Donald McLean   Class 11B   MRHS 1959

 
Donald in front of the Ancestral Home

My Career

Some people seem to be born with a sense of destiny, and you can tick off the stations on their career paths as if they were following a time-table. I was not one of those people. It wasn't that I had no idea what I wanted to be when I left MRHS. I had dozens of ideas. It is no exageration to say that I spent my working life wondering what I was going to be, and then woke up one morning to the realization that I had already been it.

After MRHS, I set off with the vague idea that a bit of adventure would be nice. I had a brief spell as a journalist in Vancouver, then joined a ship bound for Australia. After working at various jobs there, I joined another ship ... more jobs ... more countries ... more ships ... nautical college ... master mariner ... university ... Artificial Intelligence ... resarch ... family ... software developer ... End of Career.

There is more detailed biographical information and remarks on a few things that interest me on Donald's Home Page,

Today

I currently live in Stockholm, Sweden, where I have two wonderful children, Susan and Håkan. These days my time is spent partly in wondering where the time went, and partly in wondering where I put things. In between I sometimes manage to cultivate my interests in classical music and good company. And occasionally I manage to carry out my duties as webmaster of the MRHS59 Web site.

The Ancestral Home

During my days at MRHS, I lived with my parents, my brother, Richard, and my sister, Joan, (and our cat Cleopatra) at 132 Vivian Avenue. Not long after I put to sea, Joan moved to Ottawa, and eventually to the Deep South of the USA. Richard was unfortunately killed in a traffic accident in his last year at University.

132 Vivian Ave  
That left my parents very much on their own. Richard was gone, Joan lived at the other end of the continent, and I had no fixed abode. But Mum and Dad stayed on at 132 Vivian and, as the years wore on, Joan and I came more and more to appreciate the wonderful home that we had left behind, where we knew there would always be a warm welcome waiting for us when we returned for a visit.

As my children grew up, they also experienced the warmth and love which filled their grandparent's home, and came to look forward to our annual summer and Christmas visits. Mum and Dad stayed on for 52 years, and only moved to an apartment a month before Mum's 90th birthday.

For all of us, it will always be the Home in Our Hearts.
 

Mount Royal Memories

One of my strongest memories of life in "The Town", is of getting up early in the morning to deliver "The Gazette". It all started when I was still at Dunrae Gardens. My parents had given me a bicycle for my birthday, which they had acquired second-hand from a relative. But it wasn't the kind of bicycle that you could show off to your friends. In fact, it was the kind that you would prefer nobody ever saw you riding. It DIDN'T HAVE ANY GEARS.

 
Bringing news to a sleeping world
My parents, very sensibly, told me that if the bicycle they had given me (a 28-inch CCM, if I recall correctly—which I don't always do these days) was not good enough, then I could buy one myself that was. There was only one hitch. It would have taken me YEARS to save up enough on my allowance. So I got a paper round. And then another, and another, and another. I ended up with four paper rounds, which made it necessary for me to get up at 4 a.m. on winter mornings, in order to have the last paper delivered by 7 a.m., which the Rules required.

But I did it! In very short order I was the proud owner of a 3-speed Raleigh bicycle. By then I had become accustomed to being a man of means, and continued to deliver the Gazette all through high school. By about grade 10 I had learned to fold the paper right or left-handed and to throw it with either hand almost from the street. I could run the whole way, ricochetting from one side of the street to the other, getting all 4 rounds done in less than an hour.

In the early days (I believe I was 10 when I got my first paper round) I didn't always understand the significance of the news that I was carrying out to a sleeping world. But we paper boys were aware that we were fulfilling an important function. (Remember, this was long before the advent of satelite communication and mobile phones. Radios were large wooden boxes filled with thermionic valves. Transatlantic phone calls cost a fortune—if you managed to get connected at all.)

I particularly remember one very cold winter's morning in 1953, when I was 11, carrying out the news that Joseph Stalin had died. I don't know that I was sure who Stalin was at the time. But I knew by the size of the headlines—far bigger than any I had seen before—that this was something important. Later in the day, when people asked me "Have you heard?", I could smirk and tell them that I had known since 4 o'clock in the morning. Another momentous occasion, later that same year, that I was one of the first in Montreal to know about, was Hillary's conquest of Mt Everest.

 
Saying goodbye was always hard
Håkan, Dad, Mum, Susan
On Saturday afternoons (in later years on week-day evenings), I would take my punch cards with me and "go collecting" from my customers. Except for the "Office Pays", who payed through the bank. They were the stingy ones, who didn't want the paper boy coming round, so that they wouldn't have to give him a tip. At any rate, that was the firm belief of all paper boys.

One of my classmates didn't believe me when I told her that I was their paper boy. (Her parents were despicable Office Pays, so they had never seen me.) The next morning I threw their paper up onto the roof of their porch. After that she believed me. But she never invited me to their house. Apparently her father—who had to climb a ladder to get the paper down—did not have a sense of humour.

I don't know how it works in Canada these days, but I was saddened to learn that in Sweden only union-organized adults are allowed to deliver newspapers. By law, school children are not allowed to work early in the morning. Or in the evening. In fact they are hardly allowed to do anything before their 16th birthdays. It's a shame. Having a paper round was a great way for a young person to learn the value of hard work and to manage his or her (mostly his in those days) own economy. In fact, I sometimes wonder if the world wouldn't be a better place if school children were obliged to get up early in the morning and deliver newspapers, or bake bread, or do something!

Here are a few more memories:

My Name

Some of you may have noticed that on my Home Page my last name is spelt 'MacLean', whereas on this page and in the Torch it is spellt 'McLean'. Why? Well, I lived in England at a time when the IRA was busy detonating bombs in train stations, and generally making Irishness something that you didn't want to be accused of. The current wisdom at the time—totally erroneous as it turns out—was that 'Mc' was Irish, whereas 'Mac' was Scottish.

Since my anscestors, on both sides of the family, are from Scotland, I decided to change the spelling to 'Mac'. Quite unneccessarily. That's what happens when you listen to old wive's tales. Or, at any rate, when you believe them.

But it doesn't stop there. Within my family I have always been known as 'Monty', from my middle name 'Montgomery'. However, when I was at Dunrae Gardens, NO ONE ELSE IN THE WHOLE SCHOOL, was called 'Monty'. In fact, NO ONE ELSE IN THE WHOLE WORLD (as I then knew it) was called 'Monty'. So I started using my first name, 'Donald'. Only in later years, after I had succeeded in getting everyone to call me 'Donald', did I realize what a silly fool I had been. Again. 'Monty' is actually a great name, and you are all welcome to use it!

To compicate matters still further, one of the peculiarities of the Swedish language—or perhaps the Swedish psyche—is that nicknames are frequently created by adding a syllable to them, instead of removing one as in English, where David becomes Dave, Jenifer becomes Jenny or even Jen, etc.

Somehow a disyllabic first name (especially a male's) sounds less formal—and is even easier to pronounce—than a monosyllabic one. Thus someone called "Sven" (a common Swedish first name for a male) would be known to his friends as "Svenne"; someone called "Per", as "Pelle" (cf "Robert" and "Bob" in English). For this reason I am invariably known as Donald, not Don, in Swedish.

So don't be surprised if you someday receive an email from me, signed Monty/Don(ald) M(a)cLean!