Sometimes one profile of a North Shore senior inspires another.
George Stickney read about his high school teacher Jim Thomson in this column last September, a couple of weeks before B.C.'s striking teachers and their students returned to their classrooms.
George has firsthand experience about the positive influence adults can have on the lives of children. As a boy growing up in West Vancouver, two men, Jim Thomson and Ted Baines, "showed me what a man and a father could, and should, be."
George and his parents moved from Alberta to B.C. in time for his father to go overseas with the Canadian army in the Second World War. Post-war, he turned his hand to building houses in West Vancouver. George's mother encouraged her son's studious and creative interests. He drew cartoons of The Whistler and Superman while absorbing their adventures on radio serials and created his own comic books. He built model planes. "I liked building the ones I could fly, like gliders," he says, recalling the boy he used to be.
In 1949, with the Stickney house at 13th Street and Gordon Avenue (still standing) under construction, the family set up in the Ranch Motel on Capilano Road and George entered West Vancouver high school.
He rode to and from school on his Raleigh bike until the November day when the Capilano River rose, reportedly six feet in one night. The flood washed out the bridge, isolating West Vancouver.
Enter George's shop teacher, Jim Thomson, also living in North Vancouver at the time. "We walked to the end of Keith Road, pushed through the hole in the fence and crossed the river on the old foot bridge. That's how George and I got home," says Thomson.
Thomson recognized George's potential. "Behind that cockeyed grin, there was a sharp mind," he says, and became a mentor to him, as he would to many students during his 35-year teaching career.
Through Thomson, George and his schoolmates got summer and after-school jobs with the school board. "I must have painted 100 miles of windows and swept that many linoleum floors," recalls George.
"Jim taught me life skills I use today. He is a very special friend and was an important role model for me in my 1949-1954 school days when I really needed one."
Summer was also time for camping and fishing expeditions with his friend Duncan Baines and Duncan's father, Ted. In 1956, Ted Baines contracted to build the concrete foundations for the Capilano bridge expansion. George was night watchman, bunking in a shack on the construction site.
He was at UBC by then, studying for a career in aeronautical engineering. The cancellation of the Avro Arrow project in 1959 put Canada's aviation industry, and George's dream, into a tailspin.
Thanks to the encouragement and example of Jim Thomson and Ted Baines, George had the resilience to overcome such setbacks. He turned his skills as a mechanical engineer to the forest products industry, designing mills in B.C. and Alberta.
Their influence supported George and his family, wife Joan Wise and their two daughters, Laureen and Susan, in their greatest challenge: a sailing odyssey south to Mexico, across the Pacific to French Polynesia and back home to North Vancouver. Planning for the adventure took dedication and effort. George taught himself navigation while on the road visiting mills. They found the right boat, circumnavigated Vancouver Island on a shakedown cruise and set sail for the south.
A year later, George's self-taught navigational skills and Joan's eagle eye brought the LaureeSue to Fatu Hiva, a dot on the Pacific Ocean about the size of Bowen Island. "We smelled land before we saw it," recalls Joan, "like perfume after all that time at sea." Even today, the memory of that epic two-year journey lights up George and Joan like a pair of candles.
"Jim and Ted gave me confidence in my abilities," says George. "Without that, we would never have taken on such a challenge. It would have been a loss we would always regret."
Ted Baines has passed away. Jim and George remain friends to this day. George turns 79 on Feb. 4. Jim will be 94 in March. Long may their friendship thrive.
