Column Memories

My husband and I have been packing things up at our house. We hope to either rent or sell our home in the next few weeks.  While trying to organize everything into boxes I came across a stack of big brown envelopes in which I’d put old columns of mine from The Carillon that I had cut out of the paper in the past. This fall I will have been writing Viewpoint for twenty-four years. That’s around 1200 columns- hard to believe.  I thought I’d just pull out a few columns to read- but several hours later I was still sitting on my basement floor with newspaper clippings spread all around me.

       Many of my columns have been about interesting people I’ve had the opportunity to see and meet.  I once did an interview with Olympic gold medal speed skater Cindy Klassen and another with NBA player Todd McCullough. I wrote a column about Mary Barkman- who was responsible for Steinbach getting its first library and I had the chance to talk to Ollie Penner, a childhood idol of mine, who hosted a program for kids on radio station CFAM called Children’s Party when I was growing up. I’ve written about meeting Senator Sharon Carstairs in a washroom, listening to CBC icon Rex Murphy speak, chatting with Toronto Star newspaper columnist Michele Landsberg, and getting the autograph of famed chimpanzee researcher Jane Goodall.

                  I’ve always been a feminist and quite a number of my articles have been about women and women’s rights. In 1992 I was upset because Cari Penner, the only woman elected to Steinbach’s City Council was lauded for her attractive physical appearance in The Carillon rather than for her remarkable achievement in winning the election. None of her male counterparts had their ‘looks’ mentioned in the paper. In 1988 I chastised the many men who I had heard refer to their spouses as ‘the wife’ as if she were an inanimate object or possession. In 2002 I advocated changing the words of O Canada to be inclusive. As far as I was concerned singing ‘in all thy sons command’ ignored the contributions women had made to our country.

         I’ve been a teacher for nearly four decades and so it makes sense that my columns have frequently addressed education topics. In 1987 I wrote about one of my six -year old students who was surprised to learn that I didn’t sleep at the school for night.  I suggested in a 1991 column that it was time for Canadian school children to stop singing God Save the Queen each day and I predicted in 1992 that with the advent of computers eventually we would no longer teach cursive handwriting to students. I wrote about the large influx of students from Germany into Manitoba classrooms in 2000 and in 2006 I expressed concern about my high school students who were trying to earn enough academic credits to graduate while holding down full time jobs.

          Probably the old columns that made me feel the most nostalgic were the ones about my own family.  I wrote about dancing with my sons at their high school graduation celebrations, my grandmother’s funeral, the day I realized my youngest son had learned to read, the surprise fortieth birthday celebration my husband planned for me and the daily walks my mother and I took together for over a decade.

                   Someday I will need to scan all of my old columns into the computer. Until then I’ll keep my big brown envelopes full of clippings so they can continue to provide me with periodic meanderings through my Viewpoint past.