# A Retired Canadian-Australian Teacher Writes



## RonPrice (Jun 21, 2009)

As "A Retired Canadian-Australian Teacher" I write the following:
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THE LAST DAY

Beginning perhaps as early as 1953, I found ways of making money: collecting pop bottles, selling newspapers, doing the occasional odd-job but, in July 1960, I landed my first formal job with the A and W Root Beer Company in Ontario. It only lasted several weeks because, since my father was receiving unemployment benefits at the time as a retired man of 65, I was not allowed to make any money. What I did earn I had to give back: all of it. The next summer, in July or August of 1961, I began my first job with the Shell Oil Company in Hamilton Ontario. This time I could keep the money. From then until today I have been working at jobs, hunting for jobs and/or going to school. About the same time of year as now, exactly forty years ago in 1961, I began negotiating for that Shell Oil job. Today the hunting process came to an end. I had been accepted onto a Disability Support Pension eight weeks before my 57th birthday. I would continue to be a volunteer occasionally, presenting radio programs or teaching senior citizens but, it appeared for now, that paid employment and looking for it had finally ceased. -Ron Price, Pioneering Over Four Epochs, 30 May 2001.

There were times in those forty years
when schools and jobs 
were not on the agenda,
when I was zonked right out
in a hospital somewhere,
or travelling to this place of refuge
in this little town at the mouth of a river
on a small bay where I watched the boats go by 
and the waters of this estuary
criss-cross in many directions,
as life continued to flow to the sea.

Those times might add up to a year,
making a net of thirty-nine years
on the jobs-school circuit;
and those thirty nine years of travelling,
and teaching in schools:
they too were a landmark
as I enter these winter months
and a world beyond those forty years.

Ron Price
Tasmania


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## RonPrice (Jun 21, 2009)

*Looking Back At A Lifetime Of Work and Teaching*



RonPrice said:


> As "A Retired Canadian-Australian Teacher" I write the following:
> ------------------------
> THE LAST DAY
> 
> ...


--------------------------------IN RETROSPECT--------------------
A MODEST LIBRARY

Forty years ago this month I became confronted, overwhelmed, by the world of print, of ideas, of academic life. Not that it was new, for I had just completed 13 years of primary and secondary schooling and achieved second class honours. But this new world, the world of university, required a new, a different, approach to the ones I had previously used to survive, to do well, in my educational life. I eventually adjusted to what seemed to me at the time, in the autumn of 1963, an impossible onslaught of books that I simply could not cope with. I went on to complete five years of post-secondary education and teach in schools and colleges for over thirty years. Now, in 2003, exactly forty years later, as another autumn approaches, I am entering my fifth year of retirement and my sixtieth year of life. In the last four years I have organized and reorganized my modest retirement library in Australia's oldest town here in Tasmania. This poem is about my small library in my small study in this small town on a small island beside an enormous continent and a vast world where I have now lived for six decades. Would I live to see another fifty years? -Ron Price, Pioneering Over Four Epochs, 27 August 2003.

There is nothing here that was 
in my place of print in 1963 
when the great game of books, 
of study, of writing, of reading, 
really began in earnest after
a warm-up of thirteen years: 
1950 to 1963 and the sixties.

Fifty years down that track
from mid-twentieth century, 
I began to prepare this place 
for whatever was in store
in the remaining years of
this life: 2000 to whatever.

History and philosophy,
literature and poetry,
the social sciences,
religion and autobiography 
just about covered it all 
with a hint of psychology,
sociology, biography
and my efforts to publish.

They weaved their way
all these files and books 
around this little room
three doors down on the left
from the corner of Reece and South 
behind a garden above the stairs,
beside two bedrooms
and two bathrooms.

Ron Price


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## RonPrice (Jun 21, 2009)

I've just connected this site and this post to my Facebook profile. And so, for those who come to this site and this thread, let me wish you a happy summer solstice which takes place in this next 24 hour period, on 22 December at exactly 10:38 am. With 10 days to go until 2011, let me also wish you a happy New Year. For those who also celebrate Xmas let me wish you a merry Xmas in 3 days.-Ron Price, Tasmania


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## Skydancer (Jun 3, 2010)

Hi Ron,

Wow, your passion for books and your dedication to improve your mind shines through! Learning is a life long process, and I do hope you are still teaching, at least for fun! 

Wishing you and your loved ones a happy festive season and joyous new year 2011!


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## RonPrice (Jun 21, 2009)

Thanks for your response, Skydancer. I retired from FT, PT and volunteer-teaching after 32 years in classrooms as a teacher and another 18 as a student. Half a century was enough. Now I do whatever 'teaching' my little heart desires all over the internet. The last number of sites---in total---was about 6000---and millions of words......some in interaction and some not. Wishing you well, Skydancer, in 2011.


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## RonPrice (Jun 21, 2009)

Encouragement, aisstep, is always appreciated even in this the evening of the life.-Ron


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## Sohail Rana (Feb 6, 2011)

Skydancer said:


> Hi Ron,
> 
> Wow, your passion for books and your dedication to improve your mind shines through! Learning is a life long process, and I do hope you are still teaching, at least for fun!
> 
> Wishing you and your loved ones a happy festive season and joyous new year 2011!


hi
i am sohail rana i want some information how to come austarila


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## RonPrice (Jun 21, 2009)

*To Come To Australia*

If you want To Come To Australia, Sohail, you need to contact the Department of Immigration & Citizenship. This part of government provides access to information about Australian visas and Australian citizenship.-Ron in Tasmania


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