o Burns Foster I will
get it up to Aug 15th
Your last letter took 4 days.
I leave here Mon Aug 10,

305 Waverly Hall
Syracuse 10 N.Y. U.S.A.
August 3, 1956

Greetings Janet;

I received your letter half an hour ago and, according to you, as it takes a longer time span for a letter to cross the continent from east to west there is hardly enough time to get this to you, unless we get good communications, before you head off on your adventure.

This has been a bad week for me.  I have been seriously awaiting 2 letters and yours in particular and of them have arrived and both let me down from an anticipation that I have been building up.

The first letter was from Doug Johnston in Montreal.  He had promised to take his wife to the Maine coast on the weekend and I wanted to see him and had made all the necessary arrangements with his wife and children and employer.  I may decide to take a longer trip and end up in Maine myself for a day but the car has been behaving very badly and none of the local garages can fix it so I don't know whether to chance it. I think I may go straight across Niagara and up to Toronto and dicker with an automobile outfit on a new car.

The second letter was the one I received from you three quarters of an hour ago and you say your trip through the North is on.  I had almost hoped you would come east and meet me here as you thought you might do in your previous letter.

Do you know why?  Turn over the page and see if you can guess.

You need someone to look after you and I would like to volunteer my services in the capacity of your husband.  If you are interested in this matter, the necessary documents can be procured and plans for a suitable ceremony can be arranged at your convenience.

I wrote a much more flowery proposal a week ago and almost made it to the post box but I hesitated when you didn't answer my last letter. I wanted to know just a little more surely in my own mind that I was on the right track at last and I think now that I was right in waiting.

I am not quite sure how long it will take me to get to Vancouver. You say you will probably get there about August the 19th. I doubt if I can make it before about the 22 or 23 according to the stopovers I had planned at Delhi and Biggar.  Where can I contact you after the start of your voyage?  In Vancouver at Slights?

You decide what you want to do. I am agreeable to almost anything you might suggest.

Thank you for your faith in whatever is in me that keeps me from degenerating into nothing.  I needed some encouragement and knowing my weaknesses will need a lot more in the future probably.

The time has come my dear to get this in the mail so I will put it in an envelope and wish it a safe and rapid journey.

Love,

George

July 14, 1956

305 Waverly Avenue
Syracuse, New York
July 14, 1956

Greetings Jan

Thank you for the novel.  It is many moons since anyone has put so much to pen for me. Please do not expect a reciprocal quantity as there isn't that much to write about.

I am a bit disappointed in the courses so far. I was talked into switching from Goldstein's course-he is the supervisor for special education in New York and am now taking two courses dealing with intermediate slow learners,  One is a demonstration class and the other a follow up.  It is called a theory course but in reality it is a methods course.

The trouble with these courses is that they are not designed for the older kids. The reading materials are all Dick and Jane types. The art is done in the classroom, same as with all the other courses, and all in all the program is set up for the elementary school, not the junior high.

However, the woman teaching the demonstration class is a very good teacher so I am picking up a few techniques. Also the instructor in the afternoon course has had a fair amount of knowledge of the educational practices in this field for California so talks with him, if I can get him alone, should be helpful.  Another aid in my search is that my nextdoor neighbour has a junior high class in Toronto and at the same time is talking Goldstein's course on secondary education.  I am going to try to get in touch with Goldstein through him and see if it isn't possible to pick up some ideas on this problem.

There isn't anything to report on the socio-emotional front. I haven't even made an overture to an American femme yet.  My entire experience in the social world has been to split a few beers with the boys and I have had one formal type banquet for the vice president of the Ford Foundation because the Foundation just gave Syracuse four million dollars for education.

The thing I miss most hear is that there aren't any horses running in this vicinity.  They don't even carry any form charts in the local papers. Today I hope to catch Nashua running in the east and Swaps in the west on Radio Monitor.

Your letter made it in three days.  I will comply with your suggestion and see if a more rapid transit can be accomplished by aeroplane.

You sound as though you are in need of a vacation.  I hope your Northern excursion is still on. Take it easy.

George

Dad's UBC ID card

My Father's Letters

Our daughter Jordan was home last week. Recently engaged, she asked me what I knew about her grandparent's engagement since neither of them are around to tell her about it.

They were high school teachers in Dawson Creek when Dawson Creek was young. They were a bit older than most of their colleagues- Dad was a WW II pilot and an engineer before he became a teacher, Mom had a degree in Commerce and a Masters Degree from the U of A, but neither had found their "soulmate." As the only two single teachers at their school, they were frequently thrown together at staff events. Before long, they started going around together. Then they became an "item". Then they started wondering if they were just together because they were the only two single people they knew. Or maybe that the one thing they had in common was that they were both teachers. My dad got cold feet. He resigned his job, got a new one in Victoria, and went to Syracuse New York to take summer school courses in teaching special ed, which was for some reason the area he, as a decorated WW II pilot with an engineering degree, had been assigned. My mom stayed behind.  They wrote back and forth. My mom went on a cruise to Alaska to mend her broken heart. Out of the blue, my dad proposed.

"I know their story," I told Jordan.  "And I have his letter of proposal."

Stored away in a box of paper, my dad's love letters to my mom, in his perfect penmanship, written with a fountain pen in turquoise ink. Eleven letters I had never had the nerve to read. Eleven letters that went with her from Dawson Creek to Victoria to Trail, back to Dawson Creek, to Tumbler Ridge, and finally back to Victoria. Details both personal  and mundane. Why did she save them? Mementos of their early life together? A symbol of his love? Did she mean for anyone else to read them? I think she did. 

So I gave them to my daughter to read, and on a road trip to the airport from whence she would return to her adopted nation and her fiance, Jordan read them all with gasps and laughter and the occasional "Oh Granddad!"

Here they are.