SCHOOL
I started school on August 29, 1959, two months before my sixth birthday. This made me the youngest of six in Irène (à Théodore à Léon) Arsenault’s class. She was the kindest, gentlest teacher I ever had, and she gave me a good start on what wouldn’t always be a smooth path through academe. I liked school from the first day, and I did rather well academically and socially.
The only Bs I got through the first few years were for ‘Sits, stands and walks correctly’. I was born with crooked feet but, truth be known, also sat on my foot, so I suspect this was the real reason for the Bs. The crooked feet caused me much anguish, and more than a little bit of pain. Every year, Mom would drive me to Charlottetown to see Dr. Todor Gencheff, the foot specialist. He would examine me and fit me with ankle-high shoes that made me look like a total freak in the schoolyard. By the time my feet had grown to size 7, Dr. Gencheff broke the news that he couldn’t have special shoes made for me anymore; I’d have to start wearing ordinary, store-bought shoes. This was great news, until he told us that I’d have to wear them on the opposite foot! Imagine the teasing that generated when I got to school the next day?
The Wellington French School was made up of two classrooms: la petite école and la grande école. Mme. Irène taught Grades 1 to 4, and Mme. Orella (à Julien) Arsenault taught Grades 5 to 7. I breezed through Grades 1 and 2 and, by the time I got to the end of Grade 3, began to sense that something was up. My mother had a hushed conversation with the two teachers one day after school and, next thing I knew, I was told I was to skip Grade 4, and make my way directly to la grande école. I wasn’t sure this was such a good idea, but I wasn’t given much choice. The teachers told Mom they’d keep an eye on my performance and, if it proved too hard for me, they’d send me back to Grade 4. As it turned out, I thrived in la grande école.
My two favorite subjects in Grade 5 were History and Geography. I can remember to this day the story of Eric the Red and Leif the Lucky. We were told that the story was based on Norse legends, but it was very unlikely that their ships had reached North America. I wanted to believe the Norse had gotten here before Christopher Columbus and, as it turned out, they did; they beat him by about 500 years! When I’d finished my assigned work, I’d ask Mme. Orella if I could go up to the map with another student and demander des places. This is how I learned about the continents and the oceans, and memorized the names of the countries and their capitals.
The best part of the year, other than the last day of school, was the week before the Christmas concert. Mme. Irène and Mme. Orella would develop a program and assign us our roles. Sometimes it was a song, sometimes a play, and sometimes a recital. But my best memories are of pushing all the desks to the back of the room, and climbing on top of them to play cards, Monopoly and Snakes and Ladders, while others practiced at the front of the room. Having our parents in attendance when the big evening came was a big deal, as was Santa Claus’ visit!
The teachers always sent us outside during recess and at noon, unless it was raining or snowing very heavily. I can’t remember any of us having an allergy, and most of us were very healthy, happy kids. In the fall, we played baseball, football and soccer. In the winter, some of us brought our sleighs and toboggans to slide on the snow banks. As soon as bare ground showed in the schoolyard, we traced out places to play hop-scotch. When the field dried out, it was back to baseball, until the last bell rang on the last day of school.
We didn’t have structured sports or music programs, just occasional visits from Mr. Hitchcock, the Phys Ed teacher, or M. Poirier, the Music teacher, le chanteux, as we called him. Mr. Hitchcock was every inch the jock. We liked him because he brought us new equipment every year, and he introduced us to new sports like soccer. As for M. Poirier, we generally made life quite miserable for the poor unfortunate. Our favorite trick was to let the air out of his tires, and this we did more than once! I know he meant well, but we were hopeless.
One year, probably when I was in Grade 6, the big yellow bus stopped in front of our school, and out stepped the most frightened group of kids I’d ever seen. The Saint-Raphaël school had been forced to close, either because of a decline in enrollment or the lack of a qualified teacher, or both. So, the dozen or so remaining students were bused to our school and were expected to integrate with our group. There were no school counsellors in those days, but those poor kids needed one; most were totally out of their element. The one exception was the late Wilfred Arsenault, who would become a friend of mine and a damn fine politician. He stood out from the crowd and seemed more comfortable than the rest in his new surroundings. Academically and socially, the new group faced tremendous odds and, jerks that we were, we didn’t make it easy for them.
I didn’t know it then, but as I neared the end of Grade 7, I was being scouted by my future tormentor, Soeur Marie-Jeanne-d Arc, principal of École régionale Évangéline. I later learned it was her practice to compile a list of the most promising students from elementary schools in the district, and that my name was on it.
My first year at École régionale Évangéline was a disaster. My troubles started in Grade 8 when I arrived as a timid and immature eleven-year-old, surrounded by thirteen and fourteen-year-olds. Judging by my report cards, I must have seemed a child prodigy, and maybe I thought I was too. But Grade 8 was a nightmare, as I struggled to adjust to the bigger school, nuns and their archaic ways, older students, tougher subjects and the stresses of adolescence. I was a shy, overweight kid and I didn't fit in particularly well in this strange environment.
Although I tried my best, my average dropped more than ten points from what it had been in Wellington, and Mom always had bad news when she returned from the parent-teacher interview. To make matters worse, I was in Jeanne-d'Arc's doghouse from the moment I arrived at École régionale Évangéline. It seemed every time I acted up, she would appear miraculously at the door of the classroom or around the corner of the schoolyard. Everyone was older and bigger than me and, since I was mostly inept at sports, I got pushed around a lot.
Grade 9 began on an ominous note as I was assigned to the classroom of Béatrice Arsenault (aka La vieille B), a terror in a teacup. She was the meanest teacher I ever had and she sized me up right from the start. Fortunately, I had learned a few life lessons in Grade 8 and I took great pains to stay out of her line of fire. I never was one to suck up to any teacher and I did my best to make myself invisible. Those who couldn't tolerate her just quit, some of them needlessly. I would later discover a kind and self-conscious woman hiding behind a stern exterior, and eventually came to like her and to appreciate her dry sense of humour.
In the fall of 1967, just after starting Grade 10, we had to participate in a fitness test that involved running around the quarter-mile track behind the school. Mr. Hitchcock lined up the fifteen-year-olds, and had them run around the track to see who was fastest. Then, he did it with the fourteen-year-olds. Then, it was my turn; the only one left. At thirteen, I was quite chubby and, never being a runner to begin with, I struggled to make it the full distance around that goddamned track. When I finally did, Hitchcock made an issue of how out of shape I was, in front of everybody. I never forgot that!
As Grade 10 progressed, I was finally starting to grow up. We had an excellent home room teacher in Velma (à Arcade) Arsenault. Although there were still a few of the old teachers around, there were new and younger ones as well: Léo (à John) Arsenault, Soeur Florine Brun, Florence Bourgeois, Ronnie Gallant and Edmond Gallant. I particularly enjoyed Velma's History classes, Jim Praught's Science, and Edmond’s English. Instead of having to stay in the same classroom all day, we occasionally moved to the lab for a change of scenery! I think I progressed through puberty that year and began to feel somewhat better about myself. I had spent a couple of weeks at Expo '67 and I was beginning to get my weight under control. I was also beginning to notice the girls in the class and to understand the dirty jokes the older guys told.
But my nemesis still had me in her crosshairs. One day during our free period, I decided to walk over to the l’École consolidée to talk to Mr. Hitchcock. In those days, the high school and elementary school buildings had not yet been joined together. I hadn't realized that I had to seek permission before doing so and, when Jeanne d'Arc discovered my absence, I found myself summoned to her office to face whatever punishment her warped sense of justice reserved. I was ready and in a defiant mood: she had terrorized me for over three years and I wasn't about to take any more of her shit. I vehemently argued my innocence and walked out with my head high knowing I had won that battle of wills. I knew she wanted a bigger piece of my hide and I was ready and willing to face the next confrontation, but it was not to be. The next year we had a new principal, Léo Arsenault, and Jeanne-d'Arc was nothing but a bad memory.
The day Léo became principal was the first day since Grade 7 that I took more than a passing interest in school. Bottom line, if it hadn't been for him, school sports and my growing interest in the tough girl who slapped me in the face with a dirty rag the day we cleaned out our desks at the end of Grade 10, I don’t know if I’d have made it through high school at Évangéline. At the time, I hated Soeur-Marie-Jeanne-d’Arc. I realize now it wasn’t her I hated, but the regimentation, favoritism, and narrow-mindedness that marked her régime. It resulted in my total rejection of the concept of control as an approach to interacting with people; in that sense, she did me a backhanded favour.
I have only happy memories of my last two years. I worked hard through Grade 12 and managed to salvage an otherwise average high school career with a strong last semester, finishing third in a class of twenty-seven. Mom responded by buying me a brand new 1970 Yamaha 175 cc Enduro motorcycle, my constant companion and primary mode of transportation over the next couple of summers.
In those days, scholarships and bursaries were few and far between. The girl who finished at the top of our class chose UPEI and claimed the entrance scholarship, so that shut me out. Plus, I was ineligible for any kind of assistance from La Société Saint-Thomas d’Aquin because I’d chosen to attend an English institution. So, I had to content myself with a $100 bursary given by the Catholic Ladies Aid to the student from Wellington Parish with the highest average. I happened to be the only one eligible, as it turned out!
One of my regrets is that I was never given the chance to develop any leadership skills. In the five years I spent at ÉRÉ, I was never chosen to serve on even one committee and, partly because of my shyness, I left high school poorly prepared for university life. I chose UPEI, mostly because I preferred to study in English. I later regretted that decision, but made up for it by doing my MBA in French at Université Laval.
Finally, I consider that I’ve done OK for one who had such a mediocre high school experience. It taught me to always be suspicious of authority and to be very careful how I exercised it when given the chance. I learned to think independently and that it’s possible to succeed even if you don’t quite fit the mould. I learned that there are many paths to learning, and that it is right and natural to question what others present as the truth. I learned never to let another gain control over me. Most importantly, it taught me that there are two kinds of people in this world: victims and survivors. These are some of the important life lessons I’ve tried to pass on to my children.
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