Conrad Boyce is the editor and publisher of the Cosmos. He has a BA in English from the University of Alberta and a diploma in journalism from Grant Macewan Community College in Edmonton. He lived and worked in the Yukon and Vancouver Island before arriving in Ontario in 1995. Beyond these pages, he is the Artistic Director of OnStage Uxbridge, and the technical manager of the Uxbridge Music Hall.
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Their weight in gold
There’s going to be a memorial service tomorrow afternoon at the most capacious church in north Durham. But if all the people whose lives were made better for knowing this man show up to pay their respects, three Trinity United Churches wouldn’t be big enough.
That’s because Andrew Myhal (see page 1) was a teacher, a public school teacher, and he specialized in guiding young lads and lasses at just the time when they most need to understand how the world really works - Grades 4 to 8.
I didn’t know Andrew all that well. We’d done a couple of shows together back in the early days of Uxbridge Musical Theatre, when he enjoyed showing off his dancing prowess in the bottle dance for Fiddler on the Roof. But I understood then, and every time we briefly encountered each other in the intervening years, why he made such an outstanding teacher.
Andrew had a zest for life which was infectious. Even if he hadn’t seen you for a few months, he greeted you with a smile, a laugh, even a warm hug, and a “Good to see you!” which actually meant exactly that.
A zest for life is precisely what young hearts and minds need as they emerge from childhood into that dangerous world of adolescence, a sense of joy at the endless possibilities that the world offers them.
All the greatest teachers (and most of them are great) have that unbounded love of life. And that’s the reason, or at least one of the major reasons, that so many of our young people turn out so well.
Lucy Maud Montgomery may not have taught in a schoolhouse, although she most certainly taught Sunday School, but she shows in her books how well she understands teachers and teaching. In her first and greatest novel, Anne of Green Gables, she makes some of the most attractive characters teachers: Anne’s parents, Mrs. Stacy, Gilbert and of course the red-headed marvel herself.
In one of her earliest conversations with Marilla, Anne talks about her early life, about the parents that she never got to know. She is proud of the fact that Walter and Bertha Shirley were both teachers.
“I think teachers are worth their weight in gold, don’t you?” she asks Marilla.
In her usual understated fashion, Marilla replies, “It’s a job worth doing, that’s certain,” saying between the lines that it’s one of the most important jobs in the world.
Not all great teachers stand at the front of a classroom, of course. Every parent must be a teacher, every coach, every role model of any kind.
One of the people most influential in setting the course of my life was a choral conductor. His name was Ron Stephens, and he led choirs in three distinct areas of my life. He was the musical director at Strathearn United Church in Edmonton, and he was the first to teach me that when you’re performing, particularly in front of a congregation, you’re not just singing notes. The words, or lyrics, are even more important, no matter what kind of music you’re singing.
I took those lessons into Edmonton’s Centennial Singers, a high-school “all-star” choir which travelled all over during Canada’s 100th anniversary, including by train to Expo 67. That choir, those travels, were a lifetime’s education in themselves. I learned a lot of important lessons in that one year, and Mr. Stephens was there every step of the way.
And when I got to University, he was there, too. Although he was a high school teacher, he founded and conducted the University of Alberta Male Chorus. Now, I did not ordinarily go out of my way to participate in activities that involved exclusively males. I still don’t. I don’t think I’ve ever gone out “with the boys” in my life. From what I hear, I haven’t really missed much.
But if Ron Stephens was running the Male Chorus, I thought I’d give it a shot. And I stuck with it for my entire university career. At least it made me more comfortable in the company of men, even if, as my dear wife will attest, I am still miles away from being a true “guy”.
A few years ago, I heard that Mr. Stephens died. He was in his late 80s, I suppose. For some reason, I couldn’t get out to Edmonton for the funeral, although I desperately wanted to. When I go to memorial services, I find it fascinating to compare my perspective on the person’s life, with that of the other people there. So I wanted to hear how Ron Stephens had impacted other lives, paved other roads.
So when hundreds of people gather tomorrow to remember Andrew Myhal, they’ll laugh and cry at the stories the eulogists tell, but they’ll also have their own stories, special moments all their own when Andrew the teacher touched their life for the better.
A moment when, for them, he was worth his weight in gold.
