ATHABASCA – Fifty years ago, on June 25, 1970, Athabasca University was established by an Order in Council by the Government of Alberta.
Ever since that event the Athabasca region and AU have been intertwined, a fabric woven together by the people who came to the little town on the river over the years to work, play and in many cases, to stay. People like the current mayor, Colleen Powell, or Mike Gismondi who came from Ontario and never left. He also has been on town council. Then there is Daniel Schiff, a newer AU staff member who has developed deep roots in the past four years.
“Rick came up January 1, 1985. The people who'd been working in Edmonton at AU came up in the fall of 1984. We came up a few months later. I was teaching (political science) at Grant MacEwan so, I had to finish my term. I came up with my two little kids in May,” Powell said.
The Powells family had lived a nomadic life before coming to Athabasca and Powell figured they would be here a few years and be gone again on another adventure, but their lives started to weave in with the town.
“This was another adventure and we thought we'd stay here three years. My husband got hired in Institutional Studies at the university, and I was mother for the first couple of years, which worked for us; it was good for me to be home with kids. I then got a job touring for the university,” Powell said.
For the first 14 years AU was based in Edmonton and did not formally move to Athabasca until 1984.
“There were a small group of academics who refused (to move to Athabasca), which unfortunately set the stage for fewer and fewer academics to live here; at one time there was 32. But most of us stayed and developed our lives here. We grew roots. We now have second generation people from this original intake who grew up here, in some cases were born here and are now working at the university,” she said.
It takes more than academics to run a university though, and Powell said over the years hundreds of people have become part of the fabric of the Athabasca region, and not just the staff who moved here. In many cases they brought families with them.
“Now there's around 320 odd people working in this area. At one time, it was 450. When we moved up, it was much, much smaller,” said Powell. “You're looking at a large number of people, and the economic importance can't be overstated. You've got the multiplier effect if the husband and wife have got jobs.”
Powell reminisced about the impact AU has had on the world as well as the community rattling off a list of names and dates of when people arrived, retired or passed away and all of their major accomplishments along the way.
“Bob Spencer started the Center for Distance Education and both he and Mike (Gismondi) started the first Masters programs. Mike for a Masters in Integrated Studies and Bob for a Masters in Distance Education. So, you know, the people have done good things in the university and helped build that university as well as contributing to the community,” she said.
Powell also mentioned Martin Conners, an astronomer and physics teacher at AU, who was on a team in October 2010 that discovered the first Earth trojan asteroid, an asteroid that orbits the Sun on a similar path as the Earth. And Dietmar Kennepohl who was featured in an article in the Advocate June 16 for his innovation in education.
Robert Holmberg who has been a fixture in the Athabasca region is well known for his work on the Athabasca watershed, photography and teaching youth to love spiders, among other accomplishments. The list Powell provided goes on.
Mike Gismondi is one of those names that came up several times, in part due to Powell and Gismondi sitting on town council together.
He moved to Athabasca from Hamilton, Ont. in 1987 with his family during a caterpillar infestation. He had been working at Ryerson University in Toronto doing distance education at a radio station when he got recruited to write a course for AU and then applied for a teaching position.
“It was during a season of caterpillars – which everyone will remember that year – but I got a global job in a rural place. It's just perfectly what I wanted in my life,” Gismondi said.
He recalled taking the bus from Edmonton for his interview and stopping in every town and hamlet along the way; Morinville to Perryvale to Colinton. But when the bus started coming down the south hill, he knew he belonged in Athabasca.
“I got to the baseline – I didn't know it was called the baseline then – but when you're south of town you come down that hill at the baseline, and I saw the valley open before me. I said ‘Oh, this is a big place’ and I'd grown up in a big industrial city. I knew a lot about cities and I wanted something different and it really appealed to me,” Gismondi said.
Where Ryerson had a small distance education program, AU was doing it on an institutional scale with a small core of academics. Academics who did not have the freedom of a large faculty in each department like would be found in the city but Gismondi said they all supported each other.
“It was challenging. It was a very small academic community. There was one other sociologist and three or four psychologists, one geographer. You have some departments at the (University of Alberta) that are bigger than our whole university. So, we had to help each other and support each other.”
Gismondi spent three terms on town council, was part of Communities in Bloom, met his life partner of 20 years, Lori Claerhout, and helped with the historical society.
“I was able to do some research around the history of the town and publish a couple of things. I got involved with doing the signage all around town. That was a project that I lead for almost a decade,” he said.
He recalled the AU staff putting on plays, having a Fringe Festival, parties at the president’s house, that time Ian Tyson was given an honorary PhD and gave a concert and more memories, including many things that stopped happening after the Internet made it possible for people to work remotely.
“Thinking about my different colleagues, almost all of them were doing something else in the community too. That's part of the loss obviously, as people leave and no longer work from here. We're down to probably four or five academics who still live in the community,” he said. “I was going through my mind the other day, it wasn't just the academics who lived here, there was a whole pile of wonderful professional people and support people.”
When Daniel Schiff moved to Athabasca for his job at AU four years ago, he jumped into the community and added another strong thread to that fabric. He has been involved in square dancing, Pub Stumpers, the community band, Lion’s Club, a butterfly count with Science Outreach, a running group and a weightlifting club, sat on a sub-committee with the town and has appeared in a music video for a song from Gina Payzant’s award-winning short film ‘Just a Ploughboy’ about internationally famous local playwright George Ryga. There’s even more.
"Someone said to me right away, like within a month, someone at the university said to get involved with things because I think that serves a dual benefit. There's a benefit both to the person who's moved here to get involved but also to the community to have this involvement,” said Schiff.
Of all the things Schiff has done however; watching convocations, walking with then MLA Colin Piquette in the Moonlight Madness Parade, open mic nights or music and poetry at The Book Nook, it is probably the day he arrived for an interview that will stick in his memory the longest.
“I actually came up for an in-person interview the same day they were evacuating Fort McMurray from the wildfires. People were flooding into the hotel. In the morning the hotel was kind of empty, but by the end of day it was full of people,” Schiff said.
These are the people who make up the rich tapestry that binds Athabasca and Athabasca University together noted Powell.
“The University isn't sort of camped up there apart from the community, there is that kind of feeling, but the people who live in the community and work there are our community,” she said.
Heather Stocking, TownandCountryToday.com
Follow me on Twitter @HLSox
