Side by Side: Celebrating the highlights and retirement of two educational pioneers

In August 1979, 24-year-old college graduate Judy Campey boarded a northbound First Air flight from Quebec City. In this pre-Air Creebec era, taxi driver Sam Gunner met her at the Chibougamau airport. He drove her – and the local mail – through forests that finally opened up to a charming village of colourful log houses.

Notwithstanding her enchantment with picturesque Mistissini, Campey was relieved that her initial teacher lodgings in the “white units” were equipped with both electricity and indoor plumbing. Soon after, Campey met Georgina Forward, a fellow teacher. She invited Campey to her trailer to meet her husband, Stephen, and her toddlers, BettyAnne and Patrick. So began the 37 years of close collaboration that helped put Voyageur Memorial School on the map for high literacy scores, reading development programs and teaching excellence.

“As a youth, I’d planned to become a nurse,” laughed Forward. “And I a physiotherapist,” said Campey. Both women reminisced for the Nation at the Macleod homestead kitchen table, each sharing memories of four decades of friendship. In 1986, Campey’s marriage to Forward’s brother, Don Macleod, changed their status. Now they were family, their homes by the lake only moments apart.

“We worked together, and helped each other,” said Forward. “For example, with 30 students to a class, when there was a behaviour problem, I’d send my little culprit off to Judy’s room with a note that, unbeknownst to him, read, ‘Please keep him while I teach my lesson’. Judy would send one to me too. Many of the parents hunted in the bush for most of the year and our students missed them terribly, so our after-school activities meant all the more to our students. We knew we were replacement moms for the children whose mothers worked away from home.”

“City dwellers might be hard-pressed to imagine what end-of-year visits to Quebec City, Montreal, Saint-Félicien and Tadoussac could mean to our students – but we knew,” said Campey. “We saw the joy on their faces as 50 students boarded a charter bus to explore the world. This happiness was worth every last ounce of energy we all gave.

“Every year Georgina would return from summer holiday with a handful of travel brochures. Then one coffee break she’d fan them out before us on the staff room table and say, ‘I was thinking….’ and soon, well before a charter bus pulled into Mistissini, our next trip was in motion. There’s nothing like a trip away from home together to convince you how much you belong to one big family. We all felt that closeness.”

Back then, every activity required more time than it does now, added Forward. “To make photocopies, there was a tray, gelatinous purple liquid to mix with a precise amount of water, and delicate handling to reproduce a single page. Most days we finished work around 6 pm and then off we went to cook supper for our growing families, often with students in tow.”

Forward and Campey team-taught 60 children in a split-grade classroom. Opening wall dividers to form one large space, they streamlined their strategic teaching methodology of routine, music, storytelling – and it had to be fun. “We’d read first thing in the morning, which motivated our students to be on time, else they’d miss that day’s exciting instalment,” said Campey, recalling that at that time, most of her students spoke more Cree than English.

“We chose books without pictures, so our students would use their own imaginations,” added Forward. “To one, the main character was Aboriginal and tall, to another, a red-haired Viking. Whatever appeared in their mind’s eye was perfect.”

Each woman enthusiastically celebrates the other: “Judy was an especially creative teacher,” said Forward. “She loved languages and books. Before the school owned a photocopier, Judy hand-made her own design of interactive flipbooks. She taught her students how to their construct them, decorate them and hand sew the pages between two covers cut from Tide boxes. The result was pride of accomplishment – and, after that considerable effort, proud owners were less likely to lose or misplace their copybooks.”

If the first page featured the letter “A” their students found pictures that began with that letter, cut them out with a scissors and glued them into their own flipbook. This may sound simple, but there are many fine-motor steps that allow for a paced process of beginning, middle and end that today’s youngsters, who receive photocopies, may miss.

“Georgina loved to teach math and science,” said Campey. “And she was exceptionally well-organized, a place for everything and everything in its place. One day when we’d exchanged classrooms for an hour, an inspector happened to come by. After he left, he commended me on my beautifully arranged classroom. He later suggested that Georgina might want to tidy up a bit. We had a big laugh about that!

“Unlike teachers who’d completed their teaching qualifications in the city,” added Campey, “Georgina earned her Bachelor of Education through intense summer teaching courses, away from her family and without an annual holiday for 10 years. It’s important to acknowledge that kind of determination.”

The two friends also delight in recalling a Student Play Day they initiated. The whole community participated in setting up a real fairground featuring food and game booths, draws for bicycles, races, sports, mini-golf and even a dunk tank. “Remember our Patrick MacDonald, a great teacher who got dunked whenever a student won a round?” asked Forward.

Campey did not become a physiotherapist as she’d planned. She stretched minds and imaginations instead. Likewise, Forward’s childhood wish to nurse her ill father did not happen. Instead she prescribed literacy, a taste for math and a curiosity for science for the hundreds of children in her care over the years. Indeed, Forward cared for the whole school as vice principal and, for her final three years of service, as facilitator of the literacy program, Success For All.