Most of us can recall a teacher that stands out from the others, for good or ill.
The name Marvin Childs guarantees a smile from West Vancouverites who were his students. From 1955 to 1985, Mr. Childs was either a teacher or principal, or both, at Gleneagles, Eagle Harbour, Caulfeild and Irwin Park elementary schools. He fit easily into these neighbourhoods in the small community that West Vancouver was. Marvin was born and raised in his own small town.
"Our family goes back long years in the Comox Valley," he says with pride.
A cluster of oak leaves in a wood frame commemorates the picnic held July 1, 1871, at the family's Finlay Creek farm outside Comox, to celebrate British Columbia's union with Canada.
His grandmother, Jane Finlay, was of First Nations heritage. She was a crack rider and sharpshooter and a belle of the Comox Valley. Jane's husband, Frank Childs, was a founder of the Comox Valley Co-operative Creamery, established in 1901. Maternal grandfather Samuel Williams made his way from the coal mines of Wales to those in Cumberland. Somewhere in Marvin's collection of family papers is a map of the route Samuel travelled to bring supplies to the hideout of fellow coal miner and union organizer Albert "Ginger" Goodwin.
Marvin's first teaching assignment, after getting his credentials in 1950, was Edgewood, once a hamlet on the banks of Lower Arrow Lake and now at rest under the Columbia River reservoir.
"Edgewood was a little place I'd never heard of. I thought, I'll go there, and there I found the community I was looking for," he says.
Back then, people in the Kootenays made their own entertainment. At Edgewood, an actress retired from the London stage taught drama and elocution, a scholar of Anglo-Saxon gave lessons in piano and voice. The doctor's wife taught folk dancing in the legion hall and Marvin performed with the local theatre company.
He boarded with Mrs. Margaret Williams. They were friends until her death in September 2015 at the age of 103 ("+ 6 months," as corrected on the newspaper obituary mailed to Marvin by Annette Hopp, a former pupil from six decades past).
After four years in Edgewood, Marvin thought about becoming a student himself. He had his savings and a persistent dream to be an architect. Marvin left Edgewood and enrolled at the University of British Columbia - in teacher's summer school - where a colleague suggested he "'come and work at my school,'" he recalls. This was Manson Toynbee, another of West Vancouver's well-remembered teachers, and, happily for Marvin, principal of Gleneagles School.
In 1956, Marvin was in England on a teaching exchange program when he met Ruth Johnson. They married and set up house on Keith Road in West Vancouver where they raised two daughters.
As they saved to purchase their house, Marvin and Ruth lived frugally, watching National Film Board of Canada documentaries at the community centre and writing poems together, researching their bird and animal subjects at West Vancouver Memorial Library. Over the years, they were active with Camp Artaban on Gambier Island.
Following Ruth's death and his retirement in 1985, the door to the next phase of Marvin's life opened: a teaching assignment in Tokyo that continued for 10 years.
During this decade, Marvin enjoyed a secondary career as a male model with an advertising agency, resurrecting his acting skills to portray Santa Claus one day and a mogul on his yacht another day. Along the way, he became fairly fluent in Japanese. "I felt at home in Japan. It struck me that the houses of the Japanese who worked in the Cumberland mines were exactly like the houses in Japanese villages, with their narrow winding lanes and tall fences."
Back home in Canada, Marvin has the occasional opportunity to speak Japanese - when his daughter's mother-in-law visits or when it's raining and he finds he's noting the fact in Japanese rather than English. Life is a circle of family, fitness and bridge with friends. On daily walks with canine companion Molly, they frequently encounter former pupils. Each one is recognized and greeted by their name, a gift of personal attention and interest that is just one of the qualities that made Mr. Childs an exceptional teacher and human being.
Laura Anderson works with and for seniors on the North Shore. 778-279-2275 [email protected]
