Dr Donald Buchanan
Let it be said at the outset: I have never been in Dr Bucahanan's class. Doesn't that disqualify me as a writer of tributes to him? No. It doesn't. Because I did have him as a private tutor during a very decisive period of my life.
After completing 7th grade at Dunrae Gardens School, I had been sent away to boarding school in Ontaro and had fallen amongst bad company. My interest in school was at a very low ebb and I was in real danger of becoming a drop-out.
My mother, to whom I shall be eternally grateful (if I'm around in some form or other for that long), came up with the idea—at about Easter time in grade 9—that I should try to get into Mount Royal High School, and have extra tuition in French, since I was by then far behind in that subject.
Mum got hold of Dr Buchanan as my tutor. He was a brilliant teacher, and in no time at all he had a no-hoper (me) actually rushing home from school, impatient to get started on the homework he had given me.
When Dr B noticed that my English grammar was not very good (it's hard to learn French grammar, if you're not really on top of what purpose nouns, verbs, prepositions, and their ilk fulfil) he started tutoring me in that also.
Once Mum saw that his efforts were really bearing fruit, she asked him to tutor me in Algebra as well. It turned out that he was just as brilliant a Maths teacher as a language teacher. By constantly posing well-thought-out questions, which were tantalizingly just beyond what I had learned so far, he made me eager to try and figure out the answers myself. Somehow, there always seemed to be some half-forgotten tip he had given me previously, which could be used to come up with the answer. It was FUN, and I lapped it up.
I still remember one morning in June, near the end of the 9th grade, when I came walking down the corridor towards the classroom, to be met by a classmate who was skipping and jumping and could hardly contain her excitement.
CONGRATULATIONS! She shouted. I had almost forgotten that we had just written our end-of-term exams. I had found them so easy, compared to what Dr B had been putting me through, that I had hardly noticed them. When we entered the classroom, there on the board were the final results (Political Correctness had not been invented yet) and my name was at the top!!!
As nearly as I can recall, in the four subjects that Dr B had tutored me in (French was two subjects in those days), I ended up with 100%, 100%, 98% and 97%! I didn't do anything like as well in the other subjects, but that was enough to get me into Science I for the final two years at MRHS.
Sadly, I never again achieved such high grades—except in English composition, which required no studying. However, my interest in the subjects we studied (as opposed to actually studying the subjects) had been sufficiently aroused by Dr B, that I was able to cope with school work from then on, and graduated from MRHS with about average marks. Without Dr B's intervention, I would probably have ended up as a drop-out.
With the thoughtlessness of youth, I'm afraid that I never expressed my appreciation to Dr Buchanan for all that he had done for me. And now he's no longer with us. Perhaps I can make up for it in some way through this heart-felt tribute. Thanks Dr B!