Bill Broadley Interview: BCTF President 1975-1977

Interview: Bill Broadley (BB)

Interviewer: Ken Novakowski (KN)

Assisted by: Al Cornes and Lesley Harrington

Date: July 12, 2016

Location: Vancouver, BC

[00:00:10] KN: Ok, we are interviewing today, on July 12, 2016, Bill Broadley who was the president of the BCTF from 1975 to 1977. The interview is being conducted by Ken Novakowski and Al Cornes with technical assistance by Lesley Harrington. Good morning, Bill.

[00:00:30] BB: Good morning Ken.

[00:00:32] KN: And thank you very much for taking the time to do this interview, we really appreciate it. We are going to start out with some basic questions about your origins and stuff like that. So, where and when were you born, and where were you raised?

[00:00:48] BB: I was born in Calgary, in Alberta in 1934. Spent a few years before my parents—during the depression they moved to Victoria—about 1938 or 1939, so I grew up in Victoria.

[00:01:06] KN: Okay. And can you tell us a bit about your family? Was it a union or politically progressive household?

[00:01:16] BB: I wouldn’t use that term, but my father was an accountant and he was in the First World War as, a sort of, 18-year-old soldier, and then, I guess, he lost his job in the late 1930s. So that’s when they moved to Victoria and he worked for the city for a while. And then, when the Second World War started he joined up again and spent most of the war in Prince Rupert. My mother by then had three kids, I was the oldest. And then my father suffered a stroke in 1945—actually on V-J Day and

[00:01:56] BB: he never really recovered from that, and spent the rest of his life in veteran hospitals—both here and in Victoria. And so, my mother then, I guess, was on welfare for a while and then she returned to work in the 1920s—I guess she was in her mid-20s—she got (a job) at the Receiver General. She was a very fast typist and had won awards for it and demonstrated fast typing at some of the exhibitions in Calgary. And after she was Receiver General for a short time, she was transferred to military headquarters. And when she got there they said, “You can’t come here, you’re a woman!” Well, she did not like that and I’m not quite sure what connections she used, but she ended up back there.

[00:02:55] BB: Even though she was a woman she was going to work where they sent her, even though it was military headquarters and all the other people there were men. So, I guess I learned from her that you always fought for the underdog, and you didn’t take nonsense if you didn’t feel it was right. She wasn’t, what I would call, politically progressive or anything, but she always worked for the community,

[00:03:26] BB: in the neighbourhood that we lived in, in South Fairfield. She went around gathering signatures to have some civic money put into playground development and that, and she served on the Victoria recreation council—this was all before she returned to work. And then after she had returned to work, we were pretty well grown up by then, and she finally was at the Royal Roads Military College when she retired. And she worked—they were then called the 60s and ups clubs; she spent a long time helping to organize in the various areas she worked in by then. She was a membership secretary for years and years, and she would be at the desk greeting everyone as they came in, by name.

[00:04:16] BB: And as her memory began to fade, she decided that she wouldn’t be there anymore and she basically kept to herself in her own place. The dementia just eventually took over, but she lived to the age of 96 when she died. And her health hadn’t always been great, but physically she was from a long-lived family, so, it wasn’t unusual for people in her family to live that long.

[00:04:46] BB: But she was 1 of 11 kids, 5 sisters and 5 brothers—it may have been the other way around. And I spent a lot of time there when I was a young kid. And the brothers—it didn’t matter what the argument was, what the issue was—they always argued about it. So, I sort of got a bit of that in my early years that, I think, always influenced me. I learned how to argue well, or at least argue about anything. And usually take the side of the person that sees beyond the side of the losing side. So, basically that’s the best time. She spent a lot time during election campaigns, federal ones, working for the Liberal Party.

[00:05:35] BB: I think her family had been in part of that party back in the prairies, but I’m not quite sure how that began.

[00:05:45] KN: Okay. Can you tell us a bit about your experience in the school system?

[00:05:51] BB: I didn’t intend to be a school teacher. All these sort of tests you took suggesting what kind of work you should go into. Social type programs, I was poor on. I was great in salesmanship and things of that sort, so, law was my goal. But I had an uncle who was a lawyer, her youngest brother, and he suggests, “Why don’t you go to Normal School, and you can get a teaching certificate?” because it only took a year,

[00:06:23] BB: and I had already been at Victoria College for two years. And from that I found that I really loved teaching, even though I didn’t go there with the intention of making it a career. So I’m glad that I went that route, and glad that I never really felt the need to change, it was great fun. Real challenge. You felt like you were doing something useful and I always found something different to do. I could never be one of those teachers who is trying to do the same thing year after year. You had to make it different to make it exciting for yourself, as well as for kids. And I started teaching in elementary school,

[00:07:03] BB: interestingly in Victoria. I started teaching at the school I’d gone to as an elementary student, Sir James Douglas Elementary. And after two years, in those days, they didn’t have a lot of people with the degrees for junior high and that. A new junior high opened, and I applied, and got transferred there for its opening year—I spent 10 years there. Got involved in math education—very involved in it. And took a year off—I actually won an award from the Ministry of Education.

[00:07:42] BB: It was about $7,000 to go and study at UBC and to work on a Master’s Program. That would be about 1966–1967. That was when I did a lot of work in math education. I’d been on math revision committee by then for the provincial government and it shows you how times have changed in education. I was on the revision committee because I had grumbled to a Past President of the BCTF actually, Harry Dee, who was a director in instruction in Victoria. And I had tried to get some textbooks that happened to be printed in the United States about a new math program. It was highly spoken about,

[00:08:28] BB: and I had learned about it through BC Teacher magazine article by a professor at UBC who had written, “Why doesn’t somebody in BC try this?” So, I decided that I would be the one, and nobody else seemed interested. So, I had it all set up, buy the books and that, and unfortunately it was produced in the United States, and someone in school board or somebody in the board office, said, “Well we couldn’t have an American textbook!” even though mathematics wasn’t very national.

[00:08:59] BB: And so, I was denied the right to use it. So, Harry Dee came out to the school and gave me the bad news and I sort of the grumbled. He said, “Well, they are going to be looking at the math curriculum.” And I said, “Yeah, and they’ll just do the same old thing over and over again.” And within a week, I think, I had got a call from the Ministry of Education, John Meredith, who was the curriculum director of sort asking if I would serve on this committee. Now, I don’t think that happens much anymore, where people challenge (a system) and then get appointed. I think it’s rather—rude is a word to describe it. People don’t behave the same way in terms of the way they try to get ahead,

[00:09:44] BB: whereas in the path, I think, you could really challenge things and people respect you for it. Even, if they disagreed with you—they’d respect you for that. And I think we’ve lost that in education to some extent.

[00:10:00] KN: So, you sort of became an accidental teacher. You didn’t intend to go into teaching. Did you have any teachers when you were in public school that stood out for you? That were significant in your life as a student?

[00:10:17] BB: Not one, we just had lots of great teachers, like I went to Victoria High School. That’s where I learned, what’s on the government exam is not really important. It’s knowing how to find about information, and that not having to remember it all—that was from one of my Social Studies teachers. Math teachers interestingly enough, even though I became a math teacher, were less memorable. On one occasion, I asked my math teacher, “Is it possible?”

[00:10:56] BB: we were talking about graphing on the X- and Y-coordinates like on two dimensions and I had seen some photographs on Life Magazine about three dimensional models. And so, I said, “Well can’t you do it on a third axis?” And he paused for a moment and said, “No.” Which I knew was a lie. And at that point, he was nice guy, and I didn’t know, if (he) just didn’t know or whether he didn’t want to get into the topic. I never knew, and I never had the courage to ask him because he was later a principal of the school I was in. I probably should have asked but I didn’t.

[00:11:40] BB: And that was kind of math teacher I had. And another one, I got sent to the office because he said, “You got to copy this exactly.” And I wasn’t doing it exactly as he walked around, up and down the aisles. And I said, “Well, sir, I can’t write exactly like you.” And at that point I got sent to the office and that’s the way it went. At Victoria High School, that’s when I got into newspaper writing. I had hocked newspapers on street corners the way the used when I was in, I guess, junior high-school, maybe even in elementary school.

[00:12:27] BB: It must have been elementary school because I was selling them when the war was on. And I got intrigued with going in and writing and journalism. And so, we had two newspapers in Victoria then—the Colonist and the Times—and I delivered the Times. And I got interested in why the Colonist had students from each high-school in Victoria writing a column every weekend in the Colonist, and the Times had nothing. So, I went down and convinced them that they should have something like that

[00:13:09] BB: and they said, “Well, if you write it, we’ll print it if it’s okay.” So, my first step was to get permission from-schools, because I would be doing it for all the school, not just the separate person in each one. So, I started it at this school on the West Side of Victoria, Esquimalt High School, and went to their principal and suggested it. And he said, “Oh you wouldn’t be able to do it, you’d have to get the approval of the Superintendent of Education.” So, he was in Craigdarroch Castle in Victoria at the time,

[00:13:44] BB: so, I got on my bike and rode up there and went and spoke to him and he said no. So, I went back to the Times and said, “They won’t let me do it.” And they said, “If you get the information, we’ll print it.” So, what I did, I phoned the people who wrote it for the Colonist for each school and they would tell me what they were writing and they had to send it to a school supervisor before it was submitted to the newspaper. And they would tell me on the phone what they were writing about, so I can write about it for the Times.

[00:14:22] BB: But I didn’t have to send it to anyone except take it down to the Times and they would edit it and print it. And for the first few weeks they had this terrible by-line “by Stu Dent,” but after two weeks they decided that was too bad. And so, they quit using that. I think they began using my name. And I was fine, and it went on for most of the year until one issue—sometimes they took little filler things out—and it was about pushing fire alarms and bells for changing class. Those were not automatic then, in some of the schools in the city.

[00:15:12] BB: And it was in Mount Douglas High-school, the secretary or students pressed the wrong button and set the fire alarm instead of the change bells, and it mentioned a little thing in the paper about it. Well, at the principals’ meeting, apparently, this became a big issue. Reporting things like this in the newspaper. And so, when I phoned the people contacted at each school, they said I can’t talk to you this week, I’m not allowed to.

[00:15:42] BB: Anyway, that’s the way censorship worked in those days. It just amazes me, when I think about it. Anyway, I seemed to find out the information out anyways and continued doing it. And then I worked there one summer sort of like a copy boy. And I was convinced by other long time reporters that there were perhaps other careers other than being a reporter and that’s how I got more involved in thinking about law. And then, as it happened—stumbling into education really and loving it. And when I was at Victoria College, we had some censorship problems there, which created a big problem.

[00:16:29] BB: Partly because I put a headline on The Martlet, which was more like a high-school newspaper at that time than it is today, saying, “Ho-Hum Normal School Complains Again.” Because we shared the same building, and if you wanted to use the auditorium you needed permission of the principal of the Normal School. And the Normal School was run like a high-school. During the summer, I was working on the steamship, the CPR boats, in the summer; and applied for Normal School. And to go there, you had to be interviewed by somebody. And so I was going to be interviewed by the principal and

[00:17:12] BB: he was not too pleased with me. So, I was not so sure I would get into Normal School, but I did. And did quite well there. I actually got the Max Cameron Award. That was my first encounter with the BCTF—it was actually the second. My first encounter was hearing Charlie Ovans speak; and my big question was, why you had to be a member because membership was compulsory, I was challenging the status quo, as usual. So then I began teaching and I guess things went along pretty well straight forward as a young teacher.

[00:17:58] BB: At junior high-school there were a bunch of people, some of whom had been involved in the local teaching association and I think that’s how I got involved. And I worked on professional development for a number of years; and then I did get convinced to run for President. Unfortunately for me, I think, there was a very popular principal who ran for President, so I lost. So our daughters were young and it gave me the chance to drop out and stay at home more often; and not have all these evening or after-school meetings. And a few years later there was only one person running for President, and a number did not think he would be a good person for President. And

[00:18:51] BB: I was convinced to run against him, and defeated him and just went on from there.

[00:18:58] KN: Did you have any experience when you were Local President that you want to talk about?

[00:19:06] BB: I tried to make it clear that I was a full-time teacher. It was, when being a Local President was an amateur’s job. And one of my recommendations was that you needed somebody who had time off for doing the President’s work. To do it properly you needed more time.

[00:19:27] BB: Some people tried to persuade me to run again, but I wasn’t going to run if I was recommending this change—besides, I liked teaching more. So I went back to teaching and got involved with—I guess, I forget if it was called the Representative Assembly then or not… Anyway, it had evolved somewhere along that period of time into the Rep Assembly as it later became. And stayed involved in that way, after being President that is. And during the 1972 election, we set up—I guess I had been elected to the Executive in 1972 as a Member at Large.

[00:20:15] BB: We had the funds to fight the Social Credit government on their education policy and pensions, primarily. Then, two members of the Social Credit Party went to court and froze the funds. They were teachers who—their basic argument was, “We’re members of a party that doesn’t agree with this; and our money is being used to oppose our principles.” And the BCTF lost in court. As it happened, I taught with the daughter-in-law of the judge, who heard that case.

[00:20:54] BB: And she indicated, sort of, over cock-tails or something one weekend, when they were visiting them in Vancouver, how she said he felt sorry for the BCTF lawyer, who was this well thought of a lawyer, arguing this hopeless case before him, in terms of the principles involved. In any case, it got us annoyed enough, so that we left the BCTF building, went to a hotel and organized a group called the Teachers’ Political Action Group. And I co-chaired that from Victoria. I think it was Gary Onstad—

[00:21:10] KN: Who was the other chair?

[00:21:26] BB: I think it was Gary Onstad. He was the co-chair here and most of the action was here. A number of BCTF staff were involved—

[00:21:43] BB: Jim Cairnie was quite involved—but it was kept distinct from the BCTF. And we got volunteer donations from teachers around the province, partly realizing they were going to get their other money refunded, that had already been taken. And I think the anger that teachers had, about the way, in which the court case had gone, helped get them very involved, actively as participants in the election that summer.

[00:22:16] BB: And the result was an NDP victory. And years later, when I was President, and meeting with the members of the SoCred caucus, after they had been re-elected under Bill Bennet; there were still older SoCred members who—we couldn’t talk about what we were there to talk about—which was teaching and curriculum. It was about teachers shouldn’t have done that, it wasn’t their right to do that. And, you know, sort of, a hopeless case for some of them, in terms of trying to explain that teachers have the same rights of everybody else. I think I digress a bit here.

[00:22:55] KN: No, I think that’s good. So, basically from there you continued on the BCTF Executive and eventually ran for the First Vice-President, when Jim was president.

[00:23:10] KN: Was that right?

[00:23:11] BB: That’s right.

[00:23:13] KN: And served two years as First Vice-President before you ran as President.

[00:23:18] BB: Right. Well actually, I ran for President in Jim’s second year. I ran against him, and lost. And was then re-elected as First Vice.

[00:23:34] KN: Right.

[00:23:50] BB: I was one of the few people who actually jumped from Member at Large, I think, to First Vice. The position of Second Vice-President seemed to be a dead-end. I think Rob Wilson, from Lake Cowichan, I think he is the one who called it that. Not very many people did what I did what I did, though. Mostly, they went through the steps.

[00:24:07] KN: Second Vice and then First Vice?

[00:24:11] BB: Yeah.

[00:24:15] KN: So once you became President, as you indicated earlier there was a new government, the Bennett government—

[00:24:20] BB: No, it was the NDP government.

[00:24:22] KN: When you were elected, but when you took office?

[00:24:25] BB: No, it was still the NDP, until December.

[00:24:28] KN: That’s right, it was the NDP for the first few months, wasn’t it?

[00:24:31] BB: Yes, everything was going smoothly at the beginning of the school year.

[00:24:34] KN: Yeah.

[00:24:37] BB: We were ready for smaller classes and general better financing for education

[00:24:41] BB: and then, on Thanksgiving, the federal government introduced the AIB program, the Anti-Inflation Program. And it was a federal program, and we met with the premier, Dave Barrett, and we thought, we’d have some support. And he said, “We’ve got to be good Canadians,” or words to that effect “and we don’t really want to do it, but we got to be good Canadians and support the AIB program.” Well that didn’t go over well.

[00:25:13] BB: So, there was a lot of protest. We, the BCTF, I chaired a number of meetings of other organisations coming together—I think the only other group that didn’t join us from the union side, from other professional groups was the BCGEU. I don’t think they ever attended any meetings. And it didn’t really go anywhere in terms of achieving anything, because the government marched on.

[00:25:42] BB: And then, there was the change in government though, because they continued with the legislation and, I guess, it would be the spring to bring everybody under the AIB, all public servants and there was a roll back of salaries. We’d been given arbitration awards effective in January, and then salaries were rolled back. It would be about, I’d guess, four months if I remember correctly—approximately that. And that did not go well of course. And we fought and fought and we lost and lost.

[00:26:22] KN: Did the BCTF play any role at all in the 1975 election?

[00:26:28] BB: Not to the same effect.

[00:26:44] KN: No?

[00:27:00] BB: No, because—I don’t know why Dave Barrett called the election, when he did. I think he called it earlier than he had to. And we did meet prior to the election with the leader of the Social Credit—who was Bill Bennett—and I know one comment I did make, is that we were concerned if he was elected that he might appoint ministers who had been critics. I had one particular person in mind who was from the Fraser Valley. I don’t remember his name, off the top of my head.

[00:27:17] KN: He was the education critic for the SoCreds?

[00:27:20] BB: For the SoCreds at the time—in opposition, yeah. Anyway, he didn’t become a minister. Pat McGeer did, which was in some ways much better, than he had been, even though there was a lot of problems with a minister, such as Pat McGeer. Harvey Schroeder—that’s who it was.

[00:27:32] KN: Right.

[00:27:45] BB: He later told teachers out there, I was the reason he wasn’t minister. I don’t think that’s true, but maybe that was used as an excuse to explain why he wasn’t minister.

[00:27:58] BB: McGeer I’m sure, I don’t have any proof of this, made a deal, that he would join the SoCreds from the Liberals, if they would fund independent schools, which then became the issue that we had to fight. See, the Liberals had supported funding independent schools for some time—or some of the locals, McGeer being one of them. And the Federation of Independent School Association had been very effective in bringing together a coalition of the Catholic schools and, what they called, the Christian school to work together.

[00:28:44] BB: Because under W.A.C Bennett, there was no way he was going to provide funding to independent schools because he saw it as—I think rightly so—funding of the Catholic schools in BC and, as a strong Protestant United Church member, I believe, he was not prepared to have public funds to support their education system.

[00:29:12] BB: In any case, times changed and the Federation in Bennett schools, became very clever in getting support in all of the political parties.

[00:29:25] BB: And

[00:29:26] BB: it didn’t matter which party, they had their supporters affecting policy within those parties. I know, I watched it happen within the Liberal Party—that was the Provincial Liberal Party when it was a liberal party, which it no longer is in my opinion. So we fought it and didn’t get anywhere.

[00:29:56] BB: And, when I said to McGeer, there were some advantages to him. What he did, he brought in a deputy of education who had a far better sense of the education system than, I think, McGeer did. And that was Walter Hardwick who was a Geography professor at UBC. And one issue that came up with Pat McGeer was the core curriculum, and some Federation members thought there should be just total opposition to it. And McGeer, when he made statements, that was always black or white, it seemed.

[00:30:45] BB: And if you just listened to him, you would want to oppose it. But Walter Hardwick, his deputy, knew better, but somehow had McGeer’s respect. Because Walter Hardwick says, “I know that in Geography, for example, if you have a Geography exam from the province, what matters—are not the facts as approved by the provincial Ministry of Education—

[00:31:17] BB: it’s a lot broader than that. So any testing that can be done at the provincial level is going to be a set of facts that are maybe irrelevant, really.” Now, that’s not exactly the way he would have said it, I don’t think, but the message I had is, he understood you can’t just have a simple test as a measure of how the education system is.

[00:31:45] BB: And so it was easier just to sort of play along—without a direct confrontation, in my opinion—because it really didn’t amount to much—it didn’t go anywhere in terms of the black and white way McGeer was talking about it. And McGeer, for some reason, can’t understand why, at some point he wouldn’t appoint me to some committee, I forget which committee it was. And when the minister changed, I got appointed to the committee,

[00:32:25] BB: but he wouldn’t do it while he was there. I think, it may have been on the issue of finance. He came out with a statement, I forget which year it was—it might have been 1976 or 1977—that he wanted the schools to cut back their budgets 10%.

[00:32:57] KN: For the year?

[00:33:07] BB: For the year.

[00:33:17] KN: McGeer? That was McGeer?

[00:33:27] BB: Yeah, cut their budget 10%. Well, we met with them. I said, “You realize that if the school boards have to cut their budgets 10%, that the way the contracts go, no teacher can be released till the end of June; so the only way they can cut down is from September to December on teacher salaries, which means they would have to make a 20% reduction in teaching staff.” He says, “Yeah, I understand that.”

[00:33:38] BB: And his assistant, Jim Bennett said, “I don’t get it.” And McGeer said, “Oh, I’ll explain it to you later.” Anyways, so we had our answer, so then I had a news conference and made that point. And then I think, the Vancouver Sun used it as the main story and that may be why McGeer had some dislike for me. But there were other things about McGeer that were good and it never came out, but we were just chatting one afternoon in his office, just waiting for some other people to arrive… And, as I recall the comment it was, “You know,” he said, “the career goal in education isn’t right.”

[00:34:27] BB: He said, “the career goal in public school education shouldn’t be to be an administrator, it should be to teach.” He said, “You should come in and take a turn at administration and go back to teaching.” He said, “That’s the way it’s done at university.” Well, I think it was done in those days at the university.

[00:34:47] BB: I don’t think its done that way at the university anymore, there’s another whole career of administration, just as there is in the public schools. But I liked McGeer’s position on that, I could go along with that. I think that is a smart way of looking at it. I do have this thing about administration being an unnecessary discipline. So there were things about McGeer that were okay, but he was arrogant in many ways. On the very last day I was President, I was on a panel at the Vancouver Board of Trade Education Committee, down at the Holiday Inn. And it was discussing the financing of independent schools with Jerry Ensing, the executive director of the Federation of Independent School Association.

[00:35:57] BB: And I was there from the BCTF point of view, opposing. And it was not a friendly audience of members of the Vancouver Board of Trade who liked the idea of funding independent schools, I think—in the majority, not all—but I think in the majority they did. But it was actually the very last day I was President, to go and debate that issue. And I did point out there was some problems in terms of firing that there were some indications in one North Vancouver separate school—if you weren’t of the right vocation, you couldn’t keep your job.

[00:36:46] BB: They would dismiss you, which was unfortunate. I also obtained a pamphlet, which I can’t seem to find anymore, from, I believe it’s called the Heritage Foundation Washington, DC, an extreme right-wing think tank that had a number of quotes that, I think, embarrassed the Federation of Independent Schools Associations. Anyway, I still strongly believe in the funding of public schools only. I went to a high-school that had people from what some people would refer to as “the wrong side of the tracks”—from every community in Victoria;

[00:37:28] BB: and from the wealthier areas of Victoria—all in the same school. And I think that’s great, you learn about each other, you do things with each other, you are in the same classes as each other. Now, unfortunately, in my day, the Chinese community, the East Indian community, were still socially separate more so.

[00:37:54] BB: Although the Student Council President, I think the year before I was President, was from the East Indian community. And a lot of the kids from the different communities were very involved in sports, and so on. And different religions—it wasn’t a factor and, I really think, we’ve lost something by having separate Christian schools and Catholic schools, and so on. The elite schools, I’m not so concerned about, because its wealthy parents that tend to send them there, and they always did. They don’t need the extra money and, in fact, I think some were embarrassed to get it. Anyway, that is a big issue I still feel very strongly about.

[00:38:47] KN: So, Bill, you referred to earlier, about the introduction the wage and price controls, the AIB. Later on in your presidency, I believe it was October 1976, the Canadian Labour Congress had called for a national action against the wage and price controls. Can you remember that?

[00:39:12] BB: That was October 14?

[00:39:14] KN: October 14 or 15, somewhere in that range. What was the BCTF’s role in that?

[00:39:21] KN: Or did we have one?

[00:39:30] BB: Well, I had a motion that we have a vote of the membership, and that was defeated. So then there was a vote that it would be left to each local, so each local made a decision—

[00:39:40] BB: quite a few locals said, “No, we won’t participate.” I think Surrey was one that said, “We will.” And then I think, the school board declared it a non-instructional day and the rest; I’m not sure about what happened around the rest of the province. But it was divided Federation, in terms of what action it would take, because people were writing in from the locals, saying we were supporting it; or weren’t supporting it.

[00:40:10] BB: And there was something that I must have said, I couldn’t find out what it was, because there were some letters that I saw from local associations that were to the Executive that said the President shouldn’t have said what he said, that was quoted in The Province of the particular date—

[00:40:28] BB: I can’t remember the particular date. But I don’t know what I said; and I must have said it was up to the membership, or something. I don’t know, but there were letters from Burnaby, from Learning Conditions Committee, and I think maybe one or two others—maybe North Van—complaining to the Executive that I shouldn’t have said something because it was for the members to decide. I’m at a loss as to what it was. I don’t remember.

[00:41:02] KN: There were some teachers that participated in the day off.

[00:41:04] BB: Oh yeah, but

[00:41:07] BB: it was divided. The whole union affiliation thing, I never saw the point of it, yet I always felt frustrated by those people who said, “We’re better.” And in fact, there was a president who followed me in Victoria—a local president—who made the most embarrassing statement about how he had been a member of the IWA and that, and now he was a teacher, and sort of better.

[00:41:39] BB: And I just find that so wrong, that people look at a union one way, and something like what they call a profession another way. I don’t see a huge difference at all. It really annoys me, that some people opposed becoming a union because they thought it sort of a “lower level of hierarchy”. It’s crazy! I just felt the BCTF it was strong enough on its own, that we didn’t have to have resources going into liaison with a bunch of other groups all the time that we do it on an ad-hoc basis. And that’s what we were doing under the AIB and I guess it didn’t have the same solidarity it might have, but you knew where the members were.

[00:42:30] KN: Okay. You talked a bit about the core curriculum that Pat McGeer was introducing, were there other changes taking place in curriculum and education policy during your period as president.

[00:42:45] BB: Yeah, well they kept trying to do things, but, you know, the key thing is the teacher in the classroom, because, no matter what you do at the level up there, it’s what changes down here that matters. I mentioned earlier, I was involved in math curriculum, and this is when the so-called new math came in, and I was a strong proponent of it.

[00:43:11] BB: And we had workshops where there would be one teacher from the district, who would come to the workshop to get maybe a week’s, I guess, exposure to some of the ideas and then they would go back and be a resource person in their district. You can’t do it that way. The program that I talked about earlier—the program I referred to earlier, buying the text for—by the way, the school I was in did buy the texts and I was just told to keep the regular texts available, just in case someone came in to check. But I could use the other texts as long as it was there, which I did do. And I had students from that class say, when they were in university that’s about all the stuff they learned in first year, was already covered in that class.

[00:44:01] BB: It was quite neat. Anyway, having one person from each district doesn’t work. That math program, you couldn’t buy the books unless you had taken a course in teaching it. You can’t change curriculum unless you provide every classroom teacher with the in-service that they might need, to help them change. And as long as you make changes at the top, and think it’s going to filter down, it isn’t. And I don’t think times have changed. And so, core curriculum, no matter what somebody in the central office says, is not going to happen out in the boonies.

[00:44:55] BB: Now, it used to. I remember, I think it was in home economics, there was a provincial director of home economics, and she could tell in just about every classroom in the province what exactly would happen each day, as I was told—I’m not sure if it’s true. And that is appalling that you would have, essentially everybody, on a string like a bunch of puppets. That’s not what teachers are for. Teachers are for opening minds of kids and giving them skills that lead them in the direction that, sort of, feel about. Teaching is a noble profession that really requires creativity.

[00:45:46] BB: It doesn’t require people who are just automatons following an instruction from somebody up above. And I just, I guess, I like teaching because I do some different things all the time, or try to. It always bothered me that I was that I was involved so much, and away. When the College of Teachers formed—I know you were going to ask me about that—I sometimes had guilt in that it took a lot of time away from the classroom, getting things organized. And my rationale to myself was there’s a greater good I am doing, that may pay off for more, I hope, in terms of teaching and quality of teaching, than what I can do with this 20 or 30 kids.

[00:46:50] KN: Can you comment, Bill, at all on any changes you may have seen inside the Federation during your four years as a full-time table officer, two years as a Vice-President and two years as President? The Federation was growing. Were there any changes inside the Federation during this period of time that were significant?

[00:47:08] BB: Well the Federation, I think began to change, probably, under Jim Cairnie, where he became the spokes-person, instead of the General Secretary, as it was called in then, Charlie Ovans. And the same thing happened out in the local associations, where you started to get professional presidents. At least they had time—they were paid to be President, and it’s evolved

[00:47:44] BB: quite a ways since I was President. But I think, it was beginning then, where people were realizing that there was more and more work to be done at the local association; and it can’t be done by people in their spare time. And I think, you lose something when that happens. Like, personally, I never wanted to have a job at the Federation, I would rather teach, but other people like to do that, and that’s fine. It’s the same with administration, I guess. I know one deputy minister once said to me, “You know, I liked being a principal, and didn’t have to pay a lot more.” The Principals’ Association wouldn’t have liked that, but I, sort of thought it was a good idea.

[00:48:39] KN: So when you look back at your presidency, what do you see as the highlight of your two years as President?

[00:48:52] BB: You fought battles that you kept losing, like the AIB; the funding of independent schools—they were big issues. The core curriculum wasn’t such a bad one, because they can make a decision in Victoria about what is going to happen, but it doesn’t really percolate down to the classroom teacher, unless the classroom teacher is sold on the value of it. And BC has very well-prepared teachers, you know, when they come out of teacher education programs.

[00:49:35] BB: There’s a great deal of pride BC teachers should have in their colleagues. You know, when I was a graduate of Normal School, it was amazing that I could be turned lose on teaching a bunch of kids, but in those days that was the way it was done. And people went into teaching just to pay to go to another career, they didn’t stay in teaching. A lot of people, if you look back into their backgrounds, who had other careers, you’ll find they had a year or two of teaching. One of the things McGeer did, I should have mentioned, he had a

[00:50:25] BB: concern about teacher education, the faculty of education and how they prepared teachers. And so, he was determined to do something about it. So he didn’t have a real commission, but he had Malcom McGregor, who was a classics professor at UBC, who sounded like an Englishman, but actually grew up in Vancouver; and became a baseball fanatic when he was in Cincinatti doing his research on the Athenian Tribute List. He appointed him to chair sub-committee of the joint Committee of Teacher Education,

[00:51:11] BB: and then he appointed a number of people. One was Ruby May Parrott, who was a Past President of the School Trustees Association, whose husband was Past President of the BCTF. I was appointed from the BCTF. Jim Carter was there representing the Ministry; he was the assistant to the deputy minister. And we had a mandate to look at the teacher education programs, and have hearings around the province with teachers or community members who wanted to comment on them. And it was clear from my participation in those hearings, that there was a hierarchy in the teacher education programs in BC.

[00:52:05] BB: This is based on what their graduates said. At that point, graduates at UBC were the least supportive of the program, and graduates of UVic were sort of the middle; and graduates from Simon Fraser were full of praise for their programs. And the result was a very small, short report and recommendations.

[00:52:38] BB: And one of those recommendations led to the legislation of the Teacher Profession Act; and the College of Teachers. There had to be better control. Up until then, there was a group called the Joint Board of Teacher Education, which was to approve teacher education programs. Only once, to my knowledge, they did not approved a program; and that was in Nelson, and I forget the reason it was not approved, but it was a program that was developed in Nelson. I forget what the institution was called then. And, as Jim Bowman, a former staff member of the BCTF, commented that the Deans of Education went to the Joint Board of Teacher Education to make sure the Joint Board of Teacher Education really did nothing. And that seemed to be it. And they would meet, and talk about issues and that, but nothing changed in university.

[00:53:50] BB: Like UBC would do what it wanted and supposedly had to have Ministry approval, but they never really sought it. Somewhere in the process, before Vander Zalm was minister, but after McGeer was minister there was Advisory Committee set up, to advise the Ministry on the certification of teachers. Frances Worledge was one of the members, I was, and there were representatives from each of the universities,

[00:54:33] BB: and that committee had no official status. It didn’t exist in law, it was funded by the Ministry. And, it advised the minister on cancelling certificates, on issuing certificates, and changes on teacher education programs at the universities. And then, it disappeared under Vander Zalm, when the BCTF boycotted Ministry committees, and was re-instated briefly after that, before the College of Teachers was formed.

[00:55:16] BB: But the difference was, under that organization, a teacher who was charged with anything, didn’t really have the rights they should have had to be heard. The evidence was presented, and that was it—you couldn’t challenge it. And it was the provincial cabinet that made the final decision as to whether the certificate is cancelled. But I believed, they always accepted the recommendations from the Committee.

[00:55:53] BB: I don’t think there were any big issues that came out of it. That was when I learned, that in washrooms in shopping malls, sometimes there are guys upstairs looking down and watching what is happening in the booths. Never realized such things happen until then. It’s amazing what you read in evidence! And it went on for a few years.

[00:56:19] KN: Did you have any involvement directly with BCTF after your President days? I’d imagine you served as Past President for two years.

[00:56:28] BB: Yeah, I stayed on the RA for a number of years.

[00:56:35] KN: You did?

[00:56:43] BB: Yup, and I worked on the Pensions Committee. I can’t remember all the years I was on the Pensions Committee. I know I was on the Pensions Committee, when the NDP was in power, and that’s when we first got escalation of pensions based on the consumer price index.

[00:56:51] BB: Unfortunately, the consumer price index was going up at such a rate, that we were going to break the pension fund. That’s when the special fund was set aside separately from the main pension fund, to fund the cost of living increases. I think 2%. I can’t remember.

[00:57:01] KN: Yeah, contribution rate of 2%.

[00:57:11] BB: Anyhow, it was a major break-through, to get that escalation for teacher pensions.

[00:57:32] KN: So you referred a little earlier to the College of Teachers; and when the College of Teachers came in 1988, you took an active role in the College. You want to talk about that? And also, while you’re doing that talk, you mentioned, the Teaching Profession Act, that was introduced while you were President—so talk about that a bit as well, in terms of what you saw happening and your involvement in the College.

[00:58:07] BB: Well, at one of the AGMs in the earlier 1970s, there was a motion from the floor that the BCTF seek a teaching profession act, and that passed. It didn’t come from the Executive, it came from the floor. And so a committee was set up, and established recommended legislation for it. We worked with the Federation lawyer, Alan Black, in advising the legislation. We had representatives from a number of different committees, like Learning Conditions, Agreements and so on, involved in the recommendations. And

[00:58:48] BB: they went to government, it was the NDP government at the time, with Eileen Dailly as the minister. And we presented a brief to her, asking for it. It was received with interest and referred to staff to consider more. And then nothing more happened. And then, I think it was CTV, had this sensational evening news announcement about the BCTF intends on taking over the education system. I had forgotten about that! And it was based on somebody leaking a draft copy of our proposed Teaching Profession Act to the new media, I think it was Andy Stevens, the reporter at that time. I think he was with CTV or if it wasn’t CTV—a news hour program.

[00:59:53] BB: Anyway, it was really an exaggeration of what was proposed, but it became a sensation and we never did find out, who did the leaking: if it came from the Ministry, or not. But a friend of mine, who was lobbyist in Victoria, once said to me, “You’d be surprised if you knew.” And years later I asked him, and he said, “I don’t remember.” So I never did find out who did it. Anyway, it became a difficult thing to counter once this message was out, because it’s hard to be the second out with you message, trying to say, “Hey, you got it wrong.”

[01:00:34] BB: Anyway, it did not help our cause of getting a Teaching Profession Act. And then, after that, there was a change in government, and we made the same proposals and it didn’t get anywhere. But then, as I mentioned, McGeer set up this Joint Board of Teacher Education Sub-Committee to examine the teacher education programs. And we did actually have hearings around the province. Malcom McGregor who was the person in charge of ceremonies at UBC, a very classically orientated person, plus his love of baseball, which seemed out of place for somebody you’d expect to be a cricket fan.

[01:01:21] BB: He managed to always be home in Vancouver, except for one night. We would start in Victoria with the government plane, fly to Vancouver, pick up Dave Brouson who was Liberal MLA; Malcom McGregor here; and maybe somebody else here—and we’d fly to Cranbrook, and hold a public hearing, that had been well-advertised in advance. And

[01:01:54] BB: then we’d fly back to Vancouver, and then to Victoria; and then I’d get home. And that went around the province. And the only time we stayed over, was in Prince George. And then the plane came up from Victoria to pick us up in Prince George, to fly us onto the Peace River area the next morning for the hearings. We had hearings in Kamloops and Terrace. In Terrace we almost didn’t get out because there was cattle on the runway, and it was cloudy and foggy; and they couldn’t be sure they were out of the way. So we waited and waited, and finally they ran a car up and down the runway and were convinced there were no cattle in the way, so we were able to get off.

[01:02:40] BB: And it was quite interesting because it was done over a short period of time. And, as I indicated earlier, you had this definite impression about the different quality of education at the three universities. And so, when the College of Teachers was formed, it had total control over approving programs at universities, which is a major change from the way in which it had functioned for years.

[01:03:09] BB: And as it happened, the first opportunity UBC had, they challenged it and then they had the support of the Liberal government in changing the rules, so that College didn’t have the same power over them that they originally had. Which, I think, was the right power to have originally. You didn’t have to use it in an authoritarian way. In fact, when I was at the College, we clearly indicated we wanted to do it working together, but then the UBC said, “No, it’s interfering with the academic freedom of the university.”

[01:03:52] BB: In fact, going back, I recall, Harold Parrott, when he was President of the BCTF, or either just before—or just after, being involved at UBC Faculty of Education, attempting to have the BCTF have more influence on it. And being told, “No way, it would be interfering with the academic freedom of the university.” And so it went nowhere in his day of getting more teacher involvement in saying what should be in an education program.

[01:04:25] BB: Because, at that time, that was the only program. The others were Normal School. So it’s come a long way, teacher education. Now, I must say the teacher education program at UBC, I understand, is very good. And I think at all three universities, it’s much better. They involve teachers more than they used to. There’s this word “consultation,” which I find a frustrating word. Everywhere we talk about consultation and often it means “we’ve decided, but now we’re going to talk to you about it, and we want you to know what we’ve decided, but we’ll listen to what you think about it”. And to me that is not consultation. Consultation involves, you’ve got to change what you might have planned to do, based on what these people are saying. You might have to re-edit some of this to get the logic together.

[01:05:31] KN: So going to the College of Teachers then, in 1988, you served as a college counsellor for a number of years.

[01:05:40] BB: Well, I chaired it for five, maybe six years. And one thing I was determined on, is I was not going to give up teaching. See, some people thought, if you were going to be chairing the Council, you needed to do it full-time. And I was determined that you wouldn’t do that. The original Council was actually quite interesting, because, I think, there was four members who were members of groups that sought the Teacher Profession Act. After the Teacher Profession Act, there was another committee that met

[01:06:16] BB: and, I think Ray Worley, was the one who chaired it, and they made some changes in that. And they linked it to bargaining as well. And there were Pauline Galinski, Shirley Bonfield from Port Alberni, and Don from the Kootenays. They all served on one or other of these committees, and I had served on the original Teaching Profession Act Committee. They were all on the College Council. And one of them had said, his superintendent had said, “Well, now that you guys are elected you should go and get yourself paid full-time,” and that indicated an attitude that some superintendents have.

[01:07:08] BB: As it happened, he was later fired, for cause, and I don’t know what the cause was. But I was determined that you ought to be able to have a professional organization that meets once and awhile, and determines policies, and has a staff that does the work for you and lets the policy-makers continue their work in teaching. Because it’s keeping your work in teaching that you know what is really happening out there.

[01:07:41] BB: So, the College went on, and there were two people at UVic, who argued in an editorial page item on the Victoria Times Colonist that teachers got the best of both worlds. They got pretty much the same bargaining rights as everybody else and then they got the same professional rights the medical society and nurses had had. And I was at a math conference near Los Angeles at the time the special RA met in Victoria to oppose the legislation and I don’t know what my position would have been. Anyway, I know I supported the opposition, and I disagreed with this article. Years later I read it, and I thought, you know, I think they were right.

[01:08:43] BB: I wonder if it had not come from somebody like Vander Zalm’s government, if we might have taken another position. Like from a union point of view, you should be able to fight for your members by having a good program. And the concern was that, we already have the members in the BCTF—why should we have to fight for them (all over again) and that makes good sense. On the other hand, if you’re going to get all the rights of an union, I have no doubt the government thought a whole bunch of teacher organizations weren’t going to go that way,

[01:09:17] BB: but when they looked at the issue, they all voted to go for the union. And it’s just unfortunate I think, that they did not allow management—the principals individually—to be members of the BCTF. That they were automatically excluded. I think that should have been left to a Labour Board decision, to see if they were really eligible to be excluded or not. Other than that, thinking back on it—not at the time—but thinking back on it, there is nothing wrong with the union fighting for its membership. Even though at the time, it was quite an added imposition and cost to the Federation to go and sign up members all over again.

[01:10:07] BB: And as far as the College is concerned, it wasn’t in competition to the BCTF it was supplementary to it, because what it had, was the opportunity to was say to a university, “this is what needs to be done to be a teacher”. And in doing that, to involve the Faculty of Education, the BCTF, and the public—like through the Trustee Association or the parent association groups—and meet together; and come up with a consensus

[01:10:46] BB: in society. Or (otherwise) you’re at war with each other all the time. Then for teachers, the big advantage they got, was they got the right to be heard properly and not just some decision made in a committee room in Victoria—they could be represented by legal counsel and there would be more thorough investigation of circumstances involving any discipline against them. Interestingly one of the first cases the college was involved in, involved a member who had been suspended or reprimanded by his school district; and then the charges were brought to the College. And, I think, the college cancelled his membership.

[01:11:43] BB: I might have some of the details wrong, but what happened is the school board went to court challenging the Colleges decision, which was stronger than their own, because they felt the College was usurping on its right to make this decision. Whereas, I don’t agree with that, and they lost the decision, the College won.

[01:12:03] BB: So, in my view, the College was a unique opportunity for teachers to have basically, total control over entry and exit from the profession. And a number of public members were, when the NDP were there, they were nominated and named by the NDP. And when the SoCreds were back in power they were named by the Social Credit group; and they were great supporters of the College; and going to government and saying, “Hey, you shouldn’t be doing this.” An example, was, when Stan Hagen who was the minister of education and he was going to bring in legislation that, basically, if you did something, you were going to lose your certificate automatically, without any hearing. It may have been child abuse or some other issue. Anyway, it was unfair, that there not be a proper hearing;

[01:13:08] BB: and it was members of the College, who were SoCreds, were the ones who protested against it; and got other members of the SoCred caucus to protest it. And finally on the last day of the legislation, they dropped it. They had that omnibus bill at the end of the legislative (period) to clean up everything they hadn’t finished. And that was not part of it. That was when my lobbyist friend called me and told me, “Hey, it’s been dropped. Don’t worry anymore.”

[01:13:40] BB: So there were advantages. I think we lost something. I was always disappointed that I hadn’t fought harder within the Federation, because I always assumed that we’d be okay. And I had some strong words with Federation members; and presidents of the time. Probably stronger than I should have, but I was partly feeling that you got to speak up for the opposite side on these things, which I, sort of, learned from my mother I guess.

[01:14:15] KN: So, I’m just wondering if there is anything else that you would like to say about any of your experiences with the BCTF?

[01:14:29] BB: There are times you get frustrated with the BCTF. I wished there was a way of more people in the classroom having the time and energy to be more involved. Some people make the time and energy to be involved, but the demands on teaching today, as I observe it, are so great. I was in teaching for forty years and I had five more years I was planning to teach.

[01:15:07] BB: And the last year I was teaching, they were cutting down on the prep time we had in the high-school I was teaching in. We were on the block system; and we would teach three blocks out of four, and have a prep block. And they cut that back, so that some teachers didn’t have it in one semester, they’d just have it in the other and that was below what the contract required. So nobody—I was okay in the first semester—nobody grieved it. In the second semester I grieved it, and won. And it always annoyed me that, here’s this old guy on staff who is launching the grievance.

[01:15:57] BB: And the assistant superintendent came out and said, “You’re right, but we don’t have the funds to do it, so we will provide what we can, but we just don’t have the funds to do it.” So then the staff—I didn’t complain about it—but they said, “Well, you’re the one who initiated it so we will let you have the full-time prep, and we’ll compromise some other way.” That was wrong,

[01:16:23] BB: they shouldn’t have had to do that; and they shouldn’t have. They should have continued to grieve, but you can’t fight other peoples’ battles all the time. Lead the way, but if they don’t follow, you got to let them live with what they are accepting. Anyway I knew I wasn’t going to win that grievance next year, and it, sort of, annoyed me that I was the one who had taken the initiative to do this, and no one done it in the first semester. And then my wife was determined to retire, she had had a hearing problem and was finding it more difficult. Our older daughter, she was living in Pakistan. Her husband worked for the Asian Development Bank, and he had been there on a three-year assignment,

[01:17:26] BB: and this would be their last year there. So they invited us to visit them for an extended period of time in that last year. And so, I was going to get an unpaid leave of absence to go, but then I thought, I’m not going to get the prep time that I used to have, I’m not going to get any money. But I got 35 years of pensionable experience. It’s, sort of, a dumb economic decision to go on an unpaid leave of absence.

[01:18:03] BB: So I, finally, about the end of May, decided to resign and go on pension. It took me about half a dozen years to really get past not going and teaching. It was fun. Always a challenge. You had some kids you knew you did it wrong. I can think circumstances, where there was… boy I wish I could re-do it. You get kids who come back and tell you later about how important it (your work) is. You get kids who go on and do great things, you never know if you had any influence on them at all.

[01:19:02] BB: I was fortunate enough to have one kid, mostly because of his father’s work and teachers at the lower grades, he was the top student in Canada in a Canadian math contest. He’s a mathematician now. Other students, who tell me they really enjoyed math even though they could never really do it,

[01:19:39] BB: but they enjoyed it. I’m a great fan of Richard Feynman—I don’t know if you know him—a physicist who was an odd ball and he won a Nobel Prize in it. And says it took his friends quite a few months to bring him back to reality, to behave in his normal way. But he was a drummer in a band, and he was the only Nobel Prize physicist to be the Grand Marshal in Brazil, on the carnival parade. A friend of mine, who is a physicist, made me think it was Simon Fraser… But it might have been Simon Fraser’s Physicists Undergrad Club, and

[01:20:51] BB: a quite attractive woman was the chair of it—and they wanted Feynman to come and speak to them. And he would generally turn down this kind of invitations, but she flew to California—he was at California University—and she persuaded him to come on the condition that the faculty not know he was coming. He didn’t want to meet with professors,

[01:21:22] BB: he wanted to meet with students. That’s my kind of guy. Unfortunately, he died early of cancer. He was also determined: (there was) some small Soviet Republic far in central Asia, he was going to go there. He became, I don’t know what you call it, the ambassador or represented them in the United States; and he was going to visit there but he died of his cancer before; but he had learned the language a little bit. His daughter learned mathematics one way, while didn’t learn mathematics another way; and his son just ate it up. And he said, “You know, what worked for my son didn’t work for my daughter.” And that is what is so important with teaching, there isn’t one rule, not at all. And so you asked me what happened with the profession

[01:22:26] BB: and the organization? It’s more professionalized, more people are paid to do the work of what used to be volunteer people; and there are pros and cons to that. There were advantages to the amateurs, but sometimes members didn’t get served as well. It’s more likely that they are served better now. The con of it is, sometimes people want to stay in the job because it’s like administrators that don’t want to go back to teaching. That is one of the cons of it, but I see teaching today, and I go visit the school I used to teach in every once in a while. Lots of young teachers, full of enthusiasm and that and it’s just sad seeing them burning out too soon. I just hope teaching can be a career for them, so they don’t have to burn out so soon.

[01:23:04] KN: Do you have any message for those teachers?

[01:23:43] BB: Yeah, hang in there—but you have to fight for it: you have to fight for what’s right, you have to fight for professional autonomy. That’s the key thing. It isn’t what somebody tells you to do. Years ago, they used to have sponsored teacher clubs, and I was going to an elementary school with a bunch of Grade 11 and 12 students, and they were helping out in classrooms, or observing.

[01:24:09] BB: And the principal of the school, as primary school teachers walking down the hall, and he said, “Oh, I want you to meet Ms. So-and-so.  And she’s doing the neatest things in her class, with this program we’re doing”. And she sort of smiled, and she said, “Juan, I’ve been doing that for years! But now I can open my door!” You know, and that’s what teachers do. They do what they need to do. That’s what they need to do, and if they’re teachers, who don’t do that, they need to! They really do. That’s what their teacher education is all about. I had one disappointing teaching experience, at UBC; I was a teacher-assistant; you know those, sort of, slave-labour types, when I was doing my Master’s program…

[01:25:02] BB: And I was teaching primarily young women, who wanted to be primary teachers. And one day, we had a very spirited discussion. It was essentially the math I’ve been teaching in Grade 8, but these were students, who had been through the old program and hadn’t had this experience. And, one young woman was challenging, and saying, well, why this, and why that?

[01:25:27] BB: And I was responding, and we had a great debate. And to my disappointment in my mail-box, the next day, was a letter of apology, signed by just about everyone else in the class, for this other person’s “rude outburst”. And, I thought, how terrible for education! If that’s what they expect, for you is to sit in your desk, and just write down what they’re saying. Not challenge. Like I, often in math would use the term “argument”, and it bothered some kids, because, I guess at home, they learned, you don’t argue. But that’s what an argument is, it is a logical bunch of statements, or positions you put together. Yeah! Anyway, teaching is great, you need time to prepare, you need to have professional autonomy, and you have to fight to make sure that people don’t try to take it away from you.

[01:26:36] BB: It is so important. And, if you have to close the door, then do what you know is right. And you have to go open it—you have to discuss this with colleagues, you can’t just hide yourself off, and say, I can do what I want. It is a balance. I often was a department head in math and, it seemed to me, it was important, in a Grade 8 to 12 school, that if you’re teaching Grade 12 kids, you should also teach Grade 8 kids.

[01:27:14] BB: Other teachers have a different philosophy—you start in Grade 8s and you stick around long enough, that you just teach Grade 12s, I didn’t agree with that. Professor at UBC, late Steve Jennings, he emphasized how important it was for their profs to teach first-year students. He said, “Because that’s where you grab them”. And that’s where you get kids turned-on. If you don’t have people, who really know what’s going on, it won’t work. Anyway, the profession has come a long way. I think during my career—and it is hard to believe, it’s been 22 years since I retired, and 40 years since I was President? Something like that.

[01:27:50] KN: Wow!

[01:28:07] BB: Yeah… Hard to believe how the years can keep chomping by. And so, one other experience I ’ve had through the Federation, actually was going to what was then the World Federation of the Organizations of the Teaching Profession; that multi-worded organization. The first one I went to, I think, was in Washington, DC, and the next one was in Berlin; when the wall was still there. That was quite an experience.

[01:28:42] BB: And the Federation would pay my registration, and I would pay all the other costs; to go to these meetings; and do some traveling associated with it. It opened my eyes to the strength of Canadian teachers. And, I think, Canadians in general. Americans, sort of wonder, why Canadian teachers are, sort of, more effective in overseas assistance… And in my view, the simplest answer is, Canadians go there and go, “What can we do to help you?”, and Americans go and say, “This is what you need to do”. I think that sums up the difference. Cos, American teachers always wonder, why their help isn’t always appreciated. And, I think, that’s why. And, Canadian help always was. That’s the one thing I learned from those international conferences.

[01:29:46] BB: Canada was always very well-respected.

[01:29:51] KN: That’s a very interesting observation. So, thank you very much, Bill,

[01:29:58] KN: we

[01:29:59] KN: really appreciate your time.

[01:30:00] AC: Thank you, Bill.

[01:30:01] BB: It’s been fun.