When I began my full-time teaching career in Barrie Ontario, shortly after starting at Saint Joseph CHS with Principal Bullis, a few of the teachers started to invite me to attend after school gatherings at a local pub on Friday afternoons. I would not be able to attend every week as I was busy playing some gigs on Friday evenings, so, I needed to get home from my drive, see Florinda for a short dinner break, and prepare to load my vehicle with equipment to travel to the gig location.
The Friday afternoon pub stops, following a regular teaching day, of a long week of daily commuting to Barrie, was certainly enjoyable and needed. It helped to develop relationships with some staff members and this most certainly helped me to get actively involved with the school community. I think the Vice-Principal of St. Joseph CHS was Jim Naylor(?), but I am not sure. He did have some music background.
My brothers did own and operate Ricki-Jo’s restaurants and this became helpful to me as I arranged a Friday trip from Barrie by school bus to Ricki-Jo’s Queensway location to have a meal and then attend a baseball game. Ricki-Jo’s offered many of these organized events: meal and blue jays baseball for a reasonable price. I do not remember how many of these social activities I would manage to arrange with the help of my brother, but at least one trip for sure from Barrie, and many additional evenings when I moved to Father Bressani CHS, in Woodbridge.
After two years teaching in Barrie, I managed to get a teaching job at Father Bressani. This came about with my connection to a teacher at st. Joseph CHS in Barrie, who had a relative at FAther Bressani, who wanted to move to Barrie. I applied and was interviewed, and got hired.
The Friday after-school gatherings would continue for years at a local pub located on highway 7 and Ansley Grove in Woodbridge. In fact, there were times when some 15-20 teachers would show up regularly on a Friday afternoon. It was so much fun and relaxing. The local pub manager treated us extremely well. Often, as a way to thank us for our continuous attendance, we would get free appetizers, and in addition, annually, we would get free drinks and food - it was their way to keep us coming back and it worked!
I did arrange many Ricki-Jo’s / Toronto Blue Jay trips while teaching at Father Bressani. This worked well for my brothers’ business and it helped me to develop good relationships with the school community, staff members; it was fun also, of course. It was not difficult to do and I now realize that these type of activities helped to develop my organizational skills and also, helped me to negotiate with people, promoting fun and community-building. I’m convinced that these projects helped me to be skillful with future excursions I helped to plan and deliver in my teaching career.
Bye for now . . . .
