The MacKenzie Days
by Harrison Kim
part 1
In the early 1980’s, I scored my first teaching job at MacKenzie Catholic Alternative High School in northern British Columbia.
“Your responsibility will be Spanish, Science and Physical Education. The salary is two hundred dollars a month plus room and board,” said my future boss, Father Jim Saginario.
“That sounds great!” I told Father Jim. “I’m actually an English teacher, but hey, it’s all the same to me.”
“We like the fact that you are boundary flexible,” Father Jim laughed.
“How can you live on two hundred a month, Harrison?” asked my friend Maurice.
“It’s for the experience,” I said. “Like going to Africa.”
“I think they pay more in Africa,” Maurice said. “How good is your Spanish, by the way?”
“Yo puedo hablar bien,” I told him.
At the time, I was living in a hammock at the side of Burnaby Mountain, a twenty-minute hike down from the University, which sat on top of the hill. Every morning I hoofed it up to the school lockers where I stored my belongings.
A month before, I’d graduated with a teaching degree. My girlfriend left for England to learn Reiki and find a more upscale man. I made ends meet by unloading trucks and doing casual warehouse work. I wanted to get the heck out of the city and start my teaching career.
I rode the bus two days to Mackenzie, took one brown suitcase and a backpack. A late-night barber at a layover stop gave me a very short haircut.
MacKenzie lay in the northern wilderness a hundred miles from anywhere else. It was a pulp mill town laid out and constructed for the mill company workers, complete with identical houses featuring wide front lawns, circular cul-de-sacs, and amenities like a hockey arena and a shopping centre.
The first thing I noticed, when the bus bumped into town, was the abandoned tree crusher, a huge spiked steamroller that had been used to flatten out the townsite and its foliage twenty years before.
“What MacKenzie stands for,” said the sign hanging from this slowly rusting behemoth, as the bus ground to a dusty halt outside the town’s massive pulp mill.
A skinny, red-bearded young man about my age picked me up at the station. He introduced himself as Hugh, the main teacher. “The kids will test limits,” Hugh told me. “They’ve all been kicked out of regular schools.”
Limits were my weakness. “Harrison needs to take nasty lessons,” wrote my teaching practicum supervisor. “The class easily moves out of control.”
As I settled into the teacher’s residence, Hugh talked about his education skills. “I’m a classically trained guitarist,” Hugh said. “I also teach music.”
“I play too,” I nodded. “How did you do with the students last year?
“It was a zoo,” he said. “What’s that sticking out of your backpack?”
“My hammock,” I told him. “I lived in it all this summer to save money.”
“I’d like to try it out,” said Hugh.
He began to rope my former bed between two saplings in the backyard. I took a hike to nearby Lake Williston, a fifty-mile long artificially created inland sea held back by a giant dam built to service the mill and town with water and power.
The air stank like rotten cabbage. Dead trees floated on the lake surface. Hundreds of flies buzzed about, and a sharp-faced native boy was squatting on a log.
“What’s that stench?” I asked the kid.
“It’s from the pulp mill,” he answered. “Some say it’s the smell of money.”
We sat watching the stagnant water and brushing off insects. After a time, the boy said quietly, “Sometimes you see bones floating.”
“Bones?” I asked. “You mean, human ones?”
“What lies below the surface eventually comes up,” he said. “Including the Indian graves.” He smiled. “They forgot to take the trees and everything else out when they built the dam. Or maybe it was cheaper to leave them.”
“Quite a mess,” I said.
We stared out at the tangle of branches and tree trunks.
“I’m Leo,” he offered, “son of Walter.”
“Pleased to make your acquaintance.”
Leo said he was going into Grade 10 at the school where I’d be teaching.
“It’s pretty boring,” he told me. “I’m more into playing Dungeons and Dragons.”
On the first day of classes, which met in the church basement, I bought my brown suitcase full of learning materials. Leo showed up with his own brown suitcase.
“What’s in yours?” he asked.
“Oh, pencils and papers,” I said. “How about you?”
“My games manual,” he told me.
Father Jim, the principal and priest, gave the fifteen students — thirteen restless boys and two skinny girls — a pep talk. Father Jim wore a short black T-shirt that showed off his muscular arms. He’d been a wrestler on the amateur circuit and, after being hit a lot in the head, decided to enter the seminary.
“A Catholic church basement might be a strange place for an education facility,” he said, “but it’s built with attitude, not merely with money.”
He guided me through my first physical education class, held in the community sports field. “Let’s play softball,” he commanded.
One kid belted a fly ball out of the park.
“Home run or foul ball, Father Jim?” he yelled.
“Foul Ball,” yelled the buff, balding priest.
Everyone obeyed Father Jim. When I tried out as umpire, a few days later, the kids kept squabbling about my every call.
“I don’t have God on my side,” I told fellow teacher Hugh, who sat in the residence living room strumming his superb Larrivee Guitar.
“You have to set boundaries,” he said. “Or they’ll walk all over you.”
“Can I try your guitar?” I asked him.
He frowned, and smoothed the neck down with a soft tissue. “Only when I’m here at the house,” he said, and held it at arm’s length. I grabbed the neck and pulled. He held on. “You always take it by the body,” he said. “Touch the body carefully.” He stood up and placed the guitar in my hands.
I played, and it sounded heavenly; the sound took me far away from my anxiety.
“You’re not bad for a layperson,” said Hugh.
For the first week, I worked at lesson planning for my three courses. With Science, I asked the students to create a project that showed a chemical reaction. “Like a mini-volcano,” I said.
“Yeah, let’s make a volcano,” responded Brodie, a tall, dark-haired fellow with a big grin and a deep voice like a radio announcer’s.
My education professors taught me that kids were basically good. Learning was an organic, unfolding process. “You need to let them find their own frontiers,” they said. “Let the child lead.”
In school, I was never able to do what I wanted, which was to sit with beautiful girls under willow trees, playing music and writing poetry. I welcomed the idea of flexible limits.
Brodie and Leo purchased chicken wire, papier mâché, and glue at the town’s hardware store. They ordered sulphur and charcoal for the magma. “This is gonna be a great eruption,” said Brodie.
In my next class as phys-ed softball teacher, limits quickly became an issue.
Danny, a thin, twitchy kid prone to stuttering, called to Wes, a long-haired lad with a pimply face who held his bat like a club.
“You’re out, man, you’re out!”
I knew Wes and Danny both had a crush on Nicole, one of the two skinny girls.
“I think he was in,” I said.
“Yeah, Danny!” yelled Wes. “I’m in. You’re just jealous.”
Danny picked up a couple of rocks and whizzed them by Wes’s head
“Stop, you can’t do that!” I yelled.
“I can do anything I want,” he yelled back. “Next time, Wes, I won’t try and miss.”
After escorting Danny back to Father Jim’s office, I hiked home early and picked up Hugh’s guitar from its stand in the living room.
The incredible instrument sang in my arms for two hours straight. I came up with more chord and melody ideas in that two hours than over the previous year. Afterwards, music-rested from my stressful softball experience, I wiped off the guitar to minimize the finger scent and set it back carefully before Hugh got home.
After that, I snuck back early each day to play his instrument and calm down.
“What can I do about this Danny guy?” I asked Father JIm. “I can’t let him throw rocks.”
“You’ll have to grab him round the scruff of the neck,” he told me. “Get him in a half-nelson.” Then he grinned. “Or a full-nelson. Seriously, you’ve got to be more confident. When you make a call, it’s yours. Don’t shortchange yourself. Use an assertive voice.”
Next time, when Wes and Danny wouldn’t stop poking each other with rulers in the Science class, I smashed the school yardstick down on the table. “Quiet!” I yelled.
“That’s not very quiet of you,” remarked Danny.
Nicole giggled. The kids obeyed my silence command for at least ten minutes.
Leo came up to me after the class. “You need something to relax, Teacher Harrison,” he said. “You’re twitching and spazzing out. You should come to my place and we’ll play Dungeons and Dragons with my dad, Walter.”
“I’d like to meet Walter,” I said. “He sounds like he’s got some imagination.”
Leo’s Dad worked as a forklift driver at the pulp mill.
“Yeah, I’ll join you guys, too,” he agreed, as Leo and I set up the game in the basement. “Its no fun eating raisin bread all by myself.” He bought the entire loaf down with him.
“Raisin bread’s my favourite,” I said.
Leo was the dungeon master. He knew a lot about the game.
“Imagine a small town in the wilderness surrounded by a stagnant lake,” he began, “a small town with a single industry, where the only quest is to get out. Mister Kim, do you want to be a wizard or a dwarf?”
“I’ll take the wizard,” I said.
“I’ll be a wizard too,” chuckled Walter.
He remained a friendly parent until the end of my teaching stint at MacKenzie. I jogged over to Leo and Walter’s place a few nights a week to eat a few slices of bread and play different board and quest games.
Copyright © 2021 by Harrison Kim
