September 26, 2006 - 5:00pm
He might have been a beardless Santa, dropping by Malaspina during his off-season to give the gift of guidance to confused, first-year Malaspina University-College students. Bill Virtue claims he is not St. Nick, but he’s a close double for the mythical figure, with his white hair, genial manner, ready laughter and twinkling eyes.
Hired as Malaspina’s start-of-term ambassador, he spent September helping lost students find their path during the first hectic weeks of the fall term.
"It’s a beautiful job," he said. "The students are very pleasant and very polite. It’s really nice to interact with these students."
For Virtue, it was also a chance to see graduates of the Canadian school system, where he spent 30 years of his working life. "It was nice to see the end product – a very positive end product at that."
He also enjoyed meeting the international students and becoming an English language resource, explaining such idiomatic usages as "uh uh" and "ooh la-la."
"The biggest change was just greeting the students and watching the reactions change over the first three weeks. At first they don’t expect anyone to talk to them but then they start to smile and greet me," he said.
Not all the students he helped were young. He met 20-plus adults combining work with Adult Basic Education courses, seniors tackling university courses and people changing careers or finally following a long-held dream. Among them was a man in mid-life who’d left a professional career to study creative writing and an 81-year-old woman taking a one-day workshop on memory.
"It takes a lot of courage," he remarked. "They’re pursuing a dream."
He has pursued dreams of his own. He taught school in Red Deer, Alberta, for 20 years before buying his own business, a small store in Qualicum Bay. For the five years that he lived on the island and operated the store, he supplemented his income with a string of part-time jobs. "I found how adaptable a person could be," he said.
Returning to teaching, he accepted a job in Teslin, a native community in the Yukon, 90 miles from Whitehorse. Of the 400 people in the town, 75 per cent were Aboriginal, he said, giving him an unmatched opportunity to experience native culture.
"I was welcomed right into the community," he said, adding that almost upon his arrival, he was invited to a potlatch. He considers the four years he spent in Teslin one of the highlights of his career. From Teslin he returned to Alberta as principal of a community school and then wound up his career as an elementary school principal in Watson Lake.
Upon retiring, he moved back to Vancouver Island and settled in Nanaimo. "I grew and killed plants as fast as I could in my garden," he said.
He also began volunteering, doing stints with Speed Watch and with the Salvation Army. As a bell ringing volunteer during the Salvation Army’s annual Christmas campaign, he was often mistaken for Santa by young children.
He applied to work with Westguard Security this past summer and was delighted to be seconded to Malaspina as campus ambassador during the first few weeks of September.
"I like people," he said, adding that he welcomed the chance to get to know the students and staff at Malaspina and to become more familiar with the campus. Although he had lived in Nanaimo for seven years, he hadn’t set foot on the hill until he started working at Malaspina.
"It’s a beautiful campus," he said. "It’s very clean – and it’s huge."
He added that it takes 398 steps to travel from the bottom of the campus to the top. No matter which step he is on, he is ready to help. "There’s always somebody who shows up with a question," he said.
Tags: In the Community
