About

I have a framed copy of my birth certificate hanging in my bedroom. It has my tiny footprints, the name of the hospital, and the attending doctor. Most significant, however, is my date of birth: February 19, 1931. Is this possible? Surely they’ve made a mistake. Well, no, it’s all too true. But like many people my age, I am not feeling old, feeble, or even tired. Maybe ninety is the new fifty! It sure feels like it!

I can’t deny that I’ve done many different things in my life. In other words, I never really decided what I was going to do when I grew up. Every once in while, I start thinking about starting a new career in something or other, and then I think, whoa! Take it easy there, boy, you’ve got too many other things to do.

So here are some of the things I’ve been doing: I’m an continuing to support Saint James Music Academy. I was president until a few years ago when I moved away from Vancouver. We give free lessons in classical music to kids, mainly from the downtown east side in Vancouver. If you know about El Sistema in Venezuela, it’s like that. I’ve always said that art (music in this case) makes us better people. And it’s true!

I was a director of the Grandview Woodland Area Council from 2009 and then I was president 2011-2013. GWAC is a local (Vancouver east side) group that lobbies for community issues like zoning, development, housing, transit and traffic issues, anything affecting the community.

I worked part time at the Vancouver Crisis Centre for ten years. I was engaged in volunteer support and other issues involving the operations of this organization. The full title: Crisis Intervention and Suicide Prevention Centre of British Columbia says it all.

I also have a Master’s Degree in Counselling Psychology and lots of training and experience in personal psychological development and change. As a Registered Clinical Counsellor,  I carried on a small private practice, but gave that up a couple of years ago.

Summer of 2017 I retired as Special Events Manager, I created and hosted concert events for City Opera Vancouver. Usually presenting three or four events through the year.

My main occupation up to a few years was lecturing on opera at Simon Fraser University Continuing Education. The courses I gave were six weeks long, with one two-hour lecture per week. I have given courses on Twentieth Century Opera, British Opera, Gilbert and Sullivan, Singers of the Acoustic Recording Era, Seldom Performed Masterworks, to name a few.

I continue to be active in community affairs here where I live now. In Boston Bar..

If you follow this blog at all, you’ll find out a lot about my other interests and activities. I am a passionate proponent of all the arts. For this I thank my parents and my paternal grandfather, who introduced me to opera at an early age.

In my early university years at Reed College (in Portland, Oregon, where I grew up) I studied music history and played the harpsichord. I changed majors several times, especially after I rejoined my parents in Santa Barbara, California. I majored in Theatre Arts for awhile, then English Literature, and finally graduated with a BA in Music History (1956) from the University of California Santa Barbara College.

To cut to the chase: I was also married (in 1956) to Gretel Bear. We moved to Los Angeles so I could attend graduate school at the University of Southern California (music history). She worked as a medical receptionist and I had a teaching assistantship. Before long, though. our first child was on his way, and this necessitated a change in how we made our living. I took a summer course in teaching and got a job teaching grade 8 math and art in Santa Paula, California.

This is a long story which I won’t tell here, but after three years (I was already deeply questioning the whole idea of school), we picked up and moved to British Columbia (1960) following an insane dream of mine to live in the country by subsistence farming. Well, that never happened, but I did teach elementary school in BC for the next seven years, becoming increasingly convinced that school had nothing to do with education and was at best designed to keep people ignorant and under control.

By now, we had two more wonderful children. There was Miles (born in 1957); Emily, 1960; and Michael, 1962. All three became highly successful and self-motivated grownups. I even have six grandchildren!

Unbearably sadly, my older son, Miles, died of a horrible cancer, March 2021.The marriage ended in divorce in 1970, and dear Gretel passed away from lung cancer several years later.

If you’re not bored yet, here’s a brief summary of what I did after 1970. Sorry, actually after 1967: I was offered the job of headmaster at The New School, an “alternative” school in Vancouver, started by a number of very sincere UBC profs for their kids. Summerhill was all the rage in those days, and I preached the gospel with great enthusiasm and, dare I say, panache. They loved me until they found out what their kids were actually doing when the rules and constraints were removed. In short, they went wild–enough said. (A.S. Neill is very clear on this process in his books.) After a few months, the school was divided between the pro-Tom and the anti-Tom groups. The pro-Tommers bowed out gracefully and in the fall of 1968 opened the Saturna Island Free School. There followed a wild and wonderful three years which confirmed my thinking about learning, about kids, and about education. There will be a lot of this on this blog as time passes.

In 1971, I moved back to Vancouver, trying a bunch of different ways to make a living: writing, substitute teaching, vocal coaching, and even piano tuning. In 1972, I became involved with Vancouver Opera, and along with Micki Partridge and a few others, started the Opera-in-the-Schools program. (Still running.) I wrote the program, did translations, and acted as narrator in our school presentations. We did as many as 300 school performances each season for eight years!

In 1981, I decided to go back to university to work on a Master’s Degree in Opera Direction and Production. For various personal reasons (basically, I was a mess) I didn’t finish it. I started training as a therapist in Transactional Analysis, managed that for a few years, and carried on a small practice.

In 1984, I dropped everything and moved to Hornby Island, supposedly to spend a few months to collect my thoughts and figure out what to do. Eleven years later …

During the first few months there, I got involved in the local performing arts scene, formed an amateur theatre company, directed dozens of plays, and developed the Hornby Festival of which I was General Manager and Artistic Director.

It was, I suppose, a bit like The New School; my ideas and ideals were pushing people farther than they wanted to go. Again, it’s a long story, too long for here, but in 1996 I moved back to Vancouver and soon got the job of General Manager of the Pacific Baroque Orchestra. I pretty well hung on to this for the next eleven years and finally “retired” in August of 2007.

Feeling now like I really ought to finish some of the things I had started, I completed a Master’s Degree in Counselling Psychology through Prescott College in Arizona. This was a fabulous experience–in an institution that fit with my idea of how education should work. I did a lot of travelling (I had to go there for colloquia several times) and spent every penny that I had. That all took place during a year or so hiatus I had from the PBO, ending in 2001.

Then, after finally exiting from managing the baroque orchestra–and fine group of musicians it was and still is–I went back to the University of British Columbia and finished that Master’s Degree in Opera Direction and Production. That was 2007-2008, and I had a wonderful time. Maybe you really have to be in your 70s to appreciate university.

March 2016, I moved to Boston Bar (yes, beyond Hope and through Hell’s Gate). My friend Richard McCluskey and I bought a house here. People wonder what anyone does in a place like Boston Bar. I can tell you that I’ve never been busier. Social life is ever-active, and there is a constant string of community events. Not long after being here, I joined the Boston Bar North Bend Enhancement Society. I was secretary for three years.

When the pandemic came along I got to seriously writing the book I’d been planning for about thirty years. It’s now published (yay!) and you can find it on Amazon.ca. SCHOOL AND THE END OF INTELLIGENCE. Why not buy it? You’ll love it!

Well, that’s not all, but enough for now.

I think I mentioned some of the things I’m doing these days, so I won’t go on any longer. As I said before, if you follow this blog, there will be more.

Cheers,
Tom