When the school district superintendent became a student

By TOM FRIEDMAN

Thompson Rivers University

Reflecting on Dr. Terry Sullivan’s recent retirement, Kamloops residents recently spoke about his 15 years’ service to School District 73. School trustees, City councillors, union leaders, and parents all spoke in glowing terms about Dr. Sullivan’s leadership, his commitment to students and his ability to deal with contentious issues.

I first met Dr. Sullivan under decidedly unusual circumstances and can offer a different perspective: interacting with this superintendent of schools – already holding a Ph.D.—as a University College of the Cariboo student in my undergraduate Canadian literature class during the fall 2002 and winter 2003 semesters.

Looking at my class roster for English 420 — The Canadian Long Poem — in late August of 2002, little did I realize that the “Terry Sullivan—Year One—Unclassified Arts” listed was, in fact, the superintendent of School District 73. Both my sons at the time were enrolled in district schools, one in South Sahali elementary and the other in the former John Peterson secondary.

So, when this distinguished-looking man, somewhat older than the other 20 students in the class, appeared on the first Wednesday afternoon of the fall semester, I instantly knew who he was from his appearance at school events.

I was, of course, curious as to what this holder of a Ph.D. in Education and very busy educational administrator was doing taking an undergraduate literature class for three hours every Wednesday afternoon. During one of the class breaks, I asked him and he explained that the B.C. Ministry of Education, in its wisdom, required that all school superintendents provide evidence that they had completed a university course in Canadian history or Canadian literature. Apparently, Terry’s academic background did not include such a course; thus his appearance at UCC in my class.

The first semester of the course focused on 19th and early 20th Century examples of mainly narrative poems that universally promoted British colonial values while predicting for Canada a prosperous future. It became apparent that one of the key texts I taught — Joseph Howe’s “Acadia” — had become a favourite of Terry’s.

Loyal to his native Nova Scotia, Sullivan perhaps saw Joseph Howe — journalist, politician (he served as Nova Scotia premier for three years), and poet — as a role model. “Acadia” celebrates the Nova Scotia colony as an idyllic new Eden marked by the Victorian virtues of industry, piety, prudence and a respect for the past. Not surprisingly, Terry chose this poem for his semester’s oral presentation and wrote his term research essay on Howe’s poem.

In the second semester, the focus of the course shifted to more contemporary long poems, including those by Margaret Atwood and Michael Ondaatje. Terry and his classmates were very fortunate that UCC had arranged for one of the most prominent late 20th Century Canadian poets — Robert Kroetsch — to be a writer-in-residence for the Winter 2003 semester. Mr. Kroetsch not only came to the class and spoke to students about the long poem, but also met privately with many of the English majors.

During that semester I could tell that Terry’s taste in literature was definitely not situated in the late 20th Century. Even though he appreciated Kroetsch’s appearance in class, and was taken with Atwood’s The Journals of Susanna Moodie and Daphne Marlatt’s Steveston poems, describing the lives of Japanese-Canadian fishermen on the west coast, Sullivan showed me all the signs of a true traditionalist. His heart was clearly in the mid-19th Century era when it came to literary style and expression.

This literary partiality became most apparent to me when the class was studying a collection of poems about the young Bob Dylan — Stephen Scobie’s And Forget My Name. The poems focused on Dylan’s early life as Robert Zimmerman in Hibbing, Minnesota before his career really started in Greenwich Village, New York in the early 1960s.

I could see that Terry — and, admittedly, many of his classmates — were having problems with Scobie’s poems, particularly their language and innovative structure. However, much to my surprise, Terry chose Scobie’s poems for a very fine oral presentation he gave to the class. That act, it seems to me, is reflective of the man: refusing to shy away from any kind of adversity; rather, facing it head on and succeeding.

I always think of Dr. Sullivan not for his role in ensuring my sons’ fine education, but instead as my student. As Dr. Sullivan’s former professor — I don’t believe anyone else in Kamloops can claim that — I wish him a very successful retirement. I hear that I may soon be calling him “colleague” if rumours of his working at TRU in the future are true.