Visiting Northern College

Immediately after my meeting at Fleming College I drove through an early snowstorm to North Bay.  Having never made the trip, the blizardy night-time drive was a bit hair-raising, but I managed to make it in reasonable time (with only one wrong turn).  The following day I continued up to the Kirkland Lake campus of Northern College, a drive filled with breathtaking scenery and thankfully little snow.

Kirkland Lake is where my father grew up, so visiting town held special meaning for me.  On directions from my Dad I was able to track down the exact street and home where he was born - an old wooden house beside a bush trail.  In the fading light I managed to snap a few quick pictures, then it was off to meet with president Olayide (Lad) Shaba and the stewards of OPSEU Local 653.

The old MacKay home on Carter Avenue, Kirkland Lake

Northern College has its central campus in Timmins, a further hour and a half drive north-west of Kirkland Lake.  Other campuses are located in Moosonee and Haileybury.  Northern services a catchment area of over 150,000 square kilometres, and has 2,000 full time and 15,000 part time students.

Over a Local executive committee meeting, I heard about the challenges being faced by faculty at Northern, shared in many ways by their colleagues in Sudbury, Sault St. Marie, North Bay, and Thunder Bay.  Like the other college faculty working in the North, the stewards of Local 653 lamented a government that appears to be turning its back on northern colleges, and failing to appreciate the important role they play in social and economic development. 

Its not hard to see how Northern College faculty can feel underfunded.  From an early 1990s high of 135 full time faculty, today just 78 remain.  The attrition is slow and steady.  As full time faculty retire, they are simply not being replaced.  Instead, part-timers are hired, and now several programs don't even have one full time faculty member associated with them.

Local 653 on the picket line in 2006

Professors, counselors and librarians at Northern are also struggling with the increasing demands that understaffing brings.  Faculty are asked to sit on college committees, yet this work is unpaid, and unaccounted for on their SWF (the contract that spells out the hours and terms of faculty work each semester).  If they don't attend meetings, faculty risk losing even more input into academic decisions.  However, the extra work of participating can be exploitative when considering the already maxed-out full time workloads.

Over dinner after the meeting, I was given an invaluable insight into the unique experience of teaching in the North, and of how it has changed over the years.  Stephen Borao, a long-time professor and union member who retired this past summer, described his teaching career and the major impact collective bargaining had on it.

In 1980 Stephen was hired as a "teaching master" at the Moosonee campus, when it wasn't yet affiliated with Northern College.  Semesters began in October, to leave room for moose hunting season, and Stephen flew in by bush plane to teach an introductory business program.  Stephen taught between 20 and 24 hours a week with no direction, no support, and no feedback.  He created the entire curriculum from scratch and delivered it until the site was shut down in 1983.  Because he was a union member, he was transferred to the Kirkland Lake campus, where he spent the next 30 years teaching, went back to school on an academic leave, and became a tireless officer in Local 653.

When considering his experiences and the challenges now facing faculty at Northern, Stephen reflected on the successful struggles of the past, saying: "People think that the decent wages, benefits, and hours worked today are out of the kindness of the college.  They don't realize that these things were won by the union."

Stephen's point is well worth remembering for today's college faculty.  Collective bargaining works, and if professors, counselors and librarians stand in solidarity, we can overcome the challenges we now face, and return the college system to its original mandate - providing excellent education, social support and economic development to Ontario's diverse communities.