#28 Vanity and Learning: Monday Morning was Always my Favourite Time of the Week

(Part III - Carleton University)

My first year in the master’s program at U of A took my love of learning to a whole new level.

I was majoring in Canadian government with a minor in Voting Studies and Political Culture (still not yet a sufficiently established discipline that an aspiring academic could find a teaching job if this was their major) and Canadian history.

As a graduate student, I was given an office in the Political Science Department and went to school everyday and hung out with my fellow students and professors in the department lounge.

I also was a teaching assistant and absolutely loved the interaction with the undergraduate students and my advisor, Thelma Oliver. Thelma gave the formal lectures and then I would conduct 2 follow-up seminars with half the class each time. This smaller group, “Oxford-style” format gave the students the opportunity to really explore Thelma’s teaching and allowed me to expand and explain the parts of the lecture that the kids might either be the most interested in or might not have understood.

By this time, I was also very familiar with the department faculty members, and we developed a very close and causal relationship. I aced all of my courses and finished my first year at the top of my class.

My thesis – at least in theory - had the potential to be important piece of academic research, but when it was finished it ended up being pretty mundane.

My thesis advisor, Jim Lightbody suggested that I explore the Peason governments of 1963-1965 and 1965-1968 to try to determine how two successive minority governments (which, by their very composition, were always considered historically unstable) could have produced probably the most impressive legislative accomplishments in Canadian history – including the introduction of Medicare, the Canada Pension Plan and a new national flag.

There were a number of ways to go about this challenge but, still being something of a math nerd, I decided my route would be to analyze voting patterns for every motion of confidence and money bill that passed in the House of Commons over that five-year period.

The land-breaking conclusion of this exhaustive investigation was that the Liberals managed to survive as a government and pass all this impressive legislation through (wait for it!) old fashion bartering, compromise and dealing making … basically by practicing politics. Select Liberal and Progressive Conservatives arranged to “pair” to offset each other’s vote or simply agreed to be absent and not vote on bills that otherwise would have brought the House down. A bunch of old white guys would meet in their Parliamentary offices, late into the night, most often over a glass of scotch and agree not to show up for key votes. It was no more complicated than that.

Notwithstanding this rather lackluster mark on academe, I graduated with honours in 1974.

After seven years of “going steady” I asked Marjorie to marry me, and we were wed in the summer between my course and thesis year.

Now being a married man, I thought – for about two minutes – about getting a job and making a living but the allure of becoming a professor was too great and I decided to continue my scholarly journey.

But I also knew that it would be career-stifling to get three degrees from one university and, for the first time in my life, I was going to have to leave Edmonton. I applied to Queen’s, UBC and Carleton, was accepted by all but decided on Carleton because it was in the nation’s capital and the only one that would allow me to combine my political science major with a minor in Canadian history.

With that decision made, Marjorie and I jumped in our new Ford Cortina and drove across Canada to Ottawa.

At the time, Carleton’s political science department was probably rated behind Queens, UBC and U of T overall, but they had some real momentum and credentials in my field of Canadian studies. Not only did they have access to the National Library and Archives, two of their bright young faculty members, Michael Whittington and Rick Van Loon had just published the first book to replace R. MacGregor Dawson’s “Democratic Government in Canada” as the core university curriculum text in Canadian politics in over 20 years.

As I mentioned in an earlier post on this thread, while I was at University of Alberta, I really had no appreciation of how exceptional the academic atmosphere and experience was there. The contrast with Carleton’s political science department soon made that clear.

For a start, Carleton was far bigger – more grad students, more faculty and more sub-disciplines being taught and studied. It was more formal and rigid than I was used to, without the same rapport between students and professors or even among the students themselves that. It was also more depressing. The grad student’s offices were in a cavernous, bullpen-type room that we all shared. Even more scary, many of my new colleagues were in their fourth and fifth – and one in his eighth year – of the PhD program, with no end in sight.

Mike Whittington was my advisor and the only bright light in my otherwise dim initiation to the Political Science Department. He was a very handsome, hip young guy, with an irreverent sense of humour and a non-serious attitude towards formality and protocol. He was extremely popular with both the students and faculty and especially among the female members of both constituencies.

He was also very well respected and, together with Rick Van Loon, they were seen as the department’s rising superstars. In addition to overseeing my academic progress (and eventually my PhD thesis), I took Mike and Rick’s advanced seminar on Canadian politics, as well as courses in party politics, political culture, research methodology and Canadian history – all of which were taught to an extremely high standard, but without the kind of conversation, back-and-forth conjecturing and spit-balling, I was used to.

While I wasn’t very impressed with my poli sci colleagues, I also felt I got very lucky by enrolling in Richard Clippindale’s, graduate student seminar in Canadian history. He was a very well dressed and proper sort, but with a surprisingly good sense of humour and a real gift as a storyteller. I had minored in history at U of A and was aware of the broad brush strokes of our national story, but he introduced to me to other, lesser-known narratives found through social history and even more importantly, that I could write myself by going to the National Library and Archive, which I proceeded to do every Friday afternoon for the rest of the year (More on Rick in a future series)

The other requirement of the PhD program at Carleton was that you had to pass exams in two of three “skill sets” – research methodology and statistics, oral French or French translation. The first, I knew I could pass in my sleep but the other two kept me up at night with worry.

As an Albertan, being bi-lingual had not been a high priority (probably the biggest miscalculation I ever made in my professional life). As testament to how low a priority this was, I had been allowed to pass grade 11 French at Harry Ainley by making a paper mâché model of the Eiffel Tower (I shit you not!).

Seeing I could neither read, write nor speak more than a few words of Canada’s other official language, I knew something had to be done and I chose to audit a first-year French course.

By this time, I was 22 and for the first time in my life, all my classmates were younger than me. Most were also from the Ottawa Valley area and were well versed in the French language, if not already fluently bi-lingual. So, I also went from always feeling that I was the smartest guy in the room to knowing that I was the dumbest.

At the end of the day – and because I always had a very good memory – I was able to tough it through the course and pass the French translation requirement but the whole experience just added to my misery.

And as if this wasn’t enough stress, having finally settled into Ottawa and my course work, Marjorie made me a candlelight dinner, sat me down and informed me that she was 5 months pregnant (don’t ask!!!) and we were going to have our first child right around the end of the academic year.

I had a Teaching Assistantship, and she was working for the federal government, so while we were hardly swimming in cash, between these two sources of income we had enough to keep our heads above water. Now she was going to have to quit work, and the baby was set to arrive just as my teaching stipend was set to expire.

While I didn’t much enjoy the atmosphere in the Poli Sci department, I was quite immersed in my course work but knew that I was now going to have to shift my focus to financial survival.

My best bet was the Canada Council Scholarship which was awarded each year to the top student in the program. I was pretty sure that was me and I applied, fairly confident that this new source to income, together with the cashflow from my Teaching Assistantship which would begin again at the start of the next academic year, would keep us afloat.

This was also around the time when Canadian banks introduced overdraft protection where the lender would let you draw down $200 into your account, as an overdraft. I opened up five new accounts at five different banks and at least I had a $1000 float if we got desperate.

When they announced the awarding of the Canada Council Scholarship a couple of months later, I was not the recipient. I immediately set up a meeting with the Chair of Department to find out what was going on. When we met, he explained that while I had near perfect grades in the first two trimesters of the program, there was another very worthy student who was majoring in Existential Phenomenology, and they had recommended him as it was going to be more difficult for him to find a job than me because of the narrowness of his academic focus.

Ok, I might have loved learning, but this was bullshit.

Marjorie was now 7 months pregnant and I was going to have to get a job.

Learning – Sometimes life throws you a curve ball