BERNICE BENT WALLACE

“LOOKING BACK”

When I was a student of Mr. Langford, he had a group of Americans come in to the classroom. They wanted to observe him because he was a Master Teacher. When they came in, Mr. Langford was in his rocking chair and a tall boy, Bill, was reading in front of the class. Because they were using some of his textbooks, the Americans were insistent Mr. Langford read, but Mr. Langford didn’t give in.

“Oh no, no!” he protested. “I have a student who can do this.”

I thought it was really neat that he wouldn’t dwell on his glory or be pressured into doing what they wanted him to do. They wanted to see him ‘in action’, but he wanted to practice his role, which was being a teacher.

At that time, we also did the Lords’ Prayer in auditorium, and the American visitors were quite astounded with the school. Of course, what impressed ME most was Mr. Langford refusing to give in to them.

Mr. Bartley was a marvelous person and teacher. He sang in the musicals and had such a booming voice. His memory for names when all the students went through was amazing. He was just such an energetic man and so full of life. Such exuberance!

One day I was in Harvey Stewart’s room doing catch up work and watched him draw Africa freehand on the blackboard. It was just dead on and all the colours. That was a real talent he had.

Even though he’d appear to throw barbs at some students, I always saw that slight little smile that came out of the corner of his mouth. I never thought of him as a mean taskmaster. Of course, I wasn’t a student who was on the receiving end either.

One time he caught a student yawning in his room. Some squirrels were scampering up the trees, and he warned us to look out because they were looking for homes right now.

For English, I had Mr. Langford, Mr. Cropp and Mr. Macaulay.

When I was a student in Mr. Cropp’s class, we were doing a play and discussing poetry in connection with it. There was a love element in there. I don’t remember what my comment was, but I must have taken a different interpretation on a poem. Mr. Cropp just looked at me and said sadly: “Bernice, you’ve got no romance in your soul.”

When Ted and I got married in the spring of ’61, we were going to summer school. Teachers were really needed and planning a wedding was difficult. At that time, exams always went right through to the weekend, then you marked all Easter break. Ted and I decided to go away just for the weekend, then come back to do the marking.

We heard a knock at the door, and here was Paul Cropp. He said: “Here, give me those English papers. You’re not marking exams on your honeymoon!” and took all of my exams and marked them.

Paul was quite a unique person. He was always interested in sports and watched all of Beck’s games. For the Last Hurrah, Paul put together a whole slide show that was shown in the auditorium. I don’t know what happened to it. I understand a number of things were lost or went awry. What a shame, because Paul had all the staff in it, and it was just an excellent slide show, including the commentary.

As a student, I had Mr. Digges and went back to teach with him. In addition to English, I had Accounting, Keyboarding and Business Practice, thus making Mr. Digges my department head.

Mr. Armstrong told me a story about how Mr. Digges got hired. Mr. Digges’ letter of application was very unusual. Instead of detailing what he did and what his qualifications were, he said he liked to hunt and camp. Mr. Armstrong commented it was such an off-the-wall application that he just had to meet this man. Of course, once they were face to face, Mr. Digges sold himself.

Mr. Pritchard I only had in grade nine for Art and French. In Art class, what stood out in my mind was that he was ambidextrous. One day, he took a piece of chalk in each hand and drew a side profile of a face. Both were identical. It was phenomenal. I was in awe of the man ever after. I’m no artist, and if anything was going to intimidate me, that drawing was it.

If anyone was misbehaving, he could be writing on the board and turn around so quickly and whip a piece of chalk at whoever was misbehaving at the back. Away that chalk went and which hand didn’t matter! The talkers sat up and paid notice then.

In grade twelve Chemistry, I had Mr. Ramage. Marge Fisk and I were lab partners. I thought he was marvelous. He was a very gentle and soft-spoken man.

In Chemistry one day, Marge and I were collecting oxygen. Our bottles were immersed in water, and we had to hold them down. Somehow the bottles got away from us. I think it was my fault that they all flipped up. We quickly put them back down in the water, but they’d lost their oxygen. Of course, Mr. Ramage picked our bottles to demonstrate his experiment. He couldn’t explain why it wasn’t working and just went red right through. Marge and I admitted that maybe some of it got out when we tipped the bottles. He recovered and went on to someone else, but I felt very sheepish after that.

When I came back to teach, Mr. Ramage was still vice-principal. Mr. Armstrong and he were very nice, very kind and real gentlemen. They were excellent administrators and dressed and acted the role.

Bonnie and Wilda were the only two teachers I felt comfortable calling by their first names, whereas Mrs. Colwill was always Mrs. Colwill and Miss Durrant was always Miss Durrant. Miss D always said: “Call me Edna!” but I never felt comfortable with that.

When I was a student, I was one of the library helpers. Miss Dolan always treated us to a luncheon at the end of the year and gave us those little pins. A truly nice lady. I had her as a History teacher too but really got to know her best when I went back as a teacher.

The biggest thing was seeing her sense of humour, a side I didn’t realize as a student in a classroom. She also had a great love of life and appreciation of things.

Kay was a very bright lady who kept up with the times. You tended to think of her as a generation removed, but she was always in tune with the times. When I read about her going north with her sister, I could see her doing that. She was just that kind of person and that was the Kay I got to know as a teacher. When I went to her home, she entertained so graciously, and everything was beautiful. I felt totally at home when I was there.

As a student, I never knew the woman that she was, whereas with some others, I had the inkling. For instance, Roger Macaulay’s personality just bubbled over into the classroom, and Paul Cropp was so witty with his puns. Paul’s personality seemed to expand in class as well, but Miss Dolan’s didn’t. With her, the teacher profile was very much there. You didn’t see the whole person behind it. Finding out what kind of person existed behind her teacher’s face was just a delight.

Mr. Chapman I had for Math in the senior levels. I quite enjoyed him. The personality that he had in music came out in the Math classroom as well. The warmth and the laugh were ready at hand.

When I had him for Algebra, I remember working through one of the problems. I got the right answer, but I took about three-quarters of a page to work my way through. I was very dismayed when he didn’t give me full marks for it, because I got the right answer.

Having since taught computers and dealing with that now, I realize that they have something called “good housekeeping”, which is keeping memory to a minimum. Marks are lost by not having good efficiency. As a student, I wasn’t aware of that and was really unhappy when I didn’t get full marks. What did it matter if I went through the back forty to get it?

Mr. Herron I had for Biology and Zoology. His artwork was always very detailed. In grade thirteen, we had to prepare for those departmentals. He was absolutely meticulous about getting old exam papers and getting everyone ready for the exams and all possibilities. When the results came out, he was just livid because he didn’t feel it was a fair exam. He said they only hit 10% of the course, not just at Beck but all across the province. Here was everybody trying to study everything, and the exam only covered 10% of it.

He reminded me very much of Mr. Groat. Both were gentle and quiet people. I never had Mr. Groat as a teacher, but I got to know him as a staff member. We became good friends. He gave me some of his lilacs; I still have them in my garden. He never failed to greet my husband and me wherever he saw us. Mr. Groat was a very genuine person.

Mrs. Colwill lived to be a wonderful age and led a really good life. She ended up living in Vancouver next door to (her son) Jim. When Gladys died, (her daughter) Elaine gave quite a tribute at her mother’s memorial. Elaine’s approach was she wanted her children to know what kind of person their grandmother was. Going to university from a rural family was pretty significant. Being a minority as far as males and females in a field not a lot of women entered and then to excel at Math to the point of becoming a gold medallist was quite impressive.

The Colwills lived just down the road from me in the country. When I went to university, money was tight. Jim and Elaine would drive their mom to school and pick me up. I paid them, but it was a minimal amount. They took me all those years. One time, I had an exam, a six o’clock, four-hour one. I wasn’t done until ten. Although Jim and Elaine were through their classes, they both sat in the library doing work and waited just so they could take me home. I often commented on that. I felt I couldn’t repay them enough.

Mrs. Colwill’s comment was: “Pass it on.” I’ve never forgotten that. You don’t have to repay me. Just pass it on.

I was at Beck from ’60 to ’64. When I left, it was for two reasons. One was Ted and I wanted to have a family. In those days, it was looked upon with disfavour if a woman teacher was pregnant. I took a secretarial position at Prince Charles, where my husband Ted was teaching Industrial Arts.

The other reason I left Beck was I got involved with Ted’s family in creating Ski Hi at Thamesford. It was a wonderful and busy time of our life. We made wonderful friends and contacts. Our girls learned to ski. Lots of good things came out of Ski Hi, but we sold it in the eighties. Some of the family members were getting older and wanted out of it.

After being out of teaching for about twenty years, I went back and finished out my career in Woodstock. I taught in the Business area, computers and accounting. Then I was sent to an adult facility where I taught for a few years. That was an interesting time. When the funding shifted, I had to give up my teaching status and be hired as a part time contractual. After that, I got in to co-op education and worked with very special needs students. The classes were small. I had one student who couldn’t read or write and was struggling with the letters of the alphabet, but they were wonderful kids. I quite enjoyed working with them.

At the Last Hurrah, someone told me they had 75% response from all former students. I don’t know how many turned up, but I thought that was a phenomenal number of responses. Quite a few people in Thamesford are older Beck grads. They went in the earlier years and used to take a bus in. Some of them were even in the choir when Don Wright was there! A lot of them went to the Last Hurrah. Their feeling for the school is the same. To have that loyalty go through all those various decades and generations indicates Beck was an outstanding school.

Going back to when those Americans came to see Mr. Langford’s class, they were just astounded by the auditorium as well. They’d never seen anything like it. The auditoriums promoted school spirit as much as anything. Whether they were pep rallies or singing auditoriums didn’t matter. It was the fact we had them twice a week. Being there as one body made a lot of difference to the school spirit.

When the addition was put on at on the front of the school, I was teaching Business Practice in the room next to where the work was going on. They used jackhammers to remove the brick, and the chalk would just literally jump out of the blackboard trays. I had a class of forty, and I couldn’t talk. It was sign language, and I wrote on the board. That awful noise went on ALL year!

Early in my teaching career, one thing that stood out was John F. Kennedy being killed. The announcement came on at the very end of the day. There was almost a black cloud hanging over in the hallway. We were just dumbstruck by the whole thing and all rushed down to Geoff Milburn’s room to see what the significance of this was going to be in the world and in Canada.

At the opposite end of my career, I was at Woodstock Collegiate in the duplicating room when a teacher came in and said with kind of a different lilt in his voice: “Golly, did you hear about the World Trade Center?” As he was one to tell jokes, I thought he was going to tell me one and said I hadn’t heard it. When he said a plane had crashed in to the one of the buildings, I realized he was serious. How unbelievably terrible!

I’ll never forget the reaction of the Beck students in 1963, and I’ll never forget the reaction of the ones at Woodstock in 2001 either.

Looking back, those singing auditoriums were phenomenal historic events.

We really went through Beck with a wonderful group of people. I look back with tremendous fondness. It was a very, very special time of my life as a student and a gentle introduction to teaching.

Your enthusiasm and love of life is as contagious now as it was in the Fifties. Viva, Bernice!