Rick Cameron:
CLASS OF 1966
Bawating High SchoolClass of 1966
Sault ste. marie, ON
Northern Alberta Institute of Technology Class of 1998
Edmonton, AB
University of Waterloo - MathematicsClass of 1969
Waterloo, ON
Rick's Story
Seems there are 30 chunks to this part of my profile.
Rick
PEACE
1) I hope old friends remember me as being generous, trusting, quiet and forgettable.
2)I always wanted to be a kid when I grew up. My family and friends never gave it a thought. As it turns out, they were wrong.
3)Favorite way to relax:
Put the headphones on, turn out all the lights, enjoy a joint or two, put the Cd collection (about 600 discs) on random play, and just let the music drift through my head.
4)Wildest thing I ever did in school:
In residence at Waterloo, probably dozens of stories (and probably the main reason I failed there!), the "Village" residence was up on a hill from the main campus, and one winter day the path was covered with ice and everyone was falling and slipping. Looked like fun, so a bunch of us stole trays from the dining area and went out sledding. The only way we could stop was by slamming up against a building. We kept at it, and started to draw a bigger and bigger crowd joining in, until the Kampus Kops Kame and told us to quit.
5) If I'm going to work somewhere, I need to have organization, deadlines, and fun to be able to deal with the day-to-day.
6) My Hero:
The one and only Terry Fox. There was just something about that kid that reached out and grabbed you deep down. When I was teaching at NAIT, I'd often take the summer to drive back east and visit family. I'd always stop at the monument outside Thunder Bay. I wish I had 1/10th his courage and bravery.
7) Living/moving history:
Sault Ste Marie Ont (ages 0-18) - growing up, schooling, family life
Waterloo, Ont (ages 18-19) - University, Co-op Math, failed Physics and Chemistry, wrote supps in both, failed one passed one. Convince Univ to let me back for 2nd year carrying an extra subject. Oops! Bad plan! Failed again!
Montreal Quebec - (ages 20 27) - Worked as computer programmer/systems analyst for CN Rail. Suffered major depression in summer of 1975, affecting work, so I quit and moved to Edmonton (long story)
Edmonton (ages 27-current 62) - 3 years as senior analyst at Prov. Gov't; 20 years teaching logic, communications, programming, systems, etc at NAIT, a post-secondary technical institute (approx 10,000 full-time students and 30,000 part-time).
Left NAIT for same lifelong health reasons, and bought my own one-man delivery business that I ran till 2006. Finally, again, continuing failing health, I finally had to give that up also, and now live on my pension from NAIT plus CPP Disability pension. It's certainly a change in life!!
9) Obsessions:
Sports; Hockey (of course!);baseball;spring madness (american college basketball)
Reality TV: Ok, I'm not ashamed to admit it! Survivor, Canadian Idol, So You Think You Can Dance, Big Brother. One caveat on all of these. When they were original, they were more regularly watched than now. By now, they've worked out "the formula" for each show, and they're getting predictable, so they're dropping off my radar screen fast.
Pets: I've always been partial to all animals, but purr-y cats, and dogs that are bigger--than-bite-sized snacks for real dogs are among my favorites.
10) Life doesn't always turn out as expected. What's been your biggest surprise?
Well, pretty clearly, I'm going to say the two mental illnesses I have been blessed with. They have changed my life in ways that I would not have expected in my wildest dreams. Unfortunately for me, it has not been a change for the better.
11) If I could improve my home, I'd remodel the back yard landscape and add on a meditation corner. My dream home would be a high-rise high-floor condiminium looking out over the river valley and U. campus..
13) Which teacher would you love to see again and why?
Wow, actually there are quite a few! Mr. Benoit would be at the top of the heap. Mr. Bell, Mrs. Collins, Mr. Watts, Miss Braun, Miss Murray. Simply because I found them all very inspirational. I suspect part of it was that we entered Bawating as its first students, so all the teachers were primed and pumped at the start of their careers too. I found that when I was teaching, the 1st 10 years were far more fun and enriching than the last 10.
14) If I won $100 million, I'd give half of it to Haiti, then spend the rest on anonymous, pay-it-forward activities.
15) Ever live in a dorm?
For the year and a half that I was at Waterloo I lived in the "Village" dorm on campus. It was brand new the year I registered (the campus itself of the Univ. was only 10 years old, so there was still a lot of construction going on when I was there). There were 4 quadrants of 6 buildings each. Each building had 3 floors with 16 students per floor. Private rooms, private phones, maid service, 3 meals a day all you could eat, for $800 per year. Unfortunately, I blame dorm life partly responsible for my failures there. Well, actually, I KNOW I'm 100% responsible, but it eases the pain a bit to point fingers at something else to take the spotlight off my immaturity and lack of self-control at the time! I had cruised thru public and high school without ever having to study much. Guess what? University is a different place. I just wanted to socialize, it had been such an empty hole in my life growing up.
16) To be truly happy, you would be where, doing what, with whom?
No comment. Too much information!!
17) My current age is 62. When I was 12, I thought that people my age now would be dead. I was so completely wrong.
18) Working hard? Reveal your career aspirations.
Well, since I'm retired on disability, don't get out much anymore, don't have a social life, no---I'm not working hard (which, ironically, depresses me even more). I'm making attempts at an idea I have for a unique kind of book/reading project but I've had a lot of false starts and am almost ready to give up on it as being too complex.
19) What happened to your first crush?
Still friends
20) My best friend would tell you I'm moody, but people who don't know me very well would probably describe me as funny.
21) Still dress like you did 10 (or 20) years ago?
Actually, now that I don't have to "dress to impress", all my clothes are bought at Goodwill, charity-type stores, so the money is being used in a way I like, and my budget is much more maneageable. My belief is that if people are going to judge me by the clothes I wear, than I don't need them or their judgements in my life.
22) What's the weirdest job you ever had?
For a couple summers in high school, I worked in a lab behind double security locked doors, collecting emerging adult moths of the type "European Pine Shoot Moth" which was a forest-destroying insect wiping out thousands of acres of prime forests in Europe but hadn't reached North America yet. Samples had been brought to this lab as eggs, and we reared them to adult stage. Then, I had to freeze them, then dissect them under a microscope to count the number of mature eggs, immature eggs and amount of fat in each of 8 laying ovarioles. I'd mount the splayed bug on a slide, take a picture of it, then destroy the remnants of the insect. The scientist conducting the research would then take the figures I came up with and do whatever it was he needed to do.
23) I share my home with Butch, my cat, which I find sometimes very comforting!.
24) Got trophies on your mantel? Share a big victory.
Well, clearly for me, my biggest "trophy" isn't a medal or a cup, but a professional occasion. In the fall of 1992, while I was teaching at NAIT, I was invited to present a paper at an international convention of educators and educational support staff in Chicago. I had been singularly active in bringing a program called "Becoming a Successful Student" into our program. It was a program marketed out of the States to teach students what the skills are and how to cope with the "job" of being a student. Perhaps because of my Waterloo experiences, I was a little more rabid about introducing this into our curriculum. I finally reached a compromise solution . I could introduce it, but only on a voluntary basis, and it would only show on the transcript as a "credit" and would not be calculated into the student's grade in any way. Seemed fair to me. As it turned out, almost all the students came anyways (A tad of braggadocio here, I was considered one of the best instructors on staff, and NAIT set up an "Excellence Award in Teaching", the recipient(s) to be nominated and selected by the students. It was inspired by me and ...Expand for more
introduced the year I left. )
Anyway, back to Chicago. My presentation was titled "Starting With A Bang". I was scheduled for 80 minutes, and told to expect between 30 and 40 in the audience.
When I got there, I had been told I had been moved to a bigger room because over 100 had pre-registered for my session. I could re-live the whole experience for you, but that would be another book! I ended up with about 130 participants, SRO, and had them in the palm of my hand throughout. People were leaving other sessions to come in to mine to see what all the excitement was about. There were over 2000 delegates from around the world, and the closing keynote speaker made specific reference to me and my presentation 3 separate times in his closing remarks. The organizers gave out feedback sheets at each session and then passed on to us. I still have mine, they give me a perk up sometimes when I really need one. EVERY SINGLE ONE ranked me at 10 or higher on a 10-point scale. Many hand-written remarks also blew my ego so out-of-proportion that I had to extend my hotel stay by 2 extra days till the swelling in my head went down enough that I could get it out the door again!!
As a result of that presentation, I received three more to make the same presentation. One of them was to the entire post-secondary teaching staff of British Columbia. They closed all their colleges for a day, the staff all gathered at one campus. I gave my presentation in the morning, we broke for lunch, then after lunch they broke off into smaller groups based on trade or specialty and brainstormed ways of introducing these ideas into their current curriculum. I spent the afternoon shuffling from group to group, trying to kick-start discussion when they seemed stalled, throwing out a controversial item or two for their consideration, etc. Great Fun.
...and just as an aside, but related. I received a lot of gracious feedback throughout my teaching years, which of course I fed from. Many comments and students are remembered, of course, but one comment that sticks out to me still, of the thousands I received over the 20 years I was there was at one of the graduations that I had actually been guest speaker at. A grad brought his parents over to introduce them to me. In the course of the conversation, he said "Rick, I have to tell you. I never knew what to expect when I walked into any of your classes. But when I walked out, I knew that I had learned what you wanted me to learn." Say no more!!
25) You get one do-over. What do you do differently?
Defy my father just once and, in Grade 9, follow Mr. Atkinson (my Phys Ed and Health instructor...... army drill sergeant type) orders.
Here's the scoop. I was about 56 pounds soaking wet back then, and about 46 of those pounds were in my legs. I had learned to run fast from all the bullies and folks trying to terrorize me during my youth! So, here we are in gym class, and today we're doing track activities....high-jump, 500-yard track, 100-yard sprint, or whatever the events were. The point is, I was beating everyone in the class, without any training, exercising, or encouragement, and I knew I wasn't going all out, because I hated Phys Ed at the time due to my scrawniness (check out under my pictures for Gr 8. Greenwood graduating class for proof!!). Anyhow, at the end of the class, Atkinson came over to me and grunted these immortal words to me that I can still hear as if he's beside me now "Track try-outs. Tomorrow. 4:15. Be there. " The next day went by in a fuzz. Finally 4:00 came, classes were over. I ran down to the change room to get ready for practice, opened the door and saw this room full of 400-pound hairy naked gorillas snapping towels at each other yadda-yadda.
My "parental units guilt complex" kicked in, I realized that I didn't belong in that world (my Dad would not allow any of us to take part in any kind of organized sports, and he also believed that schools were strictly for academics and not "playing games". A different generation, for sure. I've often wondered if my health would be what it is, if I hadn't been so constrained. No use worrying, just wondering..),
Anyway, I went back to my locker, grabbed my books, went home, and cried my heart out for being such a wimp, simultaneously scared of the wrath I'd face from Atkinson the next day for denying him. The part that hurt the most (and probably still does!) is that the turkey never said a word about it.
26) In 10 years, I hope to be dead. I'm going to get there by debillitating illnesses.
27) Talk about your oldest friend, how we met and why we clicked.
His name was Randi Cocquyt, and he worked for CN in Montreal in 1967 when I first went there. He was a junior programmer and, as is so often the case, you couldn't find two people more different. He played Jr. Football, and was on the Allouettes try-out team a couple years. I was a wimp. He spent every weekend partying and clubbing. I was a social pariah, with absolutely no self-esteem. Given all our differences, there was just that something that clicked "deep trusted friend", and after my second attempt at University we roomed together for a number of years. He helped draw me out my shell a bit, for which I am forever thankful (and I'd like to take just a wee bit of credit for helping him settle out of his "wild ways" just a tad!). Too many wild stories to tell, but that's what makes friends "best" friends!! I was "best" man at (both!) of his weddings. It was obvious to everyone but the two of them that the first one would not last long. Shakespeare could have written a play about the relationship! He had moved to Toronto in the spring of 1975 for a new job with Toronto Bank, and was down in The Caymen Islands doing final install and testing on a system he had been working on. The install and test was scheduled to take two weeks, and then his new bride (from Montreal) was to join him for a delayed honeymoon. Tragically, he had an afternoon off, rented a sailboat and went out sailing. They found the sailboat capsized the next day when he didn't show up for work, and the remains of his body washed ashore a few weeks later. Even thinking of him and his tragedy brings back emotions.
28) What about you would surprise everyone at your high school reunion?
No comment. Too much Information.
29) My first job was at Insect Pathology Research Institute, where I got paid $85/month to dissect insects (see above). What I remember most about it is working with Roberta Bondar right beside me at the lab bench (Canada's first female astronaut) and all the gang that worked in the lab.. Because I didn't smoke, but we needed to "smoke" the adults out of the pine buds to get them to emerge before laying their eggs, she and I built an "artificial lung" out of glass piping, a plastic bottle, a few ball bearings and a rubber band. We plugged a burning cigarette in one tube and squeezed the bottle pushing air out one unblocked tube. then, a ball bearing would drop in front of that tube and away from the one holding the cigarette, so that when we released the bottle it would fill up with smoke, The next squeeze pushes it out the other tube (and onto the pine shoot), etc. Pretty simple, and pretty clever --- her design, I can't take any credit.
30) Share a childhood memory you'll never forget.
No comment
To much information.
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Well, there you have it...from my perspective anyway. How others perceive me, I have come to understand, is completely different than how I perceive myself. My theory is that that is a truism for all of us. Here, in brief, is how it goes.
I've lived with myself 24/7 for almost 62 years now. I have "lived through" every second of my life. Everybody and anybody else has only seen snapshots of me as our paths cross from time to time (including blood family). It is a natural tendency of our brains to "connect" those moments into a continuum that forms our memories and opinions of another person, even though there is a GREAT deal of their life experiences we know nothing about. That's where misunderstandings and differences of opinion etc start growing. In those void periods, where the raw truth is that EVERYONE in your past life is effectively "frozen in time" at the last memory you have of them. Those of you whom I've contacted recently here on Classmates are still "high-school mates", since that's that's the last image and memory I have of you. Bizarre way to think, eh?
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