| Sweat by day, teach by night: heritage of Frontier College For 85 summers, Frontier Allege has marshalled young men on university campuses and marched them away in steel-toed boots and hard hats to lumber camps, remote construction sites, mines and—the ultimate Canadian romance—railway gangs. They work by day and teach by night. Like hundreds of thousands of men before him, Mike Finigan is counting the swings of his 10-pound sledge-hammer. About 4,500 should be enough today, banging in anchors to hold steel rails to new wooden ties. And like thousands before him, Finigan is also thinking about helping his 50 fellow railway workers improve their lives and education later that afternoon, when the heat of the prairie sun near Suffield, Alla. has distorted rails that disappear into an endless horizon of azure sky and golden earth. Finigan is a Frontier College laborer-teacher, once the pioneer of literacy-in-the-workplace in Canada. But now laborer-teachers are even more of an endangered species than the "navvies" on CPR's Alberta No. 1 Tie Gang. For 85 summers, the college has marshalled young men on university campuses and marched them away in steel-toed boots, overalls and hard hats to lumber camps, remote construction sites, mines and—the ultimate Canadian romance—railway gangs. They work by day and teach by night. Norman Bethune moved on to doctoring in China after experience as a labora-teacher; James Mutchmor to be moderator of the United Church; Svend Robinson, David Kilgour, John Crosbie—all to the current Parliament; and someone from London, Ont. named David Peterson, who nailed spikes for $1.35 an hour.
|
