Timothy Allan Johnston
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The ATA Magazine - Editor’s Notebook

Volume 71, Jan/Feb 1991

                                                                Gone Flying

New presidents of the Association are given a perk or a duty, depending on one’s point of view, that sends them off into the province’s hinterland on what are known as the “President’s Tours.” There was a time when these tours took place by car and, if we go way back, by train.

Folks don’t usually become ATA presidents unless they have a lot of Association experience behind them. But even so, it’s difficult for a new president to know about the concerns and interests of members right across the province. So, in the first autumn of a president’s term, tours around the province are organized to let teachers, particularly those in rural settings, meet the new president face-to-face.


When I joined the Association in 1981, Mac Kryzanowski was president. He had had his tour by the time I came aboard. In fact, I had organized a trip around the southwest corner of the province for him when I was still teaching in Lethbridge. Mac traveled by car. Mac was succeeded by Art Cowley, whose tour it fell to me to organize. Again, we pretty much stayed on the ground and moved Art around in automobiles belonging to various local presidents, district representatives, communications consultants and Barnett House staff. It was a time-consuming and fatiguing process.

After Nadene Thomas’s election in 1984, things changed. She stopped in my office one day and commented on all the aviation trivia adorning the walls. “When I retire,” she told me, “I want to build and airplane in my backyard and then go flying.” The upshot of our conversation was that Nadene decided it would be a marvelous idea if we conducted her tour by chartered airplane. We’ve been flying ever since. President Brendan Dunphy and now Fran Savage have winged their way to teachers all over rural Alberta.


There’s a reason for the rural emphasis of the tours. Presidents visit with our cities on a fairly regular basis. They have a pretty good handle on what the majority of our urban members want to see accomplished. Getting off the beaten track a little helps fill in the picture of the needs and aspirations of teachers in places like Fort Vermilion and Milk River.

The reason we now go by airplane is pretty simple. Time. The demands on the president’s schedule are truly overwhelming. By chartering an airplane, the president can visit as many schools and teachers in one day as she could in two or three days by car. Thanks to the foresight of the provincial government, which must have known we would eventually send our presidents by air, paved and lighted airstrips now adorn the countryside.

Fran has now completed six trips across the province, and I have put my air facilities map away until a new president comes to office. Together, we have visited teachers in 27 rural Alberta communities and about 65 schools. Getting to those communities has been part of the enjoyment of the trips.

Getting there included making contacts with local presidents or their representatives and having them arrange ground transportation and events. Getting there also included booking the flights and finally becoming airborne long before the break of dawn.

Each day of flying provided me with vivid memories. At Cadotte Lake, we literally splashed down on a grass airstrip covered with mud, slush and water. We experienced our only go-round at Fort Vermilion where we found the runway glazed with ice. Our third trip, which ended in Consort, had been plagued by high winds which provided unending turbulence. Fran spoke at the Consort induction that night, and at 9:30 in the evening we headed back to Edmonton. The air was perfectly still and the night sky was clear as crystal. The northern lights entertained us all the way home, and I was invited up to steer the Navaho from the right-hand seat. Part of our last trip took us along the eastern slopes of the Porcupine Hills in southwest Alberta. Barry Pratte, president of the Willow Creek local, was on board and he kept after the pilots to take us down so he could look for white tail deer.

But flying was only part of the enjoyment I experienced on the tours. Fran and I met a lot of teachers during those six days away from home. The members we visited were delighted that the president would take time to come all the way out to their schools.

My president’s tour file now contains three Alberta road maps. Overlaying the roadways are webs of straight lines emanating from Edmonton. The lines show where the last three presidents have flown and the communities they have visited. What the maps don’t show are the teachers who welcomed those presidents and the staff members who accompanied them. That record is kept in the memories of those of us who have been the guests of teachers during the tours of our presidents.

My heartfelt thanks to all those who participated this year. We’ll see some of you again and many others when our next president has “gone flyin’.”