Chapter 11 - Victoria B.C. - many different ways
With admission to the University of Victoria for the M.Ed. program approved, Les applied for a dorm room in residence for the first summer. However before the first Sunday trip down for Les to move in, the Dickasons were pleasantly surprised to learn that Les had been appointed as Administrative Assistant [a ‘junior’ Vice-Principal] at NDSS for the coming school year.
After the exhausting routine of driving to Victoria each Sunday and back on Friday and Les attending lectures, studying and writing papers during the week, the Dickasons looked forward to a trip somewhere at the end of the university summer session. However it had to be a short one, to the west coast of the Vancouver Island, because the Principal expected Les to be at work at least a week before school resumed in September.
This pattern was repeated the next summer, the only difference being the destination for the short vacation, Vancouver, for the three or four day break in late August after university classes ended and duty called at NDSS.
Pat had some varied trips during the second and third school year of the U.VIc. M.Ed. period given that she had decided that teaching in the same school where Les served as the ‘Admin Ass.’ was not completely comfortable, so she switched to substitute teaching which meant travels to other secondary schools in the district. Two cars instead of one were required - so a VW Golf and a Honda Civic replaced the single car - and this made the U. Vic. summer driving routine easier.
During the third year of this summer student period, mentors persuaded Les to apply for a Vice-Principal’s position in the district, and when the summer session at U.Vic. was finally finished, the short break ended with Les reporting to work at Wellington Junior Secondary as V.P. In the following September there was one final trip to U.Vic. to sit two, three-hour comprehensive examinations to conclude the Masters Degree. With that hurdle removed, the Dickasons began the planning for the following summer free of classes.... a trip to Australia was overdue and will be included in a later chapter.
However, Victoria as a travel story had not ended with the comprehensive examination. During the fall of the second year at Wellington Junior, Les was invited to apply for a position with the Learning Assessment Branch of the B.C. Ministry of Education. Another drive to Victoria, and an interview followed with the Director and two other members of the small Branch. Weeks later, the interview almost forgotten, a phone call from Victoria confirmed that Les would be seconded to the Ministry from his position in Nanaimo for 18 months beginning in February, with an option for a further year if mutually agreed by Les, the Director and School District 68.
So, in January of 1979, the Dickasons began spending Saturdays in Victoria searching for a rental house or apartment for at least an 18 month stay. With no initial success in this hunt, February found Les booking nights in the Cherry Bank Hotel in Victoria and driving back to Nanaimo when his complicated schedule with the Ministry permitted. The Learning Assessment Branch had two offices, one in the heritage-designated St. Anne’s Academy building in Victoria where Les and some clerical staff were based, the other in Richmond [suburb of Vancouver, near the airport] where the Director, Nancy, two other seconded consultants, and clerical staff occupied the main office.
During the months of searching for a place to rent in Victoria, Les was sometimes in Richmond overnight and that allowed a ferry trip back to Nanaimo for some time at home before the drive to Victoria for the next two days and nights. Variations on this nomadic existence were numerous.
Eventually, despairing of finding a rental in Victoria through ‘To Rent’ advertisements or by phoning realtors, the DIckasons placed their own advertisement under “Wanted to Rent” in the Victoria newspapers. The flattering description in the ad seemed to work, and when Les collected the surprising pile of replies from the newspaper office two days after the ad’s first placement, there was one which jumped out from the others.
Flo, the owner of the hairdressing salon at the Empress Hotel, had a house high on a hill above Beach Drive on the edge of the suburb of Oak Bay, and she thought it might suit the Dickasons. We viewed the house and passed the interview with Flo on the subsequent Saturday, and the move of belongings and furniture to Victoria was planned and arrangements were made to find tenants for the Nanaimo home.
The movers were aghast to find the 19th century house in Victoria was 122 concrete steps above the roadway which was Beach Drive, and that it had two floors, so more stairs. But, the Dickasons and the two cats were soon comfortable in the 100 year old house with a stunning view over Juan de Fuca Strait and Trial Island, with the Olympic mountains visible on clear days. There was a small garage on Beach Drive, and the legs soon became accustomed to carrying groceries or luggage up the steps each time we returned to the house.
The consultant role with the Ministry was travel intensive. Les made at least one trip each week to Richmond for meetings, to universities in Victoria and on the mainland to work with contracted academics who were completing projects for the Branch, or to regional cities for two day meetings with reaction panels or to train school district representatives. As a result of a last minute deputizing for the Director, Les also had frequent trips to represent the Branch at conferences.
In just the second month, with a very rapid learning curve flattening, and with just three days notice Director Nancy asked Les if he could drive to Courtenay [two plus hours north of Victoria] to replace her as a speaker at a Professional Development day. Overhead projectors were still being used as audio visual aids, and Les augmented the ones Nancy had prepared with his own touch of cartoons, and threaded some personal anecdotes into her rough outline. Nancy indicated that she thought it would be a session during the early afternoon in a classroom with maybe 30 teachers who would chose to attend for the topic - ‘Classroom Achievement Tests and their use.’
In hindsight, this could be seen as a trial by fire. Les arrived in Courtenay to find that the session was not scheduled in a classroom but in the auditorium, and Nancy had been billed originally as keynote speaker for all teachers in this school district. The organizer warned Les that two days earlier, the BC Teachers’ Federation had started to campaign against the Classroom Achievement Tests, and that he should be prepared for vocal opposition from some ‘union hot heads.’
With some rapid scribbling on his speaking notes, Les inserted an early section explaining that he wore two hats - one as teacher and Vice Principal at a Junior High School and employed by his school district, the other as spokesperson for the Ministry of Education, but that he was not employed by the latter. The teaching skills of the past combined with the skills from stage work were needed to calm the 350 potentially hostile attendees that afternoon. The anecdotes and cartoon overheads played a large part, and the applause at the end seemed genuine.
Les was able to stop with Pat and the boys that night in Nanaimo before returning to Victoria the following day. Soon after his arrival at the office, Nancy phoned to offer congratulations on the performance in Courtenay. Her contact there had phoned her with a glowing report on the taming of the crowd and of entertaining and enlightening them at the same time. While pleased with the commendation, Les recalled one of Grandma Dickason’s homilies: “There are two ways to complete a job you are given: badly, and you won’t be asked again; or well, in which case you will be stuck with it.”
The predictive validity of this saying was accurate. When the Branch had to send a representative to a conference to speak during the next two years, often Les was assigned. Unfortunately there were no frequent flyer programs in those years because there were many flights to cities and towns all over BC and beyond to speak or conduct seminars and meetings.
Some memorable examples will suffice to demonstrate. To reach Richmond for an early meeting, Les drove out to the Victoria airport for either a commercial flight or a flight on one of the government’s small jets. Booking on the government flight was risky because a lowly consultant could be ‘bumped’ up to an hour before the flight by a Minister or high-ranking bureaucrat. However, once the reservation was confirmed an hour before flying Les could relax and enjoy the short flight to the south terminal of Vancouver airport.
If the sun had risen and the weather was fine, these flights were stunning as the jet swept across Georgia Strait at a low altitude in the early morning light. Several times Les was seated alongside the pilot in the front of the aircraft, and was able to watch the instruments and the spectacular view of the mountains, islands, sea and cities, sometimes as dawn broke. By reading the compass, Les discovered that Vancouver airport was almost exactly due north of Victoria - common parlance was that it was to the east.
Not all flights were pleasant or on time. A speaking engagement in Golden, BC, resulted in a flight being diverted to Calgary, Alberta because of fog. A rental car and a long drive at night back to Golden meant the program went ahead as scheduled the next day, followed by a dash back to Calgary and flight juggling to return to Victoria. The airports in the Kootenays were always a fog risk, and several times pilots announced that we would be diverting to the next valley town airport instead of the one on the ticket. The mountains surrounding airports such as Castlegar were steep and close to the runway, and this meant sharp descents and abrupt braking on landing. One flight into that airport produced a 360 degree horizontal spin as our small plane braked and skidded after touchdown.
Smaller float planes were needed to travel to workshops in some more remote locations. Les had an all-day workshop scheduled in Sointula on Malcolm Island off northern Vancouver Island and the float plane taken the day before the workshop was a regular weekly supply run. All passengers were given a box or package to nurse in their seats given that not all cargo would fit in the compartments. So for the flight to Sointula, Les had a pet cage holding two puppies on his lap. Fortunately there was absorbent padding in the cage and the trouser legs arrived dry.
No hotel was available on the island, consequently Les was billeted by one of the school district officials in his home and the party there that night was a fascinating one. Many teachers in that isolated district had been draft-dodgers or were left-overs from the hippy movements of the 60s, and the beer, wine and ‘weed’ soon had all in a mellow mood. Les, feeling the pressure of representing the Ministry, left for bed early - and was challenged in the workshop the next day as he tried to keep the recognized party-goers from sleeping when the lights were dimmed for the overhead presentation in the opening session.
While Les was traipsing around the province, Pat saw an ad for volunteers willing to serve as docents at the wonderful Royal BC Museum, and she responded to it. The staff were about to begin a series of training sessions, and to attend those Pat regularly visited the building on the picturesque harbour. Experts in each of the fields represented in the museum were invited and they gave lectures, conducted tours of relevant exhibits and, where appropriate, led field trips. The training was thorough and engaging and with Pat’s teaching background, she was soon in demand as staff assigned her at least once a week to lead student or adult groups visiting exhibits at the Museum.
Les took advantage of weekends free of commitments at the office to take courses too. One, in nature photography, had field trips on Saturdays alternating with classes where students had to show their work from the field trips and critique each other’s shots. Another class was in investing - the Dickasons were hoping to have a mortgage-burning party soon after returning to Nanaimo, and thought there might be some surplus cash to invest. At the first class, the instructor asked students to write a specific financial goal. Les, more facetiously than seriously, wrote down “Retire at 55” and over the following classes, with help from the instructor, fleshed out an action plan which was to start at the end of the course. This semi-joke had a serious side years later when it became a reality.
While the Dickasons were living in Victoria, it seemed everyone they knew wanted to visit. Nanaimo friends and members of the play-going group from Vancouver [fortunately not all at once] scheduled overnight or weekend stays during the fall, winter and spring, and Australian friends and relatives came for longer periods in the summer. Many of these visits required travel in one or two cars up the Island so that visitors could be shown the outside of the house and garden in Nanaimo, and could visit popular sites such as Cathedral Grove, Rathtrevor Beach, and the murals in Chemainus. Local driving tours for our visitors to Victoria included the waterfront from downtown to Oak Bay and beyond, and of course out to Saanich for the famous Butchart Gardens with the late night fireworks and variety show.
Travel around BC in the winter has always been challenging, and two examples from the Ministry regional meetings will illustrate this. Once when approaching Prince George airport with very low ceiling and wild winds which were buffeting the aircraft, the pilot made these announcements. “We are beginning our descent into Prince George and will be landing from the south in 15 minutes.” “Due to a wind change we will be landing in Prince George from the north in 15 minutes.” “We are going to drop below the clouds, look at the damn wind sock and make up our own minds which way we will be landing.”
That trip to Prince George had interesting consequences later. When checking in to the hotel for the review panel meetings the next day, Les was joined at the front desk by the leader of the contract team working on the province-wide Reading Assessment that Les was responsible for during his Ministry tenure. The professor from Simon Fraser University in Burnaby [Jaap Tuinman] slapped Les on the shoulder and suggested they check in quickly and go to play squash at the nearby courts before dinner. Registration finished, and credit card imprints taken, the pair did as Jaap suggested.
Almost two weeks later, Les was checking in at the Richmond Inn for a meeting at the Richmond Ministry office the next day. The desk clerk went into a rear office during the registration process, and a manager emerged and invited Les into his office. There was a security guard present, and the manager placed the registration form and the American Express card Les had presented alongside it. The manager asked why Les was checking in under the name Dickason when the proffered credit card had the name Tuinman on it. Les thought for a moment, then remembered the hotel desk in Prince George - Jaap and Les must have taken back each other’s credit cards before playing squash.
Les told the anecdote to a skeptical Richmond Inn manager, and was able to provide a phone number for Dr. Tuinman. The manager called the number, luckily reached Jaap in his office and asked him to check his wallet. He confirmed that he had the Dickason Amex card and Les was able to complete the registration using a back-up credit card. The credit cards were returned to their rightful owners at the next meeting of the contract team - and another squash game followed.
One Friday afternoon, when Director Nancy and Les wound up a regional meeting in Terrace in the north west of the province, the local host warned that the fog had moved in and the Terrace Airport would likely close in 30 minutes. He drove there quickly, but already the incoming plane had been diverted - to Prince Rupert. At the airline counter, they promised a bus to Prince Rupert for the 5pm flight to Vancouver, but warned that there were very few seats on the flight. We asked to be checked-in for that flight, but were refused; that could only be done in Rupert! Nancy, Les and two business men immediately rented a car and drove, speedily to beat the bus, to Prince Rupert to check-in for the 5pm flight. All four received boarding passes and waited for another bus which took them to the ferry to Digby Island where the airport was located. We arrived at the airport, but before we could check our bags, we heard the announcement that the incoming plane had experienced mechanical trouble in Prince George and the 5pm flight had been cancelled.
Back on the ferry and the bus to the Prince Rupert airline building went the passengers for the 5pm flight. Nancy and Les were now on stand-by for the 7.10 flight to Vancouver. When the plane was confirmed as arriving on time, the agent called us to the desk - there was one seat vacant on the flight. Les and Nancy did the ‘after you’ dance, but Nancy eventually asked if Les could reach Victoria if he took that seat. Hearing that catching the last flight from Vancouver to Victoria was possible for Les, Nancy decided to stay and take the later, last flight from Rupert to Vancouver given that she had only to drive home from that airport.
Bus, ferry, luggage check-in again, and Les was off to Vancouver followed by an OJ Simpson style run through the terminal there to catch the last flight back to Victoria. Home was reached after midnight, with Les wondering how Nancy was faring with the last flight from Rupert.
Incredible as it may sound, the last flight from Rupert was also cancelled - Nancy took the bus provided back to Terrace to fly from there to Vancouver, only to find that airport was socked in and the plane was diverted to Abbotsford. From that airport, she was bused the 70 km to Vancouver Airport where she returned to her car and reached home after 3am Saturday - a journey of more than 12 hours from leaving the meeting in Terrace that Friday afternoon.
After so many flights on small planes, in all weather, with some very bumpy experiences, Les developed a minor case of ‘white knuckles.’ In the years following the Ministry secondment, whenever the Dickasons flew on commercial flights, after take-off and during landing Les had a few moments of concern that his luck might have run out and that there was an accident in the offing. It took several years before that feeling passed when flying.
In the spring of the second full school year in Victoria there were trips by senior Ministry officials to Les’ office to start arm twisting. The secondment was to end in July and could not be extended beyond that month, but the visitors made it plain that there would be a permanent position with the Ministry of Education if Les would resign from School District 68, and stay. Having seen the inside workings of the bureaucracy, Les politely said no thanks, and the planning for a move home to Nanaimo began.
Before this, Nancy invited Les to accompany her and be a co-presenter at a Learned Societies conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The Classroom Achievement Tests were now in their second year, and the concept and use were groundbreaking in many ways so BC had been invited to give a presentation to the conference delegates. Compared to the experiences with short flights within BC, the number of longer flights and connections needed to cross from the west to the east coast made the journey very tiring. The long waits in airports for connecting flights were particularly wearying.
However, once in Halifax, there were few commitments Les had other than the one session as presenter with Nancy, so there was time to explore the leafy beauty of the city, the Citadel, the port area and the museums. The organizers of the conference had planned a lobster supper for delegates and speakers, and Les swore to return to the east coast for this treat, as well as for the friendly people and the scenery.
After farewells at both Branch Offices of the Ministry in early July, the moving men arrived in Victoria, pleased to be taking furniture down the steps from the Beach Drive house rather than up, and the return to Lenhart Ave. was accomplished.
Readers will need to be patient as one cat travel story is included here. Jules and Jim were not good car passengers, so on the advice of their vet, they were each given a half sleeping tablet 30 minutes before we left Beach Drive for the last time. Jules was with Les in the VW and this cat slept for the whole journey; Jim was with Pat in the Honda and howled non-stop during the trip, despite the pill. Upon arrival at the Lenhart address, both cats were put in the small powder room while the moving men carried in the furniture and boxes. At last Jim slept - but Jules meowed to be let
8out of the small room at first. After the truck had departed, as the Dickasons were unpacking and storing with much enthusiasm, both cats were dozing until Pat opened the broom cupboard in the kitchen to put away some cleaning supplies. Suddenly both cats were wide awake, scratching at the door and talking loudly. That cupboard had been the one in which we had kept their food more than two years previously, and their sense memories had kicked in upon hearing that door open for the first time now that they were home.
Much of the summer was spent repairing and touching up the interior of the house, and restoring the garden to its previous glory - the experience with renters had not been a positive one. With no work requirements until late August [Les to be back as Vice Principal at Wellington Junior] the Dickasons could start travelling again, for themselves.
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