BOCA INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING COMPANY

Monday, January 9th, 2012, 12:05 a.m.

Learning disabilities first affected me in grade school but I did not know anything about them. In fact I did not learn about my own until I was about 50 years old and self-identified after reading a Reader's Digest article written by an LD teacher dealing with LD students. I was tested at the University of Toronto in an ongoing study which confirmed my suspicion. I had gone to a split high school for no better term after graduating elementary school where there was no contact with girls unless you knew them from outside of school. They occupied the other half of the building, a duplicate of our side. I liked the High School of Montreal because I worked in the cafeteria, had swimming classes in the school pool, gym classes, got on every sort of school team and even ran cross country with my brother. I also got to take woodworking, metal working and auto mechanics along with typing twice a week. If you ever saw an old movie in which a news reporter was typing up his article on an upright typewriter, you will know what kind of machines we used. Yes, they were the original ones purchased and installed in the school around 1895 and they still worked extremely well having been regulary oiled and repaired as required. Besides, how much damage could my small hands do the typewriter. My little finger on my right hand was not strong enough in those days to even press the letter 'p' down so I was constantly doing a Dr. Spock greeting on my keyboard as I stretched the next finger to that key. Well, I failed high school that first year with 58.9%. The pass was 60% in subjects and I needed a 65% average. I was dumbfounded. So, the next year I went back to Grade Eight and it was more of the same except I was able to learn a bit more since I already knew a lot of the stuff. This time my typing skills went up to 82% from 60% and I averaged 62.8% for the year. I did not make the pass mark of 65% but they allowed me to go to summer school and I got through to Grade Nine. Still, I got to try a lot of different things like a session on the trumpet. I passed that course but did not continue into Grade Nine as I had been moved up to a Grade 9C class with lots more math and harder subjects. My marks dropped to 52.4% and I could not explain it. I guess I was just worn out from all the trying to get good marks with out any success. That was the year that I was transferred to a new school named Malcolm Campbell High School in St. Laurent I am not sure what the area was called. Anyway, it was near the Autoroute and a nice new building for the coming crowds of babyboomers born after the war and the slow learning types like me who had got behind. I was doing my second year of grade nine there but only achieved 61.6% with all the destractions and my teacher did not let me go to summer school that summer thinking I needed to learn for once and for all that I needed to work. He did not know anything about learning disabilities back then and probably needed a lesson. Not many teachers did, but those who did were a great help to me along the way like one French teacher and a grade four teacher who taught me in elementary school. I remember them for that. They were able to teach me where otherwise I might not have learned anything. Here I was, a summer off and time for some fun, a broken neck and months wearing a collar while I could do nothing else but learn. My parks shot up to 70.9%, a first for me, but also because all I could do was learn that year and with two previous years of plugging my brain with knowledge, I just improved upon that and finally got it all in. For the following year I asked to get into an advanced math class thinking it is where I should be. They put me in 10D, higher than the 9 H and 9I which I had experienced earlier. On August 18th, I was rushed into hospital and over the next three months I was in and out of hospital, nearly died, and did not get back to school until December 1st. Even then I was very weak. My parent paid my math teacher to come and tutor me at home but it was not enough to give me enough knowledge and practice to retain stuff as I should as my body was not reacting well and I ended up back in hospital along the way. Finally on the road to recovery I tried to catch up but it was almost impossible leaving me that far behind that I got only 49.7% for Grade Ten, about the right mark for missing three months of school and not being able to catch up. However, I did not let that deter me. I left school because I had spent 6 years there, gone through a broken neck and a kidney removal and a lung collapse along the way after they extracted 250 ccs of liquid from it. Not a happy time but such was my life. By the summer of 1963 I was working fulltime and enrolled in Sir George Williams Evening High School in the fall. It was a YMCA venture in Montreal that had allowed thousands like myself over the years to get an education at night while going to work during the day and allowed us to decide how many courses we could handle at one time. Classes were 2 hours long generally, one night per week or two nights per week in the summer. From 1963 to the end of the summer of 1965, I attended a total of thirteen highschool courses going up to 3 nights a week for four hours per night at one point. There was always homework and little time to play. Fortunately, I had met a young lady at a YMCA dance and we hit it off. She and I would date for the next three years once a week and spend summer vacations together when we could get the time together. That ended a year after I moved west to Calgary but was fun while it lasted. She was a lovely girl. Nevertheless, the environment at night school suited me and i graduated with a 70.5% average, enough to get into Sir George Williams University at age 21 just as my grade school mates who had got that far had graduated. My high school education had taken me a total of eight years to complete. And it did not stop there, it went on with my night classes at university and then when I came back from three years in the west to complete the degree I had just started when a promotion had taken me west. It was a nice break for me.  In any case, my education did not stop there. It continued on and off for the rest of my life until I had done enough and could no longer afford it. I did not overcome my learning disabilities and they plagued me in a lot of different ways throughout my life and still do while I am typing this blog but such is what I have to contend with to survive. After 4 degrees and a banking fellowship I feel I spent enough time in school, did things I needed and things I wanted to do well. The only thing I noted is that as I matured so did my marks and they kept rising as the years went by. After the age of 50 all of my university courses were mainly Bs and B+s with an A here and there. Over those years I completed a total of fifty individual courses....it was a long but an education road. Combining that with my good and bad life experiences, it is material for another book maybe....what do you think? Naaaaaw, maybe not, the others aren't finished yet and I am in my 68th year of life. Phooey!