I MISSED FAMILY DAY

What civic organization would schedule a Family Day on a Monday, a school day, a workday? Answer: None. Certainly not Surrey’s SAG, Surrey Art Gallery. SAG conveners know better, but apparently a grandfather with stage 0.5 Alzheimer’s doesn’t. Yet the ad in my Art Society of Surrey magazine said June 8 and so did the tiny window on my watch display an 8. So I took Jayden out of school, both of us eager to make art with others and then to enjoy a participative concert. However, upon arrival, a large classic Rolls Royce was parked in front of the entrance to SAG and people dressed nicely in suits and knee length dresses and somber faces were entering as well. There were no other children and parents in shorts and T-shirts in sight but Jayden and I entered nonetheless and inquired where we would find the Family Day gathering. The accommodating receptionist advised me that Family Day was yesterday, Sunday, that it’s always on Sunday so families can attend, and never on a weekday. She said this with a tone that suggested that any thinking person would have innately understood this. The muted occasion was the memorial service for one of British Columbia’s most celebrated artists, Robert Douglas Genn, whom I have admired and about whom I have written before. Jayden’s grandfather was not even current enough to remember this noteworthy event.

So J and I returned to the car, MX5, top down to revisit our afternoon plans. We came up with, let’s first go to Krispy Kreme for a world famous decadent doughnut and drink and then let’s go to the Serpentine Wild Life Conservation area. Jayden calls it ‘Turpentine.’ It was to be an artsy afternoon, but I reason that artists need to spend lots of time outdoors, so this was a well-spent afternoon. My other four grandchildren also enjoy drawing and painting so I will have to come up with matching ideas for them I’m sure.

BILL 22 IS A BAD APPPLE FOR EVERYONE

BILL 22 is an insulting Liberal government imposition upon the teaching profession of B.C. It will exploit educators in order to save educational dollars. It will remove current class size and composition limitations which will impact the teacher interaction with individual students for the sake of reducing the number of necessary teachers and classrooms. It attacks professional autonomy and the prerogative of collective bargaining. It is contextualized within a simulated mediation process overseen by a mediator of the government’s choice and who without a doubt will be supportive of the uncompromisingly combative position by the Liberal government that devalues education and educators by legislatively imposing employers’ demands for teachers to concede with respect to seniority, evaluations, placements, discipline, layoff and dismissal. Parents and the public in general must recognize the offensiveness of this treatment of educators and its prospective affect upon students.

LIBRARIES - BOOKS -

A NEW LEARNING
I am grateful for public libraries. As a child it was a Saturday ritual with me to walk to the St. Catharines city library by myself on child-safe streets. Some days I would sit with the chief librarian as she read a story. I would then browse the shelves and select several books, all of which I would read by the following Saturday. My family’s meager means never occurred to me then in part because of this lavish joy. Books, books, books.

As I grew older I eagerly built a personal library, purchasing books for high school and college and looking forward to the day that I would be a pastor. One day my home church pastor called me to his office. He was moving to the U.S and he was offloading some of his library directly into my arms. I used many of them for forty years.

It was while reading Wilbur M. Smith’s ‘Before I Forget – Memoirs’, Chicago, Moody Press, 1971, p. 283), that I was inspired to enlarge my library. Over the years Smith built a fabulous personal library (more than 25,000 volumes), and he was recognized as one of the world’s foremost authorities on books pertaining to the Bible. He held four pastorates over a twenty-year period. Smith himself was a prolific author and although he never attended a theological seminary and did not have a theological degree he taught at the Moody Institute from 1938-1947, and subsequently at Fuller Theological Seminary from 1947-1963, and concluded his thirty-three year teaching career at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School from 1963-1971. It was a day when knowledge was valued more than letters of degree behind one’s name. Perhaps Smith’s most remarkable book was ‘THEREFORE STAND — A Plea for a Vigorous Apologetic in the Present Crisis of Evangelical Christianity.’ Published in 1945 to counter the spirit of liberalism that was questioning the authority of Scriptures, it was a huge success receiving scholarly accolades.

Through the years part of my financial package was a book allowance and through the years I developed a library of hundreds of volumes. One of my first considerations at the time of my retirement was divesting myself of some of these because no longer having an off site library space, my home could not contain my collection. It was a shock to realize how many books were dated and outdated and of no use to others. Boxes and boxes were given to charity outlets and some to Surrey trash. Still boxes are stacked in my garage and must be disposed of eventually.

Libraries today require little space, perhaps a desk drawer because vast amounts of books and resources are available on CDs. I have Bibleworks for instance which in one program equips me with countless language translations, lexicons, reference material, commentaries. Similar benefits exist in every discipline.

I now have a library card at my local Cloverdale Library and have access to books I could never afford. I have come to the end of a marvelous loaned biography of former lieutenant - governor of BC, the Honourable David Lam. On his last night in Government House, David and his wife Dorothy said a prayer and thanked God, humbled by the privilege of the past six and one half years and believing that it was a gift from God.