Category: History of the Halifax School for the Blind

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.
–Robert Frost

Miracles and Medicine

I had the good fortune to be born to parents who loved me and who, as far as they could, accepted me as I was–totally blind. They were not overly protective. As a small boy, I rode my tricycle along the sidewalks near our home. My father taught me
how to ski and to skate. He also believed that I should learn how to handle my own problems.

One day I bought an ice cream at a nearby shop. As I had given the shopkeeper a dime, he should have handed back a nickel instead of a penny. Although I was only six years old, I knew that a penny was smaller than a nickel and that it would buy less than a nickel. A dime was smaller than either, but it had a rough edge. I therefore took this penny home to my father. He explained to me that the shopkeeper must have made a mistake. I should return to the shop with the penny and explain matters to him. When I entered the shop, it was crowded. But I marched up to the counter and, in a loud voice, told the shopkeeper of his error. The buzz of conversation ceased. In the ensuing silence, Flustered, he quickly exchanged the penny for a nickel, and he saw to it that I left his shop with another ice cream–on him. Years later, I found out that this shopkeeper was notorious for short-changing people.

I have since wondered how I came to be in possession of a dime, for my weekly allowance was a nickel, a quite generous allowance in 1929. The dime must have been a birthday or Christmas gift or have been left for me by a relative or other visitor to our home. I had to do some work for my weekly spending money. Every night after supper, while my mother washed the dishes, my father would sit down in our livingroom to read the evening paper. At such times he wanted his slippers, and it was my job to take his boots to the bedroom and to bring him the slippers.

The cause of my blindness is open to question. An
ophthalmologist who examined my eyes some years ago told me that it could be owing to any one of a half-dozen causes and that, on account of the atrophy of the eye through not being used, it was impossible to say which of these causes was operative in my case. But my father had a quite different story to tell. I was a home delivery and, according to my father, the doctor who delivered me was drunk at the time. Although he himself was a teetotler, my father had grown up in a community where, late last century, drunkenness in public was a daily occurrence. He would therefore know whether another person was drunk or not. But whether this doctor’s condition contributed to my blindness is a question I shall never be able to answer. It hardly matters now. Whenever a physician asks me the cause of my blindness, I find it diplomatic to give only the first answer.

As both my brother and sister were much older than me, I was,
in a sense, an only child. Until I was almost nine years old, I never played with another child. That summer Mother and I travelled from our home in Saint John, New Brunswick to Boston, where we spent three weeks with relatives. I was sent out to play with a little girl who was about two years younger than me but much older in the ways of children. I believe we fought continuously throughout those three weeks. She was faster on her feet than I, but her pigtail was her Achilles heel. Although we have seldom seen each other since, I retain a certain liking for Cousin Katherine.

My father, a devout Roman Catholic, believed in miracles. When I was two years old, he arranged for Mother and me to go to Montreal to visit St. Joseph’s Oratory, which was being built on the Blessed Brother Andre’s reputation for healing. I have been told that I sat on the knee of the Blessed Brother Andre and that I behaved in a manner appropriate to the occasion. I remember only being on a train and living in a house with some unfamiliar but very kind people. Several of these friendly people were teen-aged girls, who were delighted to have a little boy to look after. They talked to me in French, and I have been given to understand that by the end of a week’s stay with them, I could speak French. Of course, upon my return to a unilingual home, I soon lost my bilingual status.

Our visit to the Oratory had two lasting effects on me, one of which has remained with me to this day. The officials of the Oratory did try to send people away with hope in their hearts. For me there were tips for healthful living. A priest there told my mother that there are cords in the backs of the legs that lead to the brain. I should therefore never be allowed to go outside with bare legs. As a child, I always had to wear knee-length stockings. Whatever this restraint may have done for my brain, possibly it conformed to the reverend gentleman’s idea of modesty. He also told her that I should not be permitted to drink anything at meals or for a half-hour before or after meals. Once I went to school, this dietary restriction was lifted, and at home as well as at school. Nevertheless, such is the power of early habits that, even today, I seldom want to drink anything with my meals.

When I was five, six and seven years of age, Mother and I made three annual pilgrimages to the shrine at Ste. Anne de Beaupre, near Quebec City. We travelled there on a pilgrim train and in a car for people (mainly Irish) from Southern New Brunswick. On our way to and from the diner, we passed through the next car to ours, which was for French people from Northern New Brunswick. Their adults seemed more joyful than ours, both going to and returning from the shrine. Our adults were quiet and solemn, almost as though they were in church. But from time to time we could hear singing from the next car–of hymns no doubt, especially on the way to St. Anne’s. On the way back, a fiddle could sometimes be heard from the next car. Even our adults were more cheerful. They seemed relieved. As our train pulled out from St. Anne’s, a rumour would fly about of a miracle on another train, perhaps the train from the West, or even the one from Toronto. Although everybody was kind to me, I would have the feeling that in some way I had disappointed people. I now think that they must have been disappointed because I had failed to bring forth the miracle they had hoped for–perhaps feared. Years later, I was told that some of these pilgrims had rather unsavoury reputations in the community. By going on a pilgrimage, they were trying to demonstrate that they had turned over a new leaf. Such people might have found Divine intervention, even in the form of a miracle, a little too close for comfort.

When I was eight years old, my father took me to see a missionary priest who was visiting our parish. He said that if I could be brought to Boston, he would arrange to have my eyes examined by one of the world’s most skilful ophthalmologists. That summer Mother and I went to Boston and stayed with the relatives already mentioned.

I liked the ophthalmologist because he spoke to me as well as about me. After a brief examination of my eyes, he told my mother that I was totally blind and that nothing could be done to give me sight. He urged her to get me to school as soon as possible and offered to help with my enrolment at the Perkins Institution, which is located near Boston. He said that for many years Perkins had run one of the finest schools in the world for blind children.

When I was three, a local optician had fitted me with glasses, which I still wore and would continue to wear until the age of twelve. Mother was finally persuaded to allow me to go without glasses by a diplomatic school superintendent, who pointed out that as I ran about so much, I might run into something and break my glasses and the glass might injure my eyes. This optician had sold my parents a delusion for $22.50, which was more than my father earned in a week. The world-famous ophthalmologist charged us only $10 for reality. But then it is not unusual for people to
be willing to pay more for a delusion than for reality.

A mind that is stretched to a new idea never returns to its original dimension. –Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

As my mother continued to be upset, the doctor asked her to wait outside so that he could talk to me. With my mother out of the room, he proceeded to explain my blindness to me. He said that my blindness was neither a blessing nor a curse; it was a fact. I found this reassuring because on a couple of occasions neighbours had wondered out loud to my parents as to how such an affliction could have come upon them, they being such good people. I knew who the affliction was. I could also remember a time when my mother, by mentioning my blindness, had inadvertently frightened a salesman into running down the stairs and rushing out of our house. This salesman had been trying to sell her a very expensive statue of St. Thereasa. When my mother had said that we were not well off, he had countered that we could afford a radio. Mother had retorted that I was blind and that the radio was my only source of entertainment. The ophthmologist also said that I should be neither proud nor ashamed of my blindness; it was a fact. I explained to the doctor why my parents believed that I had some sight. When they dropped coins onto the linoleum flooring in our livingroom, I could tell a quarter from a dime. My parents said that I must be able to see the difference. The doctor asked me whether I could hear the difference and I said that I could. We agreed that it was my hearing that made the difference.

Mother left the office sad; I left relieved. I would no longer have to pretend to be able to see things. I was never again subjected to the coin test.

The next morning we visited the missionary priest who had arranged for our visit to the ophthalmologist. Mother was still upset because the doctor had said that I was totally blind. The priest explained that the doctor had said that because he was an atheist. I piped up that I had liked him. It was now my turn to be sent out of an office. The priest asked my cousin, who had accompanied us, to take me into the monastery garden.

We also visited a blood doctor. He took a sample of Mother’s blood and a sample of mine. Again, Mother was very upset. But she said that if he found anything, she would accept it if it would help me to gain my sight. She also said that if the doctor found anything, my father in Saint John would have to give a sample of his blood. As the doctor in Boston did not find anything, my father did not have to go to the doctor in Saint John. I found all of this a mystery. Nevertheless, I had the feeling that I was not supposed to ask about it, so I did not ask.

Having exhausted the healing powers of Boston, we returned home to Saint John. I was now nearing my ninth birthday. I had a cousin my own age who would be entering grade four that autumn. My older brother Joe went to Holy Trinity School, which was on the next street to ours. This school was run by the Sisters of Charity. On several occasions Mother and I had visited the school and talked with the teachers. We always attended the closing exercises at the end of the school year. I got it into my head that, like Joe, I would be attending Holy Trinity. But the authorities would not permit me to do so on account of my blindness. The Sisters of Charity prepared the children of the parish for their First Communion at age seven. As I had not been allowed to attend this school, even for religious instruction, I was not able to make my First Communion.

Nevertheless, on Sunday morning Mother always took me to the children’s Mass in Holy Trinity Church, where we sat in the gallery. She now had the idea that if we sat in the main body of the church and just behind the school children, I could learn my prayers by hearing these children recite them aloud. The children of Holy Trinity School sat at the front of the church, near the altar, with a reverend sister in charge of them. At certain times during the Mass, they said prayers aloud. The rest of the congregation sat behind the children or in the gallery. One Sunday morning Mother and I took our places immediately behind the school children. But we did not remain there for long. The Sister of Charity in charge came back to us and ordered us to get to the back of the church, where there were no kneeling benches. Mother said nothing. But we went to the back of the church and out through the back door and home.

Mother was furious and talked to relatives and friends about what had happened. One evening a few days later, the priest visited our home. Mother was still very angry; my father was very quiet; the priest talked of the mortal sin of missing Mass. It was arranged that Mother and I would attend the children’s Mass and that we would sit in the gallery, where there were kneeling benches. If I sat there, nobody could possibly take me for a pupil in the sisters’ school. When, home from school, I accompanied Mother to church, we still sat in that gallery, never in the main body of the church.

At the time, I did not understand what all the fuss was about. But I knew that the fuss was over me and that it had to do with my blindness. In the future, I would always have a feeling of unease upon entering a church. I already knew that my lack of sight made me different from other people. I was now forced to realize that it also sometimes made my presence unwelcome.

The priest agreed with my parents that, somehow, I would have to make my First Communion. My grown-up sister Ann, who had attended a convent school, took on the task of preparing me for my First Communion. But it was not to be made with ceremony or with the other children of the parish. Mother and I attended an early-morning weekday Mass, when there would be but few people in church. Before administering the Sacrament to me, the priest asked shrewdly, in a stage whisper, whether I was “deef too.” I remember this incident on account of the way in which he pronounced the word “deaf.” I now understand why he asked this question. One should not receive a sacrament without having a commitment to what one is doing. Had I been deaf as well as blind, it would have required the services of a person skilled in communicating with deaf children to provide me with the information necessary for such a commitment.

No doubt the presence of a small child with a highly visible disability renders it more difficult for shepherds to justify to their sheep the ways of God to man. In the Old Testament, the Book of Job wrestles with the question as to how, God being all-knowing, all-powerful and good, bad things can happen to good people. His friend Eliphaz visits Job, who is suffering in both body and spirit. Eliphaz suggests to Job that Job cannot be so good a man as he appears to be and counsels, “Remember, I pray thee, who ever perished, being innocent? Or where were the righteous cut off?” (Job: 3 7) With friends like Eliphaz, who needs an enemy? But, without resorting to original sin, it is difficult to see how a small child could be guilty of great wickedness. A mere economist, I would not presume to tell shepherds how to tend their sheep. Nevertheless, it seems to me that if shepherds had been able to find it consistent with their theology to regard disabilities as facts rather than as evidence of Divine displeasure, they might have found it easier to permit children with disabilities to participate in public religious instruction and ceremonies.

A few weeks after our return from Boston, Mother and I were visited by two officials of the Canadian National Institute for the Blind. They said that I would have to be sent out of my city and out of my province to attend a residential school for “the blind” in Halifax, Nova Scotia. This was not so. At that time, a child whom the local schools refused to accept did not have to be sent to school. Possibly these officials believed that the end justifies the means–always a dangerous belief. Concerning my need to go to school, the CNIB officials were preaching to the converted. My mother realized that I would have to live my life as a blind person. It was my being totally blind that she found difficult to accept. She knew that, as a residential school for blind children was the only kind of school that would accept me, the nearest school where I COULD GET AN EDUCATION WAS the Halifax School for the Blind. It was my father who kept praying and waiting for a miracle. I suspect this waiting was why I was not already at school. These CNIB officials also said that I would have to learn how to live with “his own kind.” I had to realize that my father and mother were not the most powerful people in the world. Things would happen to me that neither they nor I wanted to happen. I would have to learn new ways. When I was in my final year of high school, an official of the institute assured my father that, as soon as I was through school, the CNIB would take me over. During my adult years, I have supported the institute both financially and, from time to time, as a volunteer. But I have never allowed myself to be taken over.

It was arranged that I would enter the Halifax School for the
Blind after Christmas. In those days, the train journey took about ten hours, which meant that I would be able to come home for only the Christmas and summer vacations. My mother travelled to Halifax with me and stayed at the school overnight. Mother had eaten her evening meal and breakfast in the girls’ dining-room at a table that was being supervised by a blind lady who was a teacher. This experience had given her ideas concerning my possible future. The following morning, waiting in the library for the superintendent, Mother remarked to the librarian that it would be lovely if, one day, I could become a teacher at the school. A well meaning but very limited woman, she remarked, very coldly, that my mother was looking a very long way ahead. Apparently Mother felt that if I was going to have to live my life among my “own kind,” I should at least have a superior place among them.
No doubt fearing a scene, the superintendent advised my mother to slip away quietly without saying goodbye to me. Mother refused to do this. There was no scene.

The next day, January 6, 1932, I celebrated my ninth birthday. Some celebration!

The Braille Jail

All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions.
–Leonardo da Vinci

My age was important because, at that time, blind children
were entitled to only seven academic years of schooling following their tenth birthday. I might therefore have had less than nine years in which to prepare myself to earn a living. Years spent at the school by children under the age of ten were added to these seven years. pupils entering the school between the ages of ten and thirteen were entitled to seven years, pupils between fourteen and seventeen to five years and pupils between eighteen and twenty-one to three years.

On account of childhood illnesses and accidents and, in ALL TOO MANY cases, the failure of teachers in the public and separate schools to recognize children as having visual problems, some pupils did not enter our school until they were in their teens. Often their inability to see what was written on the blackboard had resulted in them being considered stupid and in them learning little. Many came to our school with a very poor opinion of themselves. Usually, there was insufficient time for them to complete high school, and some could not even enter high school. But there should be time enough to teach them a trade. Our school was THEREFORE important as a trades school as well as an academic institution. For boys,instruction was given in shoe repairing, broom making, mattress making, chair seating and piano tuning. Girls were taught cooking, sewing, knitting and crocheting.

It was possible for a pupil to receive additional years of schooling if the school recommended it and if the municipality of residence of his parents was willing and able to pay for them. As I came from Saint John, a relatively prosperous city, I was able to obtain the two additional years I needed to complete high school. But, especially during the depression of the 1930’s, many students who came from poor communities were not so fortunate. Municipalities granted additional years one at a time. Therefore, prior to my final year, it was not known that I would be able to complete high school.

But they should be able to teach me a trade. They little knew the magnitude of their undertaking. First, they tried to teach me how to put cane seats in chairs, but with little success. They were much too wise to ever entrust me with a real chair. I never advanced beyond the rectangular frame. An exasperated instructor would chide, “You stand there, Foohey, thinking of some poem or other instead of how to get your two’s on top of your one’s.” Or was it the other way around? The next attempt was in piano tuning and repairing. At least I think I MADE SOME PROGRESS WITH THE TUNING, BUT, AS WILL BE SEEN LATER, MY REPAIRS WERE DISASTERS.

During my first few months at the school, I was desperately homesick. I had been a member of a family of five living in a small apartment. I now found myself in an institution with over two hundred persons. The corridors were long and wide and high and echoed. With experience, I would learn how to use echoes in getting around. But at first I found them frightening. The rooms were large, crowded and noisy. I slept in a dormitory with a half-dozen other boys and ate in a dining-room with about eighty other boys. I had never played with a boy. But the military tactics taught me by Cousin Katherine stood me in good stead.

We were given baths twice a week–three boys to a bath water. I soon learned to be the first, fourth or seventh boy in line for a bath so as to be able to enjoy clean water. I learned about arithmetic progression early. Mother had trained me in the use of a knife and fork. But here boys under fifteen ate everything with a spoon–the same spoon. Thus, at breakfast we dug into the COLD beans with the same spoon we had used for the tepid porridge, and, at dinner, the same spoon served for the meat course and the pie.

Every Sunday afternoon Mother wrote me a letter, which always arrived Tuesday morning. The mail was then known as the Royal Mail and always arrived on time. During the eighteen years I spent in Halifax, as a student and then as a teacher, I don’t think that a letter or a food parcel was ever late.

All letters were read out in class, and recipients were expected to dictate replies immediately. I was grateful to Mother for not engaging in sentimentality. One religious lady kept on referring to her offspring as a “child of God.” I am ashamed to say that the “child of God” had to endure a lot of ridicule in the playground, and that “mommy’s little darling” fared even worse. I was soon made to understand the rules of reply. Don’t mention the cold food and the lumpy bed. Don’t talk about the lack of forks and knives. Remarks favourable to the School and, especially, to its teachers will be written down eagerly, but they may get you into trouble with your classmates. You are expected to say that you are well, happy and enjoying school. It is safe to tell the truth about the weather.

Every Wednesday Mother mailed me a food parcel, which arrived on Friday. There was always enough for the matron to be able to provide me with a treat twice a day for the entire week. Although Mother and I had no really personal communication by letter, we did communicate (though only in one direction I am afraid) with cookies, doughnuts, date squares and macaroons.

I was finding out that I liked to learn things. This love of learning helped me to overcome my loneliness. With the coming of spring, I was looking forward to going home for the summer holidays. In mid-June, the school year over, I returned home by train. It was good to be home again. But I had nobody to play with. There were many children in our neighbourhood, and I could sometimes hear them playing in our yard, but never when I was there. Perhaps their parents had warned them that if they played with me and I got hurt, they would be blamed and punished. By August, I was looking forward to going back to school.

I knew that I was still a part of a loving family. But things could never be quite the same. The pain of breaking the family tie had been severe. I would be home for only a few weeks, and I did not want to experience that pain again. I would never bond again in quite the same way, and the pain of breaking a bond would never be quite the same.

Our trips to the country were bright spots in my summer vacations. One year Mother and I would spend a fortnight with Uncle Dan and his family, and the next year we would pass a couple of weeks with my Aunt Mary. Uncle Dan and Aunt Bert had several sons and daughters in their late teens and early twenties. These cousins would take me with them when they rounded up the cows for milking. They taught me how to run the separator, which separated the cream from the milk. They also taught me how to churn butter. There was a dasher churn. To make butter, you had to push the dasher down into the cream. As the butter formed, it became harder and harder to force the dasher down and pull it back up. Nevertheless, by the time I was in my early teens, I was strong enough to make butter. I also rode the small horse and sometimes helped to harness it. I remember these cousins with fondness. The opportunities they gave me to learn to do USEFUL things helped me to grow up.

My Aunt Mary had married a ship’s captain, my Uncle Arthur, and had gone on several voyages with him. But the replacement of sail by steam had forced him to turn his back on the ports of the world and to go inland to farm a farm he had inherited. Aunt Mary and Uncle Arthur read the Bible daily, and Aunt Mary would go about her work singing such hymns as “Work For The Night Is Coming” and “Jesus Loves Me.” Uncle Arthur also had the Bible on his lips as he went about his work. But his speech was often an interesting mixture of Biblical references and the rough seaman’s language he had learned before the mast. He found his bees entirely lacking in discipline. When stung, he would refer to them as “plagues of Egypt.” He expected better of the cattle and horses, but they often disappointed him. Some of them were as stubborn as “Pharaoh.” My aunt and uncle had formed the habit of naming their cattle and horses after their numerous nieces and nephews. There was a young bull named Edmund. He was particularly stubborn.

As she and her husband had no children, for many years after Uncle Arthur’s death Aunt Mary farmed the farm herself. Saying that there should be “no idle hands in the vineyard,” Aunt Mary undertook to teach me how to milk a cow. For some reason, I had formed the opinion that the sources of milk should be between the cow’s front legs. It was not so. Aunt Mary kept on encouraging me to explore farther and farther back. Eventually, I came to things hanging down that I thought might yield milk, but I hardly dared to tempt the fates by squeezing them. Nevertheless, urged on by Aunt Mary, I squeezed and got favourable results.
I believe that my Aunt did enjoy teaching her nephew how to milk a cow.

But I had to learn about more solemn things than the geography of the cow. Towards the end of my second year at school, when I was ten years old, I was Confirmed. We were prepared for Confirmation at a nearby convent by the Mothers of the Sacred Heart, a prestigious religious order. These mothers taught us with great kindness but possibly from the point of view that, as we were blind, the Holy Ghost would not expect much of us. As it turned out, the archbishop was made of sterner stuff. We were not to be Confirmed publicly with the other children of the parish but privately at this convent. Ordinarily, each of us would have had a relative or family friend present to sponsor him and to give him a name. As this was not feasible in our case, our chaplain, a no-nonsense sort of man, decided to sponsor the lot of us and to give each of us a name. As we marched into the convent chapel, two by two, he stood at the door saying, “You’re Pat, you’re Mike; you’re Pat, you’re Mike; you’re Pat, you’re Mike….” As I was marching in the left-hand column, I became a Pat.

The archbishop, a huge Highland Scot, arrived. To everybody’s surprise, he began to try to find out whether we knew the things we ought to know to be Confirmed. “Is there any boy in grade eight who knows the Seven Gifts of the Holy Ghost?” No response. “Is there any boy in grade seven who knows the Seven Gifts of the Holy Ghost?” You could have heard a pin drop. “Is there any boy in grade six who knows the Seven Gifts of the Holy Ghost?” A deathly hush fell over the chapel. The archbishop had a strong, rich voice, and this time he spoke more loudly. “Is there any boy at all who knows the Seven Gifts of the Holy Ghost?” Although I was in only grade two, I stood up. But I did not make a good beginning. “Yes, sir!” I called out, instead of “yes, Your Grace!” I don’t suppose it had ever cross the mind of any of the reverend mothers who had trained us that any of us would ever have to address an archbishop. But this archbishop must have had a big heart in his big body, for he apparently understood. He did not reprimand me but allowed me to go on. I started off with “wisdom,” ended up with “fear of the Lord,” and sat down. The ceremony of Confirmation could now commence.

The Chaplain had warned us that the archbishop would give each of us a buffet on the cheek to remind us of the buffets we would receive in the course of our lives as Christians. He had said that, although the archbishop would never willingly hurt anybody, there would be so much weight behind his buffet that we would have to hold on to the altar rail tightly to avoid rolling down the chapel isle, something the Mothers of the Sacred Heart would consider definitely not nice. I now think that this chaplain himself was more than a little in awe of these reverend mothers. I held on tightly, and I did not roll. Actually, the archbishop was quite gentle.

As soon as we left the chapel, I was congratulated by our chaplain, by the mother in charge of the mothers who had trained us and by the superintendent of our school, who always turned up for such ceremonies. Although it did not enter my head at the time, I now think that I perhaps saved a couple of reverend persons from an embarrassing interview with an intelligent, powerful and very persistent archbishop. Actually, it was not the reverend mothers who had taught me the Seven Gifts of the Holy Ghost; it was my sister Ann. It can be difficult for even an archbishop to get to the bottom of things. Because he had treated us as boys rather than as “the blind,” we boys liked this archbishop and, among ourselves, used to refer to him as “Old Archie.”

Although I am not of it, it pleases me to remember that I once distinguished myself favourably in my father’s church. That June, he came to Halifax to take me home for the summer holidays. We went down to the rectory so that he could thank the chaplain for having me Confirmed. He was met with a happy and grateful explanation as to how I had saved the day.

Dad formed the habit of taking his holidays in September so that he could travel to Halifax with me when I returned to school. He would remain in Halifax for a few days, and he would take me out to dinner every evening. When he returned me to the School, the male teachers would invite him into their sittingroom. There he met the principal of the Literary Department, Dr. S. R. Hussey, and the head of the Music Department, Mr. J. C. Williston, both of whom were totally blind. Years later, he told me that meeting these gentlemen had given him new ideas concerning my future. I am sure that he never gave up his prayerful hope for a miracle. But it had occurred to him that after I finished school, if I was still blind, he could set me up in a little candy store. He had heard of a blind man who had run a little candy store successfully. His meetings in the male teachers’ sitting-room had widened his ambitions for me. I am sure that, had he mentioned these ambitions there, he would not have been discouraged.

I had thought that my “own kind” would, like me, be totally blind. But I found out that, with the aid of glasses, many of my classmates could read print. Early in the War, two of them got into the Merchant Navy and one into the Army. Having attempted to wrestle Art in the gym, I am sure the Army made a wise decision in placing him in the Provost Corps. He spent his war keeping law and order in Halifax, no easy task at that time. A few of my school friends were able to get driver’s licenses, and, as far as I know, they have had good driving records. Probably more than half of our pupils were legally blind, but a large proportion of them had some sight. Our sight-saving students had the advantages of small classes, close blackboards, large print textbooks and good lighting. Furthermore, in Halifax they were able to receive ophthalmological and other medical treatment that would not have been available to them in most other places in the Atlantic Provinces. In some cases, there was a significant improvement in their sight while these students attended the school. Government grants were on a per student basis. A larger enrolment permitted certain economies of scale to be effected. Especially in the upper grades, classes tended to be quite small. There were only six of us in my graduating class, and I was the only Braille-using student. I believe that two of us were able to obtain licenses to drive a car. Our school offered education in music, domestic science and crafts, opportunities not widely available in rural schools at that time. Our superintendent and his wife spent their summers travelling about the Maritime Provinces visiting the homes of children who might be candidates for enrolment at our school. They were able to acquaint parents with the advantages for their children of attending the school. It seems likely that a substantial number of our students had normal sight when corrected with glasses.

Although our school was segregated from the
wider community, within the School itself there was a good deal of integration between blind and sighted people. While most of our teachers were fully sighted, some, especially in the Music Department, were totally blind. The principal of the Literary Department, the head of the Music Department and the head of the Industrial Department were all totally blind. These gentlemen were valuable role models. I grew up knowing that a blind man could earn his own living because these blind men were doing it. In such a school a blind student learned to know his limitations, but he
did not learn to have an overall sense of inferiority. Reading and Writing were, of course, taught separately to Braille-using and print -using children. But for all other subjects, including Mathematics, Science and Physical Education, we were taught in the same classes. Thus, regardless of our level of vision, we grew up free from the hangups about lack of sight that are so common in the wider community.

We students differed widely not only in our sight but also in our backgrounds. I remember one year when I slept in a dormitory with eight other boys from families in widely different circumstances. I was in the centre bed, and on my left was Leslie, a quiet and very religious boy whose father was a deacon in a church that met the spiritual and many other needs of its black congregation. Russel, on my right, spent much of his summer vacation getting to and returning from somewhere on the Labrador, where his family lived in a tent in the summertime and in an igloo in the wintertime. Camille, on Russel’s right, entered our school speaking no English at all. The other French-speaking boys were discouraged from speaking to him in French so that he would learn English more quickly. Unable to see his way to the toilet, the bathroom, the dining-room or the classroom, and unable to ask his way in French, he soon learned English. Indeed, he learned English so thoroughly that when he returned to the farm the following summer, for several days he could not speak to his family in French, and they could not speak to him in English. Surely this was a rather high price to have to pay for an education in English. Next to Camille was Gerald. He had arrived from a Newfoundland outport speaking English, the English of about the time of the publication of the King James version of the Bible. Eventually, Gerald took aboard modern English words and expressions and substituted them for his seventeenth-century English–most of the time. But he never lost his wonderful Outport accent. All the men and older boys in his outport fished for a living. When the fishing was bad, the people did well to survive. Gerald had lost a brother and two uncles to the sea. Ronaldo slept next to Gerald. He had entered our school speaking his English with a marked Italian accent. In one of our readers there were several poems written by a person called “Unknown.” At the end of his reading, Ronaldo would announce proudly that the poem had been written by “Unkanownee.” He came from a company mining town in Cape Breton called Dominion Number Six. One day Ronaldo’s dad was killed while working in the mine deep under Dominion Number Six. We grew up knowing that earning a living could be a dangerous business. On Leslie’s left was Albert. His father was a wealthy businessman. He was the only boy whose parents could afford to phone him from time to time. Albert had an accordion, which he played well. He also had a battery radio. At night he would sometimes lend us an earphone so that we could listen to the American stations. Next to Albert was Buck. He had come to us from the “reform school” because, no matter how much they beat him, he still couldn’t see well enough to read the blackboard. Buck had been sent to the “reform school” for his part in burning down a barn. He was the sort of boy who would get caught. Buck was as proud of his dad as any of us. But he did not know what his dad did for a living. He had not been home for years. Buck thought that he had to live in a place called Dorchester. (In those days, being sent to Dorchester was synonymous with being sent to the penitentiary in Dorchester, N.B.) Next to Buck was George, who slept by the window. One night George went walking in his sleep and fell out of that window and broke his arm. The newspapers made quite an issue of the accident. Our superintendent explained to us that what had happened to George could have happened to anybody. But there were those on the outside who said that all the windows of the “blind school” should have bars. They did not prevail. Although we had to remain in what we sometimes called “the braille jail,” we did not have to go behind bars. One of the former inmates in that dormitory is now a member of the Order of Canada. I wonder which one. It isn’t me.

Our boys’ supervisor was a very large man with a military bearing who could well have passed for a prison guard.
The school nurse had warned my mother that, once they reach their teens, blind boys require a very firm hand. Such a hand was provided in the person of this x-drill sergeant, who stood six feet three inches and weighed two hundred and twenty pounds. Among ourselves, we called him “Old Roar.” We marched everywhere. He loved to bellow military commands at us and to prophesy that “you may have broken your mother’s heart, but you won’t break mine.” He harangued us concerning our short-comings, and There were frequent references to boys who lacked the brains that “God gave geese.” He christened some of us with names that he thought more appropriate than our own names. He almost always referred to us by our last names. My name he thought sufficiently humorous in itself, especially when pronounced with a drawl and a sounded “h.” A boy named Bernard received more than his share of the x-drill sergeant’s attention. In order to improve Bernard’s table manners, from the front of the dining-room he would shout, “Barnyard, get your front feet out of the trough.” Up until the time he was thirteen, Bernard was a model citizen. But that summer he got hooked on cigarettes. Thereafter, from time to time he did feel the firm hand of the former drill sergeant. On one occasion, however, Bernard did escape the rod of correction. One winter evening the former drill sergeant was looking out the window at a snow fort we had just built in the playground. He spied a thin column of smoke rising from its chimney. On investigation, he discovered its source, Bernard. It was Fire Prevention Week. Old Roar had a sense of humour after all. That is why, although we feared him, we did not hate him.

At the public executions carried out in our gymnasium, Bernard had to kiss the gunner’s daughter at fairly regular intervals. We returned to school in September. Before Thanksgiving, he would have been caught smoking, flogged and confined to barracks for the remainder of the term. After Christmas, Bernard was able to make a fresh start. Nevertheless, unless Pancake Tuesday came very early, he would again have been caught, and the same punishments would have been imposed. He fared no better after Easter. But one spring, he had completed Grade Ten and was looking forward to returning for his final year. As he would turn eighteen during the summer vacation, he would be permitted to smoke. But he had also exhausted his seven years’ education allowance, and no additional year was forthcoming.

But at home he was befriended by members of a fundamentalist religion, who were strongly opposed to the use of tobacco. Bernard joined their church and gave up the evil weed. Furthermore, he now condemned smoking by others with all the ardor of the newly converted. The CNIB gave him a job running a vending stand in the City Hall in Halifax. He would sell cigarettes to men, without enthusiasm, but also without comment. With young women the case was quite different. His church had provided Bernard with biblical passages in Braille that discouraged smoking. He was therefore in a position to discourage these young women with passages from both the New and Old Testament, which he did with all the zeal of a Bernard of Clairvaux. Eventually, the CNIB had to fire him, and he had to go on welfare. But I believe he continued faithful to his new beliefs. It would appear that, in Bernard’s case, the pen was mightier than the sword. But the harsh discipline and the rigid doctrine to which he had been exposed were not such as to induce moderate views.

We did have some contacts with the world outside. Most of our teachers lived in the institution, but a few lived out in the city. There were also a few day pupils. Abey was such a pupil. We thought he knew a lot about the world outside.

We had a fine teacher for Braille reading and writing. As she used Braille in her daily life, she served as a role model for us. I cannot remember her ever punishing anybody. She didn’t have to. We knew that she was not a person to be trifled with. Abey was the only boy who ever managed to get around her. As we had our Braille reading lesson the first period of the day, Abey should have arrived from home by 9 o’clock. He never did. About half past the hour there would be a gentle knocking on the classroom door.
“Good morning, Miss Campbell.”
Good morning, Abey. You are late.”
“I was looking for my shoes, Miss Campbell.”
“But, Abey, why didn’t you wear the other ones?”
“Miss Campbell, those were the ones I was looking for.”
“Oh, Abey, take your seat.”

Although I didn’t realize it at the time, this strong, independent woman introduced me to Women’s Lib. In our reader there was a poem about sunbeams to one of whose stanzas she took strong exception. The Superintendent was in the habit of conducting tours of the school for important persons such as clergymen, businessmen and politicians. Our Braille reading class was one of his favourite points of interest. Our teacher warned us of the dire consequences that would follow (unspecified) if any of us ever dared to read this dreadful stanza to the Superintendent and his guests. As I sat next to the door, I was often the boy asked to read on these important occasions. My classmates offered me powerful bribes to read the forbidden stanza during the next visitation. I was to receive a somewhat sprained mouth organ, a pair of bones (for musical accompaniment), a bagful of marbles and even a few ball bearings. It was possibly just as well for me that we had finished that reader before the Superintendent and his guests next visited our classroom. The temptation that was thus removed from me ran as follows:
And one (sunbeam), where a little blind girl sat alone,
Not sharing the mirth of her playmates,
Shone on eyes that should ne’er see the light
‘Til angels should lift up the veil.
I saw nothing wrong with this stanza. I wasn’t a girl. I am sure that our teacher of Braille had not been the sort of girl who would wait for angels, or anybody else, to permit her to go out to make friends and have a good time.

Actually, we had girl pupils. Apparently this circumstance had much troubled those who had established our school and its rules. Their fears were reflected in the very architecture of the place. Between the girls’ residence and the boys’ residence, there were not one but two sets of fire doors. On the dormitory floors, these doors were kept locked twenty-four hours a day. We once had an assistant nurse whose duties sometimes required her to pass through one of these fire doors. A forgetful soul, she occasionally neglected to lock the fire door behind her. She did not long remain with us. We ate in separate dining-rooms, and the girls’ playground was fenced off from ours. In the school building, each classroom had doors that were at opposite ends of the room and at right-angles to each other. Boys and girls used separate doors. We sat at parallel tables, and the teacher either sat at the cross table or stood at the entrance to the horseshoe. It would appear that those who made these arrangements believed in the Euclidian proposition that parallel lines never meet. Boys and girls were forbidden to speak to one another, even in the presence of a teacher. An exception was made in the case of dialogue in plays, but even this exception was frowned upon by certain older members of the staff.

In 1939 a new wing was added to our school. Here, each classroom had only one door. Boys and girls had therefore to use the same door, but, of course, never at the same time. The winds of change were beginning to blow–but gently.

But nature will out. Billy Smith was an ambitious lad. On the train on his way back to school he met and became interested in Mary Smith. Mary was coming to the school for the first time. On our first day back, in the early evening, Billy strolled over to the residence of girls and knocked on the door of the supervisor of girls.
What do you want, young man?”
“Please, Miss Lockhard, I would like to see Mary Smith.”
“And what is your name, young man?”
“Billy Smith, Miss Lockhard.”
“Very well, Billy Smith. Wait on the bench.”
Brothers and sisters were permitted to visit with one another once each day on a bench in the main corridor and close to the superintendent’s office. For several days, Billy Smith went on paying daily visits to Mary Smith. But there came an evening when the superintendent was working late. Even the Smiths of this world should not expect to be able to fool all of the people all of the time.

Despite the best efforts of those set in authority over us to prevent girls and boys from forming attachments, several of my classmates married girls who were at the school when we were there. And I know of no case where fears concerning inherited blindness have been justified. Some blindness can be inherited. But surely information about responsible sex would have been a better preparation for life after school than these not altogether effective taboos.

Girls were much more restricted than boys in making trips outside the school. Every afternoon, after dinner, girls went on a walk, as a group, with a teacher out in front and another teacher bringing up the rear. Once girls reached the age of eighteen, they were permitted an unsupervised afternoon visit to the local store in groups of two or more. But, should such girls be seen talking to boys, this privilege would be immediately cancelled.

Boys eleven and over were allowed to go out during the day in groups of two or more. Once a boy could get around safely in the streets, he was permitted to go out on his own, regardless of his level of sight. Boys fifteen and over were permitted to go out in the evening until 9:30–10 o’clock Saturday night.

Formal instruction in mobility and professional mobility instructors lay many years in the future. The younger boys learned how to get around from the example of the older boys. This way of learning must have been quite effective. I can remember only one accident. It happened to Roy and Eric. Being totally blind did not prevent them from being rather adventurous lads. One dark night they decided to play Dracula in Holy Cross Cemetery, which was across the street from our school. Having entered the cemetery by the gate, they separated and began to wander among the gravestones. After a time–and at about the same time–wishing they had not come, they sought to leave. They found a gravel path–the same path– and hoped that it would lead them back to the gate. they heard each other approaching.
But Eric did not know that it was Roy, and Roy did not know that it was Eric. Both feared that it might be Sir John Thompson (fourth prime minister of Canada) or one of the other permanent residents of the cemetery. There followed a mad scramble among the tombstones. Eventually, both found the gate and hobbled home. As they had scraped their shins rather badly, the attention of the school nurse was called for. That believer in the necessity of a firm hand over blind teen-aggers was not amused.

In my early teens I was becoming increasingly aware of people’s attitudes to pupils from the Halifax School for the Blind. Travelling home for Christmas, a number of us had to wait for the Saint John train in the station waiting-room in Moncton. When the train arrived, a railwayman lined us up and preceded us along the platform, ringing a large hand bell and shouting, “Make way for the blind! Make way for the blind! Make way for the blind!” This gentleman had missed his calling. He ought to have been the town crier. Although the platform was crowded with holiday travellers, people gave us a wide birth. We could hear them moving out of our way very quickly. We boys found this performance hilarious. But we knew that our parents would never understand, so we saved up our story for our Braille reading and writing teacher. She laughed with us. She understood.

Then there was the silent treatment. In my late teens I began to do my own banking. As soon as my cane was spotted, the buzz of conversation in the bank would cease. In the ensuing silence I would approach the counter, transact my business and leave. As I stepped into the street, the door being still open, I would hear conversation recommence. It seemed to me that I had the same effect on people as a passing funeral. This did not happen in nearby shops frequented by students from our school. But it did happen in places where people were unaccustomed to seeing us. I am glad to say that, with the passing years, most people have become more relaxed in the presence of a blind person. Incidentally, in the Atlantic Provinces at that time, we did not use the white cane because the white cane was associated with the tin cup. Later on, as pensions for needy blind adults became available and employment opportunities improved, the tin cup was encountered less frequently. Blind persons were therefore able to take advantage of the safety aspect of the white cane.

Even Establishment persons appeared to be suspicious of Braille. Our superintendent was a member of Rotary. Another boy and I were therefore taken along to a Rotary luncheon to read and write Braille for the edification of the members. The other boy was to do the writing, I the reading. I was therefore held in a room far away from the dining-room by two rotund Rotarians. I had to walk between them. They waddled as they walked. Their president dictated something to the other boy. He was then removed from the dining-room before I was allowed to enter. The dictation consisted of the 23rd Psalm. As I had learned “The Lord Is My Shepherd” in the choir, I had to be careful not to get ahead of myself, for I knew that the eyes of Rotary would be glued to my fingers. As I was lead from the dining-room, I could hear loud expressions of wonder and congratulation to our superintendent. It can be difficult for even Rotarians to get to the bottom of things.
That Rotarian luncheon had a wonderful aroma. We had missed our meal. So that we would not miss our first afternoon class, our superintendent had arrange for the janitor to drive us back to the school. On the way, Mr. Dillman bought each of us a chocolate bar.
When I was fourteen, a Boy Scout troop was formed at our school. Our scout master was a fine man and a former student at the school. Scouting gave us an opportunity to sometimes meet with boys our own age from other schools. From time to time we held joint meetings with other troops, and occasionally we went on hikes with them. I enjoyed the ritual of scouting and the challenges posed by various proficiency badges.

Men out in the city who were interested in scouting served as examiners for these badges. Most of these gentlemen took us seriously. The local fire chief certainly did. Several of us went to him to be examined for the Fireman’s badge. He asked us many questions about the detection and control of fires. We had to use a fire extinguisher to put out a fire he had set in the yard. We also had to slide down the pole in the fire station. He insisted that we try the Fireman’s Lift on him. HE MUST HAVE WEIGHED OVER TWO HUNDRED POUNDS.

But there was a young physician who was more interested in publicity than in proficiency. He came to our school to examine us for the St. John’s Ambulance badge for First Aid. Four of us had studied for several weeks to pass this examination. The physician expressed his disappointment that there were so few of us and INSISTED that the troop be assembled so that he could do all of us. His command was obeyed. He had a newspaper reporter and a cameraman in tow. There were to be photo opportunities. I think he asked each of us one very easy question. But most of the time was spent on the pictures. One boy was photographed holding a bandage; another boy was photographed holding a splint. There were several pictures of boys standing near a stretcher. I believe that the physician himself appeared in all of the pictures, several of which appeared in the local newspapers. We all passed. But we knew that nobody had passed. We formed a plan to deal with this situation. But it seemed to us that it would not be kind to possibly embarrass our fine scout master by telling him about it.
From time to time the local commissioner for scouting came to our school to present badges. Our school superintendent always turned up for these ceremonies. The night for the presentation of the St. John’s Ambulance badges was memorable. First, a number of other badges were presented to members of the troop who had earned them. Finally, the first scout to be presented with the badge for First Aid was commanded to step forward. He did so, came smartly to attention and saluted the commissioner. The scout then said, “I am sorry, sir! But I have not earned this badge, sir!” He again saluted the commissioner and stepped back into line. This procedure was followed by each of the twenty members of the troop. Nothing was ever said to us about this incident. Nevertheless, a few weeks later, the four of us who had studied for the St. John’s Ambulance badge went to the office of an established physician. This time, we certainly earned our badges.

Eventually, I earned so many proficiency badges that I became a king’s scout. Hearing of this, a newspaper reporter did some research and found out that I was the first blind person in the world to have become a king’s scout. The local newspapers wrote up the event in exaggerated language, and their stories were copied by a number of papers in Canada and the United States. I got some practice in dealing with reporters. At that time, newsmen tended to think of any accomplishment by a blind person as being either a miracle or a trick. Almost certainly the second blind person in the world to become a king’s scout was a member of my own patrol, Gerald from the Newfoundland outport. Unfortunately, he received no press coverage at all.

At the beginning of my final year at the school, I approached my piano tuning instructor with a serious question. “Mr. Haydon,
do you think I shall be able to finish high school and also gain my tuning certificate?” He was a kind man, so he replied, very slowly and deliberately, “Yes, Edmund, yes, I think we could make a tuner out of you.” He was also a truthful man, so he then added, very quickly, “But it would take a very long time.”
I had thought that I had made some progress in tuning a piano, at least in respect of the upper reaches of the instrument. But, upon mature reflection, I had to agree that his cautious forecast had some merit. In order to bring a piano string to its proper pitch, you have to apply a tuning hammer to the upper pin holding the string. To raise the pitch, you must put more pressure on the string by turning the hammer clockwise. But if you place too much pressure on the string, it will break. When it snaps, a bass string makes a marvellous reverberation inside a piano. I should know, for I wreaked havoc on the inventory of bass strings. After such an accident, I would have to approach my instructor with a request for another bass string. He would sigh as he handed me one. I experienced no difficulty in attaching the string to the pins. But, as I brought the string up to pitch, the old madness would come over me.

I gave up my piano lessons at the same time as my tuning instruction. No doubt the Music Department breathed a collective sigh of relief. But I have never regretted my tuning instruction and piano lessons. MY ATTEMPTS TO TUNE AND REPAIR PIANOS TAUGHT me RESPECT FOR THOSE WHO EARN A LIVING THROUGH THE SKILFUL USE OF THEIR HANDS. The piano lessons not only taught me to respect musicians but also gave me an appreciation of music that I doubt I could have gained just by listening to music. I thought my piano teacher quite elderly though, truth to tell, he was then several years younger than I now am. Having decided that the world would not be thereby deprived of another Schnabel, about a half hour into the lesson Mr. Williston would invite me to abandon the piano and to come over to sit with him at the table. He loved to reminisce about the old days at the school and, in particular, about the time when he was its band master. Around the turn of the century, a concert party from the school used to tour the Maritime Provinces each summer. His band was, of course, a most important component of this concert party.

No army can resist the strength of an idea whose time has come.
–Victor Hugo

The touring concert party was the brain child of Sir Frederick Fraser. A graduate of the Perkins Institution, Sir Frederick was our superintendent for fifty years, from almost the beginning of the institution until his retirement in 1923. Our school had been educating blind children since 1871. In the early years, its operation was financed entirely by private charity. It was not called a school but an asylum. (Statutes of Nova Scotia, 1867) a map of Halifax in the 1870’s shows the “Blind Asylum” and also the “Deaf Asylum” and the “Poor Asylum.” But eventually, governments did provide per pupil grants, and the institution became recognized officially as a school. In the 1890’s, legislation was amended to provide for the admission to the school of children from the age of six instead of from the age of ten. Sight-saving students were also admitted. There was therefore a very rapid increase in the enrolment. Three of the school’s five wings were opened between 1891 and 1904. But government grants were insufficient to meet the school’s expansion needs as well as its operating needs. Around 1900, the institution was very short of funds. Politicians had been telling Sir Frederick that, being enlightened men, they recognized that “the blind” were educable. But the voters would never accept it. According to my piano teacher, eventually, Sir Frederick had said, “You leave the voters to me.”

The concert party consisted of some senior students, a few teachers and, of course, Sir Frederick. It would enter a town or village by train and, of a summer evening, set up in the square, near the fire hall or wherever people gathered. There would be vocal and instrumental music followed by a brief speech from Sir Frederick. He would tell his audience that the school had been educating blind students to become useful members of their communities. This was no idle boast. According to the school’s calendar for 1902, 80 percent of its graduates were gainfully employed. Many more blind children remained to be educated. But they could not be educated without more funds. If his audience had enjoyed the concert, would they please tell their members of parliament that they had been entertained by blind musicians from the Halifax School for the Blind.

At that time, before television, before the radio and even before regular showings of silent moving pictures, these towns and villages received little entertainment from the outside. The music and Sir Frederick were successful in spreading the politicians’ enlightenment to the voters. In response to pressure from these voters, the politicians saw to it that more funds were forthcoming.

I remember thinking that the students who had given up their summer holidays to provide concerts must have believed that education was important. without their sacrifices, perhaps I would never have been able to get an education. I would never again take my education for granted. Years later, I would come to realize that I had been taught by a very shrewd piano teacher.

The effects of the depression of the 1930’s were borne in on even children in a residential school. I can remember a teacher explaining to us that our milk had to be mixed with water because the school was poor. As the depression deepened, more and more children could not go home for Christmas because their parents could not afford the rail fare. My father was able to keep his job, so I was always able to go home for Christmas.

Following that dominion’s financial collapse, Children from Newfoundland were unable to attend our school for several years. One boy who had to leave school at age twelve returned seven years later, well over six feet tall and fresh out of the dory. He had missed so much time that he had to fit his large self into Grade Six. This seemed not to bother him at all, but it did embarrass some of the female teachers. He had the charming habit of calling all women “dear.”
“No, Patrick, you must call me Miss Brown.”
“YES, MISS Brown dear.”

One cold winter night, when I was home for Christmas, Sergeant Sullivan came to our kitchen door. I gathered that this was by no means the first time he had come there. There was a family in the neighbourhood with many children but with absolutely nothing in the house to eat. Mother took a large box and placed in it meat, potatoes, home-made bread, sugar, tea, and milk. Then, saying that a family in that situation needed a treat, she added a dozen cookies and a dozen doughnuts. Even children whose fathers kept their jobs and mothers who believed in “bread and roses” knew something of the hardships of the depression.

Sir Frederick Fraser’s policy of reaching out to acquaint the wider community with our activities was still alive and well at the school when I was there. All year we practised in the gym for an exhibition of gymnastics put on each May. These exhibitions were well attended by the public. Old Roar, the x-drill sergeant, was an excellent gym instructor and a fine showman. Our closing exercises, held each June, featured a good deal of both vocal and instrumental music. On both occasions, the main corridor leading to the auditorium would be lined with exhibits of our hand work. There would be girls’ sewing and knitting and boys’ woodwork and chair seating (not mine). I believe these efforts were successful in causing many residents of Halifax to be proud to have our school in their midst.

There was also some reaching in to us, but of a rather special kind. Most of the maids at our school were girls in their late teens or early twenties. In wartime Halifax, these girls were very popular with servicemen. I earned some spending money by tending the door and answering the telephone in the evenings. In the early part of the evening, my main work would consist of going to the maids’ quarters to inform one of these girls of the presence in the library of her soldier or sailor. I found it advisable to seat the sailor in the library and shut the door because my call for the girl would often be answered by a loud-voiced “Ed, you know damn well she’s just gone out with her soldier.” When I reported to the sailor that his friend was not in, his reply was sometimes rather salty.

We senior students were about the same age as the younger maids. The taboos pertaining to girl students did not extend-at least with full rigour–to these girls. These warm-hearted, generous young women did not confine their interest to those on the outside. After all, we had the advantage of being handy.

There were other circumstances that called for the diplomatic touch. Some of the older boys would call for girls from outside pay phones. I would therefore have to go to the duty room of the supervisor of girls to announce that Mary was wanted on the phone. In spite of the success of Billy Smith, it should not be thought that this guardian was naive.
“Man, woman or child?”
“The line is rather noisy this evening, Miss Lockard.” Suspicious, she would come to the phone herself. As soon as she spoke, the line would go dead. “Bad line, Miss Lockard.”

At about the time I entered high school, I began to think of the possibility of going on to university. I came to realize that, unlike my teachers at the school, my professors would not be able to read Braille. I would therefore have to learn to type in print so that they could read my term papers and exams.
At the beginning of grade nine, I approached our superintendent with a request to be taught to type. “Yes, lad, I shall look into it.” I made the same request at the beginning of grade ten and received the same promise. At the beginning of grade eleven, having received the required financing for an additional year, I was now sure that I would be able to complete high school. I was therefore a little more persistent. I explained to the superintendent that I would need to be able to type so that my college professors could read my term papers and examinations. “Lad, I want to find somebody who will be able to instruct you well. Leave it with me. I shall look into it.” After a month had passed without my hearing anything from the Superintendent, I decided that I would have to teach myself to type.

As I was earning some spending money by printing the school’s Braille textbooks, I had the key to the printing office. There I found an ancient typewriter and an old typing instruction book in Braille. Early every evening, the superintendent walked from his office at the north end of the institution to a door at the south end that led through the garden to his home. The corridor he walked along had internal windows, so he was able to see what was going on in the classrooms. I stationed myself in one of these classrooms along with the ancient typewriter, the old typing instruction book and some typing paper. I commenced to teach myself to type. He came along the corridor on schedule. He did not slacken his pace as he passed my room. But the next morning he called me to his office and told me that his secretary would be providing typing lessons for me and several other students. Nothing was said about the activity of the previous evening.

His secretary taught us very well indeed. Realizing that we would not be able to check our own work, she insisted on accuracy. I once skipped a letter on the bottom line of the second page of a two-page report. I had to do the entire report again.

Ever the public relations man, our superintendent doubtless realized that I would teach myself to type–badly, and that my poor typing would reflect badly on his school. The ability to communicate with sighted people in print is so important to a blind person that I am happy to have played some part in the restoration of a typing course.

Sir Frederick Fraser had introduced a typing course in 1912, but it had been discontinued somewhere along the way. Actually, typing may have been taught to some students at an earlier date. A graduate of the school, Charles McInnis, entered Oxford in 1910 and was lecturing at Bristol University in England during the First World War. He volunteered to go to France to type letters home for alliterate soldiers during rest periods behind the line. To Charles McInnis and other blind people in the early years of this century, the typewriter must have meant a new opportunity to take a step forward in communications, as the computer, modem, printer and scanner have been in the later years of the century.

Life on the Outside

My brother Joe had attended St. Mary’s University in Halifax. I got it into my head that it would be pleasant to follow Joe in this matter. I inquired as to whether I could enrol at this university, but I was told that they had no facilities for training “the blind.”

In October, 1943 I entered Dalhousie University. Students from our school had been attending Dalhousie from before the beginning of the century. I therefore had no difficulty entering and being accepted at this university. Our professors knew that we were prepared to integrate ourselves fully into university life and that we required no special facilities. But there was one feature of university life that caused me no little embarrassment. There were girls. And these ones, if they met you on your way to class, expected to walk along with you. They even sat next to you in the classroom. The separate doors, parallel tables and no-speak of the Halifax School for the Blind had hardly prepared me for such intimacies. I was painfully aware of my lack of the social graces. But, gradually, I came to find these new ways rather pleasant. To summon up the courage to ask one of these girls to go out to dinner was quite another matter. Nevertheless, in the fullness of time, even this feat was accomplished.

When I entered Dalhousie, I was hardly in a position to ask anybody to dinner. Except for special days such as Thanksgiving, Christmas, Pancake Tuesday and Easter Sunday, meals at the school never varied. I can still recite the twenty-one meals a week. Suffice it to say that Tuesday breakfast consisted of tepid cream of wheat porridge followed by cold liver, and that breakfast on Thursday and Sunday mornings featured tepid oatmeal porridge followed by cold beans. Beans were served cold on those mornings because beans had been served more or less warm the previous Wednesday and Saturday evenings. When I went to a restaurant with my college friends, I did not know what to order, even after the menu had been read to me. What was French toast, English muffin, Irish coffee? To hide my ignorance, I adopted the practice of always ordering what the person just before me had ordered. I had a friend from Lunenburg County who just
loved blood pudding. I followed Hans in this particular only once. It took me some time to develop a vocabulary of food names that would permit me to order on my own.

At age fifteen the school provided us with forks, but we were never entrusted with knives. Mother had taught me how to use a knife and fork before I went to school. But during the subsequent years of cutlery deprivation her instruction had gone by the board. In such matters, a sighted person can learn by watching what others do; a blind person cannot. Nevertheless, with the help of some kind friends, I did regain at age twenty the proficiency in handling cutlery I had enjoyed at age eight.

My parents being teetotal, I knew nothing at all about the names of alcoholic beverages. Here too, I hid my ignorance by ordering what the person before me had ordered. A fair amount of empirical research was required to enable me to build up a vocabulary of names of drinks that would pass muster in the taverns of Halifax.

We had no soft chairs at the school, and the x-drill sergeant insisted that we sit bolt upright on the hard chairs we had. When invited to friends’ homes, I found sitting in easy chairs quite uncomfortable. Chesterfields were even worse. But I found out that in such homes the x-drill sergeant’s commandment against “slouching” did not apply. Furthermore, the presence of a charming companion would somehow make slouching more bearable. The rules of this new world were quite different from those of the Halifax School for the Blind.

At the school all our floors were bare. I now had to accustom myself to walking on carpets. When you walk across an uncarpeted floor, your walking causes echoes, which, to a totally blind person, can be important navigational aids. I now had to learn from experience where furniture was likely to be located in a carpeted room. The rooms in our school residences were but sparsely furnished. I also came to realize that sounds other than those of walking can be useful in orientation. You can snap your fingers to make an echo. The sounds coming from clocks, radios and people talking can be useful guides. Open doors and windows often provide helpful sounds from outside the room. Experience is an effective if At times a stern teacher.

At the school, bells ad ruled our waking hours. At a quarter to seven in the morning a bell woke us up so that we could have the pleasure of going to the gym for calisthenics, running and a cold shower. During the winter months there were, however, usually a few mornings when we were not able to enjoy the cold shower. Those were the mornings when the water had frozen in the pipes. Bells sent us to meals, classes, recreation and bed. We had few choices as to what to do with our time. Although I was now a part-time teacher at the school, what I did with my time was very much my own responsibility. At Dalhousie class attendance was not compulsory; Christmas and end-of-year exams were. Those were our times of reckoning. But the heavy schedule of the Halifax School for the Blind had instilled in me the habit of keeping busy, and this habit did not desert me. Still, it took me some time to learn how to manage time.

As I had been travelling on my own for years, I had no difficulty going to and from the university. But blindness does have its pitfalls and its snares. At Dalhousie we went to the public health Clinic for our annual medical checkup. As I had never been to this clinic on my own, when it came my turn to go, I asked a fellow student where the clinic was. He gave me the location but did not tell me what was next door. I entered a building and told the receptionist that I had an appointment for 4 o’clock. She asked me whether it was an emergency. I said no, but I insisted that I had a medical appointment. She asked me whether I got sick in the morning. Now that I was a college student and no longer had to take a cold shower, I felt just fine in the morning. She next inquired as to how far advanced I was. Well, I was only a Freshman. Finally, she told me that I was in the Grace Maternity Hospital. Probably she thought this was a lark and part of my initiation. In the future, I would give the Grace a wide birth and never give myself the occasion to have to go there.

There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we spent with a favourite book. –Marcel Proust

Miss Campbell, our teacher of Braille, had seen to it that I became not only a proficient Braille reader but also a person who loved to read Braille. We had a good Braille library at the school, and I passed many happy hours reading its books. I now began to read from the CNIB library in Toronto.

But virtually none of the books I needed for my courses at Dalhousie was available to me in Braille from either the school or the CNIB library. The girls of the Junior League of Halifax did most of my college reading. They were good and faithful readers, and some of them read to me all six years that I was a student at the university. Fellow students and personal friends also helped me with my reading.

Reading furnishes the mind with the materials of knowledge; thinking makes what we read ours.
John Locke

Occasionally, I took notes on a Braille writer, but this was time consuming. As there would be time for only one reading of course material, I had to remember what was important in what had been read to me. I had a ph.d. before I had a tape recorder. This was not altogether a bad thing. I had to develop the ability to decide quickly what was important and what was not. Although my reading time was limited, my thinking time was not. Walking to and from the university and at other times, I cultivated the habit of thinking over what had been read to me and what I had heard in lectures. I was therefore able to gain a depth of understanding of the course material that might have escaped me had I had more time to read but had thought less. Literacy is essential for material and social success in the modern world. Yet I can understand why Plato was concerned by the prospect of the spreading of literacy on the ground that it would dull memory. Using a stylus, I took lecture notes on a Braille slate. To avoid annoying my fellow students with the sound of my writing, I used the thin pages of a scribbler. Later in the day, I would expand these notes and write them out on a Braille writer. I now used Braille paper, which would stand up to many readings. This practice caused me to ask myself questions about what the lecturer had said that might not have occurred to me otherwise.

At the school I had received excellent training in mathematics. We were at first permitted to use tactile diagrams in geometry class. But our teacher soon let us know that to make real progress in geometry, we would have to learn to hold in the mind geometric shapes and reason about their relationships and properties. It was hard to rebel against this way of doing things because our teacher, being blind, was asking us to do nothing that he was not doing himself. He also showed us how to do mental algebra. The writing out in Braille of algebraic equations was sometimes cumbersome on account of the limited space available on a Braille writer. Today, using a computer spreadsheet such as Lotus 1-2-3, this is no longer a problem. Yet mental algebra still comes in handy in such places as the supermarket. I have been known to straighten out cashiers who had inadvertently keyed in wrong numbers. I have heard university professors proclaim that “the blind” cannot be expected to do mathematics. I and other graduates of the Halifax School for the Blind did university mathematics and received good marks. At Dalhousie we had two excellent professors of mathematics. One used to speak the equations as he wrote them on the board; the other did not. I always took the courses given by the talking professor.

I had also received excellent instruction in physics and chemistry. In a class of only six students, I was able to obtain a hands-on knowledge of the experiments that I doubt I would have gained in a large class in a public school. At Dalhousie there was a certain mutual disdain between the professors of the Arts Faculty and of the Science and Engineering Faculty. I can remember a professor of English declaring that he would not teach “bastard English to engineers.” He always commenced first year English with an examination of the story of Baowulf, written in Early English. First year English was a compulsory course for everybody, including engineers. A professor of engineering had had the temerity to suggest that engineering students needed something more practical, such as instruction in report and letter writing. For their part, the science professors insisted that Arts students follow the same initial courses as those who were to become scientists. Chemistry One was considered to be particularly rigorous. But, owing to the fine training I had received at the school, I had no difficulty in passing this course. The professor of chemistry also was a talking professor. I was therefore able to follow the formulas he wrote out on the blackboard.

Nevertheless, today I would be able to participate more fully in the experiments than I was at that time. There are now chemistry sets designed to be used by blind as well as by sighted students. There are, for example, devices to measure weight and volume with synthetic speech output. A blind person can pour acids accurately and safely. You use a beaker with ridges around its inner circumference. Insert two electrodes down to the level to which you want the acid to rise. These electrodes are attached to a battery that activates a buzzer. When the acid in the beaker rises to the desired level, the electricity flows and the buzzer buzzes. But it is a good idea to pour slowly in order to be able to stop pouring as soon as the buzzer buzzes.

Slow pouring is also recommended with respect to such frothy liquids as beer. In a quiet room, liquids are easy to pour because you can judge when to stop from the change in the pitch of the sound as the glass fills. If the liquid is cold and the glass thin, you can also use your finger to be aware of the rising level of the liquid from the temperature of the glass. I once embarrassed inadvertently a very well intentioned gentleman from an organization called “Uniforms for the Blind,” who was giving a demonstration at a convention of the National Federation of the Blind. He was using a battery and buzzer to demonstrate how “the blind” could pour water safely. I suspect this gentleman would not have been at all in favour of blind people pouring beer. He asked me to pour water from a jug into a glass and I did so, stopping just before it was full. The embarrassment was that he had forgotten to attach the battery to the buzzer.

To understand history, you need to have a good knowledge of geography. My studies in history at the university were greatly benefited by the fact that the school had many tactile maps, both contour maps and two-dimensional maps. We also had a large tactile globe. Globes are very important in giving you the sense of living on the surface of a sphere. I could understand why our explorers had courted danger in order to find a North-West Passage to Asia. Years later, travelling between Toronto and London, England, I was not surprised when our plane touched down in Iceland. My seat mate, a well spoken man of about my own age, couldn’t understand why we didn’t go “straight across.” I think he must have studied all his geography on maps.

A few years ago I was invited to go to the Canada Map Office to examine some tactile maps the officials there had just produced. These officials believed that their new maps were the greatest thing since sliced bread. I had to tell them that, with one exception, their maps were the same as those that had been used to teach me geography at the Halifax School for the Blind more than a half-century earlier. The exception was an interesting one, especially for an economist. An official from Australia had brought with him a sheep map of that country. The density of sheep per square mile was shown by the density of dots on the map. Thus, one could obtain quickly an idea as to where in Australia sheep do safely graze. I have seen no similar maps for Canada pertaining to sheep or anything else.

Work in English, history, economics and political science required me to submit to my professors a great deal of written material. A compulsory course in English involved the writing of a theme of at least one thousand words every week. This would have been extremely difficult to accomplish had it not been for my ability to type, which I had found it necessary to be so persistent–some might say devious–in order to acquire.

At the school I had two fine teachers of English. They gave me a lifelong appreciation of English literature, both prose and poetry. They were also rigorous in their teaching of spelling, punctuation and formatting. Here Braille is an essential tool for the totally blind child. you cannot learn to write without being able to read. You cannot learn how to spell, punctuate or format by listening to live or recorded reading.

But one of these excellent teachers of English, being sighted, believed that a line of poetry must occupy a line on the page, no more and no less. As some poems have alternating long and short lines, it is difficult for the tactile Braille reader to read these poems smoothly. This is why standard Braille includes a poetry sign, which permits the filling up of the lines on the page. But this teacher would never allow us to use the poetry sign. We all have our limitations.

A short time ago, I was disturbed to read that a hospital in the United States had found it necessary to discontinue a course for medical secretaries it had been offering to blind students for many years. This hospital had built up a library of reference books in Braille, but the candidates for the course were no longer able to read Braille. Sound recordings could not teach these young people the spelling of medical terms required by a medical secretary. Integrated education, if undertaken without regard for the special needs of blind students, can in itself be a handicap.
The Halifax School for the Blind offered me a part-time teaching job in return for room and board. I taught a variety of subjects to children in different grades.
I continued to be responsible for the printing of the school’s textbooks in Braille, which brought in some cash. But I needed more money for university fees, books, clothing and spending money. As soon as I became twenty-one, I therefore applied for what was popularly known as the “blind pension.” The administration of this pension was such as to demonstrate that the spirit of the English Poor Law of 1834 was still alive and well and living in Nova Scotia. You received the princely sum of $30 a month and were permitted to obtain another $30 from other sources. If you were so unwise as to receive $31, your pension would be cut back to $29. It would then require a good deal of time and form filling to demonstrate that you had learned the error of your ways. In my case, one error sufficed. As my pension policeman was at pains to explain to me, “other sources” meant “all sources.” If I went home for Christmas, I was to report an amount for room and board received from my parents. I was also supposed to report the value of any Christmas presents I received. My pension policeman was one of the least attractive people I have ever encountered. He talked loudly, walked heavily and stank of beer. But no doubt he had served the Party well, and I was his reward. He made frequent visits to the school in an effort to catch me earning money I was not reporting. From the front door to my room, he saw to it that everybody he met knew why he was there. Then he had the charming habit of placing his large, sweaty paw on my shoulder and remarking suspiciously on the quality of the cloth in the suit I was wearing. He was determined to see to it that only those who desperately needed a pension received one. And, in my case at least, he was successful. I was able to do some extra teaching, win a few scholarships and get summer work that eventually enabled me to put the pension police behind me. But many were not so fortunate.

Welfare policy at that time, at least as it applied to blind people, was the opposite of workfare. Workfare requires you to work to prove your need for welfare. The welfare policy that I lived under was to maximize the disincentive to work.

I once met a blind man named Dave, who had supported his family throughout the depression of the 1930’s. At one time during this period, the bureaucrats in charge of welfare decided that those getting welfare must work for it. As Dave was at that time getting welfare, he turned out with the other men of the community. They were told to dig a long ditch. They were then told to fill it in. Dave swung his pick with the rest. He said that his fellow workers gave him lots of room in which to do it. Very prudent fellow workers! Dave was a big, strong man, who no doubt swung his pick mightily. When he told this story, most sighted people were scandalized because a blind man had been forced to work for his welfare. But Dave said that he had been proud and happy to support his family in that way. For once in his life, he felt that he was really one of the men of the community.

For all six years that I was a student at Dalhousie, I spent my summers working as a relief man for the CNIB in its vending stands. As I would take the place of each operator while he was on holidays, I often had to move from town to town every two or three weeks. I worked in a great variety of situations: hospitals, shipyards, sulphite plants, office buildings, city markets. Certain items, such as cigarettes, chocolate bars and soft drinks, were common to all locations. Other items were peculiar to the stand. For example, in the sulphite plants I sold a great deal of snuff because the men who worked in the digesters were not allowed to smoke. At the mental hospital, I was permitted to sell matches to the doctors but not to the patients. It was sometimes difficult to tell which was which. But I worked in that hospital all six years without mishap, so perhaps the patients were not so bent on setting fires as was feared.

Most of the stands I worked in had been constructed according to a plan drawn up by Mr. Joseph Klunk, an American who had come to Canada in the late 1920’s to assist the CNIB in setting up a vending stand program. Having been a blind vending stand worker himself, Mr. Klunk understood the needs of blind vending stand workers. On the counter of the stand there was a wooden receptacle for coins. Therefore, the operator did not have to search the counter for the customer’s money or search for the customer’s hand when returning change. The cash drawer had several wells, one for each denomination of coins. There was also a slot for bills of each of the smaller denominations. Coins presented no problem because they differed in size and because, while fifty-cent pieces, quarters and dimes had milled edges, the edges of nickels and pennies were plain. Almost all customers were honest with respect to bills. But if somebody with a shifty voice came along with a twenty-dollar bill for a penny packet of matches, I was sorry that I could not make change for the twenty, but the gentleman should be able to get the bill changed in the shop next door. The gentleman never returned, but I still had the matches. The showcases were sectioned off so that we could put each brand of cigarettes in a separate compartment. All light switches were up-and-down switches. We never used the rotary switch because it does not tell a blind person whether the lights are on or off.

One summer I worked in Montreal. Here I worked in stands that had been set up for veterans who had lost their sight as the result of war wounds. It was obvious that their stands had been constructed so as to showcase what the federal government had done for its blinded veterans. Only the most expensive woods were used. The showcases were spacious, the light fixtures elaborate. But these stands were much more difficult to work in than were the stands in the Maritimes. As the showcases were not sectioned, when reaching for a package of Players, we had to be careful not to knock over the column of Black Cat’s. As there were only rotary switches, a blind worker had to try to remember about the lights, and even a good memory was not good enough.

I arrived at a stand one morning expecting to be very busy during the rush hour. But 8:30 came and went without a single customer. This stand was located in an alcove off the main hall of a large office building. I walked out to the main entrance, where a commissionaire was on duty. He was surprised to see me. He said that, as the lights were off, everybody thought that I must be ill. Apparently the cleaners had inadvertently left the lights on. I would therefore have turned the lights off by trying to turn them on.

I very much enjoyed meeting and working with the veterans, but I did not enjoy working in their stands. I was glad when that summer’s work came to an end. Those veterans were fine young men trying hard to fit themselves into a difficult new life. They deserved the best. But the best is not necessarily the most showy and expensive.

Both in the Maritimes and in Montreal, the vast majority of customers were pleasant, and some were really helpful. But there were exceptions. There was the real estate lady who, ignoring the money box, insisted on spreading her coins all over the counter, saying, “You may now search.” I’m glad I was never her tenant. Then there was the difficult and demanding civil servant. We had to save many things for “His Excellency,” as the regular operator called him in private. There were papers and magazines; then there was his daily pint of milk. As he never identified himself when he picked up the things saved for him, it was difficult for a person new on the job to be sure that he had come and gone. When I was new on the job, I once failed to save his milk, and he was really quite nasty about it. He also had the habit of coming along in the evening just after we had locked up for the night and insisting that we open up to sell him a penny packet of matches. I met this gentleman at a federal-provincial conference about twenty years later. He, by then a deputy-minister, was representing his province, and I was representing the Atlantic Development Board. He was the most charming man at the conference. He was courteous to everybody, including me. I couldn’t help wondering whether he recognized the formerly young man who had failed to save his milk twenty years earlier.

My summer work for the CNIB had brought me in to contact with people from many walks of life who had lived through the depression of the 1930’s, and some of these people were prepared to talk about their experiences. I was led to contrast the labour surplus of those years with the labour shortage of the war years. I had taken economics in grade eleven, and I understood that Economics had something to do with explaining such contrasts. By the end of my second year at Dalhousie, I had passed all my compulsory subjects, so it was time to make choices for the future. I decided to specialize in economics, but not too narrowly too soon. I believed that to become good at applied economics, I would have to know quite a lot about other subjects, such as history, philosophy, political science and statistics. During my two final years of under-graduate work, while I followed several courses in economics, I also studied these other subjects .

It seemed to me that, following Dalhousie, it would be a fine thing to pursue my studies at Oxford in England. As I have already mentioned, a former student at the Halifax School for the Blind, Charles McInnis, had done just that, and he had later become Professor of Imperial History at Bristol University. But how could I obtain the financial support required to spend several years in England?

I applied for a Rhodes scholarship. A member of the scholarship committee, himself a Rhodes scholar, invited me to his office to discuss my application. He began by telling me that participation in athletics was necessary for a Rhodes scholar and that, being blind, I would not have been able to take part in athletics. I told him that I had been a member of the senior gym team in high school and that I had done some rowing at Dalhousie. Although I was BY NO MEANS an outstanding athlete, I had participated. In their literature, the Rhodes scholarship committee emphasized participation in athletics rather than outstanding performance. This gentleman then became frank with me, saying that even if I managed to swim the English Channel in both directions, his committee would not be favourably impressed. It was not what I could or could not do that bothered the committee; it was what I was–blind. The members of his committee did not believe that a blind man could properly represent Canadian youth in England. He went on to say that, given my academic record, the committee members were afraid that, if allowed to compete, I might win the scholarship. He and his committee were therefore not prepared to accept my application. I think they may have had reason to fear my academic record because, at our graduation, I shared the University Medal with a fine man who went on to become a Rhodes scholar. Nevertheless, I did appreciate this man’s honesty. It did save me from wasting my time applying again.

According to a CNIB publication, recently a blind Canadian has won a Rhodes scholarship, the first blind Canadian to do so. It is a half-century–fifty-one years to be exact–since the Rhodes scholarship committee for Nova Scotia refused to accept my application to become a candidate for a Rhodes scholarship. This young man deserves much credit. I know it wasn’t easy. And progress is progress, even though maybe we have to measure it in geological time.

At the end of my senior year at Dalhousie, I was elected life president of our class, one of the finest honours I have ever received. The class of ’47 was no ordinary class. While some of us were in our early twenties (I was twenty-four), many of us had interrupted our studies to fight a war. These older students, with their varied experiences of life, had interests and views that were new to me. Many were resolved that the Canada of the future would be a more open and a more just country than the Canada in which they had grown up. Some had had very bad wartime experiences and wished to put those experiences well behind them. One day I was in an auditorium with a veteran, one of the kindest and gentlest men I have ever known. He wanted something that was on the stage, which must have been at least five and a half feet above the floor level. With one easy movement, he was standing On that stage. “Erney, how did you manage to do that?” I asked. He sounded a little embarrassed as he replied, “Oh, they taught me how to do that in the commandos.”

When I agreed to become life president of the graduating class, I little knew what awaited me. That spring, our convocation was attended by Field Marshall, Earl Alexander of Tunis, Governor-General of Canada, and by the Right Honourable Louis St. Laurent, soon to become Prime Minister of Canada. Both of these gentlemen graciously accepted our invitation to attend the convocation ball. It therefore became my duty to see to it that they were suitably entertained. Both proved to be extremely easy to entertain, but in quite different ways.

I escorted His Excellency to the table for members of the life executive and introduced them to him. There were two very attractive girls on that executive whom the Governor-General asked to dance. They danced with him and passed him around among the other girls of the graduating class. He had to dance all the time he was at the ball, but I don’t think he minded at all. The verdict was that he danced like a dream and that you would never guess that he was a field marshal, an earl or a governor-general.
“Uncle Louis,” as he later came to be known, passed himself around. I introduced to him a girl named Bauer, but he thought I had said Power. His dear wife, Blanche, had had a dear friend at the convent who came from the Maritimes and whose name was Power. Perhaps she was related to his dear wife’s dear friend. I don’t know whether Uncle Louis danced at all, but he circulated himself around the ballroom, impressing graduates with his urbane good manners and charm.

Before the end of my senior year, I had decided to read for a master’s degree in economics and political science. The breadth of my interest in the social sciences at this time is illustrated by the fact that while my thesis in economics was concerned with certain concepts in the writings of John Maynard Keynes, for political science I wrote a thesis on tyrannicide in medieval political thought.

I was able to continue to do part-time teaching at the Halifax School for the Blind. But I needed additional financial support. A fellow student mentioned that there was a scholarship posted on the bulletin board that might be of interest to me. It was called the Defoe Foundation scholarship, and it provided support for two years for a student doing master’s work in the social sciences. To apply for this scholarship, you had to obtain the written support of certain professors. I called on one of these professors to ask for his support. He told me that, now that I had found out about the scholarship, my academic standing was such that he would have to support me. He had not told me about the scholarship because he did not want to encourage me to become an economist. He knew of a blind man who had become a capable economist but who had never succeeded in getting a permanent job in the field. I was able to tell this professor that I too knew of a blind man who had become an economist. In the nineteenth century, Henry Fawcett had become Professor of Political Economy at Cambridge University and had also been Postmaster-General of Great Britain. It goes without saying that this professor had no obligation to tell me of the Defoe Foundation scholarship. Still, when dealing with blind students, one wishes that professors would not try to play God. They do no credit to themselves nor to the acting profession.

With respect to playing God towards blind students, I understand that sometimes things have been worse in recent years than they were fifty years ago. Several people have told me that a social worker prevented them from following a desired course of study because the social worker had decided that “the blind” just could not do it. One man, who had lost his sight in his early thirties and was therefore no longer able to continue as an artist, wanted to study computer science. But his social worker knew that the only thing a blind man could do was social work. To obtain a government grant, it was necessary for the student to have his social worker approve of his course of study. He therefore took a bachelor’s degree in social work and then a master’s degree in social work. Some ten years later, this man has never earned his living as a social worker. But he earns a very good living in the computer field. While he was studying to become a social worker, he did manage to sneak in a few courses in computer science. He also went to work part-time for a person who was assembling computers and fitting them with software. To get through college, I had to work both during the academic year and in the summertime. But I was able to choose my own career and the courses I would need to prepare myself for it.

I had not allowed the Rhodes scholarship committee to discourage me from pursuing my goal of doing post-graduate work in England. While I was reading for my m.a. degree, I applied for and won a Beaverbrook scholarship.

As my Beaverbrook scholarship was tenable at the University of London, I applied for a place in the Graduate Department of the London School of Economics, the LSE being a college in the University of London. The dean of the Graduate Department raised no objections concerning my academic qualifications, but he turned me down on the ground that I would not be able to look after myself. I took his letter to our family doctor, who had looked after me for six weeks in hospital while I was recovering from a ruptured appendix. Dr. Nugent had known me since I was three years old. He had seen me ride my tricycle, swim in Lily Lake, walk about the streets, as well as eat, dress and perform more private functions while in hospital. I therefore felt that he would be the professional person best qualified to reassure the dean concerning my ability to look after myself. Dr. Nugent was a very outspoken man, and I think that he was more than a little annoyed by this dean’s negative attitude. At any rate, he wrote the dean a forthright letter in which he described in great detail the manner in which I had perform various bodily functions. In the fullness of time, my application for admission was accepted by the Graduate Department of the LSE., and I heard no more from the dean about my ability to look after myself. One wishes that deans as well as professors and social workers would refrain from playing God.

It had taken so long to bring the dean around that I was not able to enter the LSE in the autumn of 1949 but had to wait until the autumn of 1950. For the academic year 1949-50,
I obtained a full-time position teaching in the high school of the Halifax School for the Blind. I taught economics, a subject in which I had obtained my master’s degree. I also taught history, one of the subjects in which I had specialized to get my bachelor’s degree with honours. Among my responsibilities was that of preparing the grade eleven students for their provincial school-leaving examinations in economics and history. They had to pass these examinations to enter university. They were good students who deserved to pass. They all did pass.

The institution in which I began to teach full-time in 1949 was quite different from the one from which I had been graduated six years earlier. There had been a number of staff changes including that of the superintendent. The winds of change were no longer blowing gently. Indeed, according to the old guard, they were blowing up a dangerous if not a disastrous storm. Girls and boys were now allowed to speak to one another. There was a social club for high school students–a mixed club–and frequently there was dancing. Naturally, there was some awkwardness at first.

One of the leaders of this revolution was a young teacher who was rather short of stature. One evening she found herself dancing with a very tall, very thin, very taciturn teen-agger. In an attempt to coax from him some pleasant if not gallant comment, she looked up at him saying, Richard, isn’t this a lovely dance we are having?” From a great height, Dick replied, “Well, at any rate, we are getting through with it.” I understand that this teen-agger went on to become a very enthusiastic and a very popular dance partner.

The fears of our elders that blindness would be thereby transmitted from generation unto generation have not materialized. Furthermore, these teen-aggers were being prepared to go out into a world whose ways they would better know and would be better able to cope with than I had been.

I also obtained a part-time position as a lecturer in economics at Dalhousie University. I enjoyed teaching and I think that, with experience, I might have become a tolerably good teacher. The best test of your knowledge and understanding of a subject is to try to teach it. Unless you understand something thoroughly, you cannot teach it convincingly.

At Dalhousie I taught labour economics to third and fourth year arts and commerce students. Some of them had fought in the War and were older than I was. They were not content to study theories;they wanted to see how those theories were applied to solve problems. In particular, they were curious about the working of the national employment service. I therefore arranged by phone for us to pay a visit to the Halifax branch of this service.

We were received courteously and taken on a tour of the various departments within the service. Our last stop was at the department that dealt with the employment of disabled people. In a fulsome voice, its manager began to tell us how successful his department had been in finding employment for “the disabled.” A number of former officers who had been disabled by war wounds had found profitable employment after his counselling. He must have then spotted my cane, for I could hear the self-assurance ebbing from his voice. He admitted that some of “the disabled” were more difficult to place than others, and some were very difficult indeed to place. Finally, he turned to me and said, “And you would be absolutely impossible to place.” Loud laughter from my students. It would have been fruitless to embarrass this gentleman by trying to explain. As this was the last department on our tour, we left. As the veterans were older than me and no doubt looked more mature, He may have taken me for a student. Then again he may have thought that the class had picked me up somewhere to test his ability to place “the disabled.” And some of those characters would have been capable of doing just that. Outside, we all laughed about what had happened. We also agreed that all of us had learned something about the National Employment Service that we hadn’t known before.

My father died while I was studying in England. I am glad that he knew that I had been able to obtain full-time employment. I believe that he understood that I would be able to support myself financially. This wasn’t the miracle he had prayed for. But it wasn’t a bad deal either. A practical as well as a spiritual man, Dad realized that, with the skills I already had, I would be able to make a life for myself. The year’s interruption of my studies caused by the dean’s fears was therefore not without meaning.

A License To Begin

One can never creep when one feels the impulse to soar.
–Helen Keller

In September, 1950 I boarded the Empress of France, bound from Montreal to Liverpool. I went aboard early to avoid detection by the ship’s officers. I thought this precaution necessary because I had been told that “the blind” were not permitted to travel on seagoing ships without an escort. While my scholarship included my fare to England, it did not include the fare of an escort. I went straight to my cabin and stayed there until we had cleared Father Point on the lower St. Lawrence. Once we had cleared Father Point, where the St. Lawrence river pilot was put ashore, I knew that, while I might end up in irons, I would end up in England. I therefore circulated freely among the other passengers. Apparently the ship’s officers decided to accept the inevitable by ignoring my unescorted presence. Indeed, one night I had a long and frank discussion with one of the mates. He was very angry at the people of Halifax for their treatment of seamen during the War. Although I admitted that conditions for seamen in crowded wartime Halifax had not always been pleasant, I remained a stoutly loyal Haligonian. Even that did not get me put in irons.

When the Empress of France docked in Liverpool, a number of newspaper reporters came aboard. A reporter from what turned out to be one of the more sensationalist tabloids interviewed me. He was very pleasant and seemed to be genuinely interested in my reasons for coming to England. Among other things, I told him that, in vacation time, I wanted to travel about to see something of England. The headline on the front page of the following morning’s paper read: “Blind m.a. says he wants to “see” England.” In fairness to the English press, I should say that on several subsequent occasions I was interviewed by reporters from less sensationalist papers and that none of them tried to exploit my blindness.

Arrived in London, I at first thought that I would have difficulty getting about in the metropolis. An English student who was blind told me that blind people were not permitted to travel on their own in the underground without a pass. To obtain this pass, you had to sign a paper promising never to sue the transportation authority if you had an accident in the underground, regardless of the cause of the accident. Thus, if there was a train collision that was the fault of the authority, while the injured sighted passengers could sue the authority, the injured blind passengers could not.

Although it was necessary for me to use the underground, I decided not to sign this odious paper. Instead, I would loiter in the hallway leading to the platform until a group of cheerful-sounding people came along. I would join this group and pass through the turnstile with them. After the train ride, I had no trouble at the exit because the guard assumed that I must have a pass to have been permitted to enter the underground. After a while, I became bold enough to pass through the turnstile on my own. Apparently, so long as I didn’t try to pay, the guard assumed that I had a pass.

I asked the student how this state of affairs had come about. He told me that in the year 1892, late one Saturday night, a gentleman had emerged from his pub, possibly the worse for drink, and had stumbled off the platform onto the tracks and had been killed by an in-coming train. The gentleman was blind. Authority responded to this accident with the infamous paper. Over the intervening years, the numbers of blind people using the underground had increased until, by 1950, thousands of blind people in the greater London area travelled in the underground each working day. Although, as far as was known, there had never been a second accident involving a blind person, that which was writ on paper was writ in stone.

Things were quite different in the Paris subway. There, disabled veterans had pride of place. Seats were reserved for them close to the car door. But other groups also participated in this arrangement. I believe that pregnant women and women with small children tied for second place, though there may have been some order of precedence between these two groups. But I am sure that not even a pregnant woman with small children could rank a disabled veteran. In any case, disabled civilians ranked forth, and, in my experience, fourth was quite good enough. During my two stays in Paris, I never had any trouble getting a seat. We who sat near the door were a motley and, with children crying, sometimes a rather noisy group. But nobody seemed to mind.

I obtained board and lodging at Passfield Hall, the LSE hall of residence. This residence was named for the Fabian, Sydney Webb, who was the first director of the school and who became Lord Passfield. As there were only about fifty residents, we came to know each other personally. Half of us were from England and Wales, and the other half were from overseas. There were students from Asia, Africa and the Caribbean as well as from Canada. We ranged in age from late teens to early forties, but most of us were in our twenties. There were both under-graduate and graduate students. Most of the Welsh students were zealous members of the Student Labour Party. There were several student lawyers. We therefore had some fine political arguments.

We were an experiment in student self-government. Final authority lay with the director of the school, but he used his power as little as possible. His representative in the residence was the warden. But the power of the purse lay with the bursar, a formidable former Women’s Royal Navy officer. We students held weekly house meetings at which matters of great moment were discussed, sometimes with more heat than light. One of the most eloquent speeches I have ever heard was given by a Welsh student who was reading for the bar. It was a scathing criticism of tomorrow night’s dinner. Food played an important role in our deliberations. One of our resolutions read: “This house prefers food that tastes good to food that is said to be good for it.”Actually, the food was fairly good. Meat, cooking fat, margarine, tea, sugar and chocolate were still rationed. But the rationing authority provided students’ hostels with extra rations, having defined us as “growing boys.” All were treated alike, including a professor on a sabbatical, aged forty-two. As the food was rather starchy, there was a danger of becoming a growing boy, if not vertically, at least laterally.

I was surprised to find that the British were still under food rationing. In Canada, rationing had ended with the War. In Britain, rationing was worse immediately after the War than it was during the War. So long as there was a war in Europe, the Americans were generous with their dollars for their gallant British allies. But, once the War was over, dollars were harder to get. But by the time I left Britain at the end of 1953, food was plentiful, and rationing was only a formality.

Shortly after my arrival, I was elected chairman of the disciplinary committee, a post to which I was twice re-elected. We got along so well together that there was little for the disciplinary committee to do. But we did have one interesting task; we ran the food exchange. The need for a food exchange arose out of the fact that we came from different cultures with differing dietary laws. Hindus did not eat beef. Muslims and jews did not eat pork. Roman Catholics did not eat meat on Friday. There was, however, one exception to the latter rule. A Spanish student who stayed with us for a time told us that he was allowed to eat meat on Friday because his ancestors had driven the Moors from Grenada in 1492. As the hostel could serve only one menu per meal, students needed to be able to exchange food they could not eat for extra food they could eat at other meals. The terms of trade were set by the committee in accordance with supply and demand. Nevertheless, they were also set in such a way that nobody was ill nourished. Market imperfections will occur.

Occasionally, situations did arise that the warden considered too serious for the disciplinary committee to handle. Such a situation arose one night when Mike lit a firecracker under the bursar’s door. Mike turned himself in, and the warden had a long talk with him the following morning. Mike readily agreed to write the bursar a letter of apology, which ran more or less as follows: “I am frightfully sorry for having exploded a firecracker under your bedroom door. The warden has explained to us that ladies going through your time of life are apt to be nervous, highly strung and rather difficult. You may therefore rest assured that the next student who lights a firecracker under your bedroom door will not be me.” I believe Mike went on to a distinguished career in public relations. The warden was from Oxford, the bursar from Cambridge. They therefore always treated each other with the utmost politeness. It seemed to us that, for the next little while, they also treated each other with more than usual formality.

This was only the warden’s second year in office. He was younger than some of us and not much older than most of us, and he was a graduate of Oxford. He sought to introduce to the LSE hall of residence certain of Oxford’s ancient traditions. Particularly memorable was his installation of the High Table. Actually, it stood no higher than any other table in the dining-room. But it was a heavy, ornate structure that was positioned in an alcove at one end of the room. The warden, the bursar and other members of the above-stairs staff sat at this table. Students sat at other tables–below the salt–if not literally, at least figuratively.

We Canadians viewed the High Table with some amusement, but not the Welsh. Most of them miners’ sons, they were opposed to the High Table and all that it stood for. They were so much against such things that they were deeply hurt when their left-wing Labour Party hero, Aneurin Bevan, wore a dinner jacket to Buckingham Palace.

One morning it was found that the High Table had been brought low. It must have required several sturdy young men to turn this heavy structure upside down. The Welsh were sturdy. It took several staff members from below-stairs to right the High Table so that the staff members from above-stairs could eat their breakfast. The chairman of the disciplinary committee never tried to find out “Who done it.” The warden very much wanted to know, but he never succeeded in finding out.

Actually, the High Table was not altogether a bad idea. Once a week in term time, we entertained a distinguished guest to dinner. It might be a cabinet minister, a judge, a distinguished barrister or literary man. Two students would be invited to join the above-stairs staff and the distinguished guest at the High Table. I couldn’t help noticing that if the distinguished person belonged to the Labour Party, even the Welsh students were happy to accept this invitation.

After dinner we entertained the distinguished person in our common room. Actually, usually it was the distinguished person who entertained us. These evenings were strictly off the record, and some of these men had most interesting stories to tell. I remember hearing things about the abdication of King Edward VIII that, although they are well known now, were revelations to us then. I had not realized how much support King Edward had among certain elements in the British public and how much feared he was by the then ruling members of the Conservative Party.

Nevertheless, certain students never quite forgave the warden for the High Table. One morning our bulletin board was of more than usual interest. The sex goddess, Mai West, was soon to visit England. The tabloids were full of her and her pictures. There was a typed letter from our warden to Miss West inviting her to spend the night with him at the Hall. There was also a reply from Miss West’s secretary in which she said that Miss West was charmed to hear that the English called their prisons halls. Miss West would have been delighted to spend an evening with the warden, but preferably on the outside. Unfortunately, previous engagements prevented her from giving herself this pleasure. Perhaps they could meet during some future stay in England; that is, if the warden was not already living in retirement. Into every warden’s life a little rain must fall.

The police never had occasion to visit our residence. But certain students did have the occasional brush with the law. When the King made ceremonial visits to the City, he passed along the Strand in his royal coach. On those occasions, it was the tradition that students from King’s College should line one side of the Strand and that LSE students should line the other. As the coach passed along, we would all sing: “All the King’s children are illegitimate, are illegitimate, are illegitimate!” The police did not take this seriously because, in those days, everybody knew that the King’s children were not illegitimate. But it was considered definitely not cricket to roll ball bearings under the hoofs of the horses of the Household Cavalry, not because of what might happen to the riders but on account of what might happen to the horses. Rightly, the police did take a dim view of that. Then there was the matter of the Serpentine, a lake in Central London. To swim in the nude in the Serpentine at midnight was part of the initiation at Passfield Hall. Usually, the police failed to notice.

But I had not come to England to learn about food exchanges, wardens, or even High Tables. I had to set about making myself into a professional economist. At Dalhousie, I had received excellent instruction in the history of economic doctrine and in the application of deductive reasoning to economic analysis. Professor Maxwell would go about a small class asking questions on a reading assignment. The student’s answer would lead to another question from the professor, and soon the student found that he was contradicting himself. I enjoyed this game even when, as not infrequently happened, I was the student contradicting himself. I enjoyed it so much that I decided to play a more active part. One day, in response to the professor’s question, I posed a question myself. No doubt Professor Maxwell had encountered students like me before. Without hesitation he said, “Mr. Foohey, there can be only one Socrates here.” I now knew the name of the game and its rules. But this in no way diminished my pleasure in playing it.

But I was weak in empirical research. I therefore followed courses in statistical methods given by Sir Robert Allen and in the philosophy of science given by Sir Karl Popper. I also took a course in econometrics by Mr. Philips. Professor Philips of Philips Curve fame was then a young lecturer. His famous curve lay in the future, but he was already famous for his contraption.

Having come to economics from engineering, he had constructed a tank with faucets through which water of different colours flowed into the tank. The purpose of this machine was to demonstrate fluctuations in gross national expenditure and its components. An increase in exports, represented by an increased inflow of water of a given colour, would raise the level of water in the tank, which represented gross national expenditure. There was an outlet for imports that, when opened wider, lowered the level of water in the tank and gross national expenditure. Everybody was proud of the Philips machine and loved to show it off to visiting professors.

I was a member of a seminar on macro economics conducted by Lord Robbins. This seminar was attended by faculty members and graduate students. We had frequent visitors among whom were three economists who later became Nobel laureates, Milton Friedman, Sir John Hicks n James Meade. These were lively affairs. People were not afraid to cast their bread upon the waters although it was sometimes but half baked. I expect that I was one of those whose bread was less well baked than most. But apparently Lord Robbins did not hold this against me.

Although he was extremely busy, Lord Robbins found time to take a personal interest in his students. He thought it would be lovely for me to be able to examine the Elgin Marbles. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Lord Elgin had removed these ancient Greek sculptures from the Parthenon and shipped them to England. The British government later purchased them from Lord Elgin and gave them to the British Museum. As British ambassador to Constantinople, Lord Elgin had been able to persuade the Sultan to allow him to “liberate” these sculptures, Greece being then a part of the Ottoman Empire. Having become an independent country, Greece has expressed strong reservations concerning the present location of these art treasures. Nevertheless, it was a fine thing for me that the Elgin Marbles were where they were–in the Greek Antiquities section of the British Museum.

Lord Robbins arranged with the director of Greek Antiquities for me to be able to examine the sculptures. They had been placed in a band high on the wall of the Parthenon. They were now placed in a band high on the wall of a large room in the British Museum. When I arrived, I was met by the director of Greek Antiquities, a porter and a tall step ladder. The porter placed the ladder under the first of the sculptures while the director explained what I was going to be able to feel. I then mounted the ladder and examined as much of the sculptures as I was able to reach. Having descended the ladder, I was told what I would be next able to examine while the porter moved the ladder to the next location. In this manner, we proceeded through the Elgin Marbles.

The fifth century B.C. sculptors had used images of the gods to show the idealized human body–in motion and at rest. These sculptures had a beauty that still lingers in my mind. They exhibited a superb striving for perfection. I shall always be grateful to Lord Robbins, to the director of Greek Antiquities and to the porter for permitting me to experience something of noble beauty and great historical significance.

The Royal National Institute for the Blind also helped to enrich my stay in London. From time to time, they would send me tickets to concerts in the Albert Hall. I had never before experienced orchestral or chamber music live. Even with today’s advanced recording and transmitting technology, there is no substitute for the live concert. You cannot catch the excitement of the audience without being there.

Lord Beaverbrook took a personal interest in his scholarship students. I had the privilege of meeting him on several occasions in his home at Leatherhead in Surrey. Unlike the Rhodes scholarship committee, Lord Beaverbrook was not afraid to have a blind person represent Canadian youth in England. He encouraged his scholarship students to accept invitations from service clubs and other groups to speak to them about Canada, and he took it for granted that I would participate fully in this activity. I enjoyed doing this, although I once disgraced myself by referring to Rotary clubs as “common.” The distinguished Rotarian with whom I was attempting to make polite conversation assured me that, while Rotary clubs in London were numerous, they were by no means “common.” Nevertheless, I did receive subsequent invitations to address Rotary. Probably they felt that I was in need of more of their civilizing influence, and probably they were right. They had excellent meals. Furthermore, unlike the time when I read Braille for Rotary at age twelve, I now got my share.

Over dinner, Lord Beaverbrook told me that he had known Mr. J. C. Williston, but he did not tell me in what capacity he had known him. But Mr. Williston, my long-suffering piano teacher, had told me that he had known Lord Beaverbrook and also in what capacity he had known him. They were of about the same age, and both came from Newcastle, New Brunswick. As a teen-agger home for summer holidays from the Halifax School for the Blind, Mr. Williston used to play the pipe organ for services in the Presbyterian church of which Lord Beaverbrook’s father was the minister. Somebody had to pump air for the old pipe organ. Who would be a more likely candidate for this rather dull job than the minister’s son? It could be a good thing for sighted youths to have to serve blind people. That could change attitudes. “Now, Max, you get on with that pumping, and do it right this time.” I have no reason to suppose that this conversation ever occurred; it
‘s just a fantasy of mine.

Lord Beaverbrook saw to it that his scholarship students were invited to take part in a variety of events. I was one of several Beaverbrook students who were invited to meet the Queen (then Princess Elizabeth) on the occasion of Her Royal Highness receiving an earned bachelor’s degree in music from the University of London. After the formalities, we all sat down to an informal and very pleasant tea. But I got myself into terrible trouble for what I said afterwards. An acquaintance, a former army officer, asked me what I had thought of Princess Elizabeth. Meaning no disrespect, I said that I thought she was a lovely girl. For a while, I thought it was going to be pistols for two, breakfast for one. “Bloody colonial impudence” was, I believe, the least severe of his descriptions of what I had said. I shudder to think what would have happened to me had Princess Elizabeth already been Queen Elizabeth. I once visited the torture chamber in the Tower of London. Fortunately for me, the x-officer’s wife managed to calm him down, and, after a time, we were again able to meet on friendly terms. But we never again ventured on any subject having to do with royalty.

When I entered LSE, I knew that I wanted to write a thesis on the impact on the economy of taxation, but I had no clear idea as to what I wanted to do. Professor Ronald Tress, my supervisor, was very patient reading my over-ambitious outlines for a proposed thesis. Gradually, he nudged me down to something doable. I decided to write a thesis having to do with the taxation of capital gains. I had been reading my way into this subject for almost a year when, one day, a fellow graduate student drew my attention to a book that had just arrived in the library. It was written by several professors in the United States, and it was on the taxation of capital gains. I had to spend several weeks reading this rather large book to find out whether these professors had left a thesis topic for me. Eventually, I had to admit they had not. To obtain the Ph.D. degree, you must make an original and significant contribution to knowledge. There was no way that I could make such a contribution in that field at that time.

I had only about a year and a half left in my three-year scholarship. I therefore had to find a thesis topic in a hurry. I decided on Government of Canada debt management for the period 1931-1951. I had therefore to examine debt management under three widely differing sets of economic and financial circumstances. I had to deal with the problems for debt management posed by the Great Depression of the 1930’s, the wartime economy and the period of post-war reconstruction. It is
interesting to note that something I chose to write about more than forty years ago has become a topic for household discussion if not a welcome house guest.

My research involved a great deal of reading. Fellow students were very generous with their time. They did most of my reading. But the Royal National Institute for the Blind also provided me with a considerable number of volunteer readers. I was also able to do some background reading in Braille from the Students National Library, which is run by the RNIB. The LSE library was well stocked with Government of Canada financial and economic documents. From the point of view of access to relevant information, I was as well off at the LSE library as I would have been at any university library in Canada. The staff of the research department of the Bank of Canada were most helpful in providing me with statistics that, while they were not confidential, had not been published.

I completed my thesis in mid-1953, and later that year I had to defend it. My Supervisor, Sir Alan Peacock, was my internal examiner and Professor Tress, being now at the University of Bristol, was my external examiner. Although I did most of my research at the Lse, my Ph.D. degree is from the University of London. This is because the LSE, being a college within the University of London, is not a degree granting institution.

Written on the Ph.D. certificate are the words: “A License To Begin.” It was therefore time for me to return to Canada to begin my career as a professional economist.

In December, 1953 I again boarded the Empress of France, this time bound from Liverpool to Saint John, New Brunswick. The St. Lawrence River was already closed to navigation for the winter season. On my return journey, I did not try to hide from the ship’s officers. Nevertheless, nobody tried to put me ashore. In mid-Atlantic, we ran into a severe winter storm. I remember sitting in my cabin with the ship pitching wildly. Perhaps the Empress was mirroring my thoughts. I now held a doctorate from one of the most prestigious schools in the world. I was as well qualified to begin my professional life as an economist as anybody could be. But I was still blind. Life on the outside had taught me that most sighted people cannot see the person for the blindness. I had no reason to believe that sighted employers would be an exception. In England, there were some successful blind people in several professions. I have already mentioned Charles McInnis, Professor of Imperial History at Bristol University. But what were the opportunities for blind professionals in my own country, Canada? Apart from people working at the CNIB and the Halifax School for the Blind, I had not heard of any successful professional persons who were blind. Furthermore, in my own profession, I knew of a blind Canadian who had become a competent economist, but who had never succeeded in obtaining permanent employment in his profession. Would society permit me to earn my living as an economist? Eventually, I would obtain permanent employment as an economist and would be able to pursue a satisfying career. But first there would be more hurdles to surmount. I would almost have to suspend my job search for lack of money. Sitting in my little cabin in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, I could not know what the future would hold. Whatever material success I might or might not have, I was richer intellectually and spiritually for having spent three years in England. The storms were abating. I was young and healthy and, generally, of an optimistic turn of mind. Come what may, I was determined to succeed.