Paul

Content Note: This story includes reflections on wartime loss and death.

Why is Rotary such a big part of my life? 1977 was a low point for me because we had to leave our church. A neighbor, a very good friend, invited me to join Rotary. So, in January 1977, I attended a Rotary meeting and I said, "This is for me." What attracted me to it was service to others; Rotary's motto is "Service Above Self." I was very comfortable with that because my career was being a teacher, where I'm serving others and happy to do so. We solved the church problem pretty quickly, but with Rotary, I got to do the service work that I wanted but also what I needed. I've been in many leadership positions: President in ‘82-’83, chaired a lot of committees, and was on the board of directors, but I got into the secretarial position primarily because I've always been strong with computers. Some people won't know what a VIC-20 even was, but it was the first Commodore personal computer, and I had the first one in Kingston. As secretary, I put the whole club on a database and then set up our club’s webpage, the first in our Rotary district. My commitment to Rotary can, in part, be measured by my attendance. Attendance at Rotary is important because it shows commitment and participation. I have had perfect attendance for 47 years – I’ve either attended every week or I’ve done a makeup, meaning that I went to another Rotary meeting within six days of the meeting I missed. It’s much more forgiving recently.

My degrees are in physics. I wrote the first thesis on lasers at McMaster University. The first solid-state laser was fired in 1960, and I started my master’s degree in physics in 1962. I joke that I was at the leading edge of laser research for about two weeks. Then, I did a year of a PhD in physics, but I was unsettled by the project I was doing, so I left the program, moved to Kingston, and taught at the Royal Military College while intending to continue my PhD at Queen’s. But after three years, I realized that I did not like learning more and more about less and less. I knew from doing my laser research, that I would be risking losing the rest of my life to research. I had a wife and children, and I had many other interests: church, choir, Rotary, and the American Civil War. I just knew that “more and more about less and less” was not me. 

I was at the Royal Military College for three years and then joined St. Lawrence College to teach. After a year, I became the chair of technology, meaning that I was the chair of all the technical programs at the college including apprenticeship. I did that for nine years, and in my seventh year, I was the chair of the heads of technology in Ontario, which was a highlight because we were at the leading edge of a very fast-developing system called the Community College System. Before 1967, there were five Institutes of Technology, and suddenly, over that summer, there were 19 community colleges. 

Then I thought to myself, “What more is there to do?”. I had been asked, “Whose needs are you not meeting?” and I instantly said, “The shift worker.” They're asleep for a third of the classes, present for a third of the classes, and the other third they're somewhere in between the two, so they were really having a hard time improving. I was granted what I called an in-house sabbatical and explored the concept of distance education – learning outside the classroom using the technologies that were available at the time: print, audio tapes, and video cassettes. The beauty of what we now call open learning – using technology to teach – is that they could start any day of the week, any week of the year, and progress at their own pace. I started this centre and began adding courses to it. By 1996, when I retired early, we were using computer-based learning, and the internet was just coming online. I call myself an intrapreneur. An entrepreneur is a term we are all familiar with, but I was an intrapreneur because I worked inside an institution. 

During COVID, I started a new project. My oldest cousin was killed as a rear gunner in 1944, and he died the night of my fifth birthday. I remember it incredibly clearly. I was on tour in 2019 with Ted Barris and saw his grave and was very moved by it. He had sent letters home – about 50 of them – and I transcribed those letters. I started putting footnotes to explain to the family what he was talking about and where he was stationed, but the footnotes got more and more numerous and longer, so I ended up writing a 50,000-word book. There was a lot of research trying to figure out where he served because the letters could not tell me where he was stationed; that information would have been censored. But I think I’ve got it. I think my cousin is still inside me. I want to get his story out because it’s a very ordinary story. He got to grade 10 and went to the Ontario Agricultural College for about six months, where he learned how to be a better farmer. Their farm was just east of Bowmanville and was on the crest of a ridge. From their front door, they looked down over a valley, and in that valley was a prisoner-of-war camp, called Camp 30, with hundreds of Germans in there. In most of the letters he wrote, the last sentence would be something like, “I’ll be home soon,” including the last one he wrote. A rear gunner had a 50% chance of making it through five operations. A tour was 30 operations. He got to number 27 or 28. He was that close to getting home. 

My advice to those who follow: be curious. Find something of interest to you and start digging; it will grow from there. And so will you. It won't likely be more and more about less and less, but hopefully it will be more about more. In my case, my career was in physics. It wasn't in history at all, but I've led 62 tours of Civil War battlefields, and I’ve been to Gettysburg over 200 times. And secondly, give service to others – share your gifts and what you have learned. And remember, you can always give your friendship to others.