Women now make up more than 60 percent of university undergraduates, more than half of students in graduate studies, medicine, and law schools, and a rapidly increasing number are enrolling in engineering, agriculture, and forestry, areas traditionally male domains. The social ramifications of this huge gender shift will reverberate through society for decades, I am sure.
I wonder, however, about the boys who are not winning the awards they once did and who are not going on to university, but not because I think they should be represented fifty-fifty. Personal experience tells me that women mature socially and intellectually much sooner than boys. I know I was brain-damaged by testosterone and figure I'm just starting to catch up to women, except that senility threatens to intrude any minute. My son, as much because I was his father as anything else, did not complete university and graduated instead from Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design in Vancouver. He has become an excellent carpenter and, more recently, an accomplished boatbuilder, and I am very proud of what he has become. Yet I worry as I watch him inform others, almost apologetically, that he never completed university.
Has university become the standard by which we measure a person's worth? If so, it is a mistake. I have as much regard for Troy's talent as a carpenter and boatbuilder as I have for any academic with a bachelor's degree or even a PhD. And every time my car breaks down or my sewer gets plugged, I am very grateful to and admiring of the tradespeople who come to my rescue.
The declining proportion of men in academia may, as the Fraser Institute suggests, reflect discriminatory standards, although I doubt it. I believe we have the opportunity to get our priorities and values right. Yes, we need academically trained people, as we need violinists, artists, and so many other talents. In a multicultural society such as Canada's, diversity has become our great strength, and we have to find ways to honor that diversity, especially as gender barriers are removed in most occupations.
One serious challenge of this gender shift is the conflict between a woman's professional ambitions and the biological imperatives of her body. The decline in fertility after the age of thirty is quite dramatic and often leads to heroic medical interventions, such as in vitro fertilization for older women. Could we develop ways for women to have it both ways, to pursue a career while also having children?
My wonderful secretary, Shirley Macaulay, worked for me for more than twenty years until she was forced to retire by the university. I despaired of finding someone who could replace her as both efficient secretary and friend. When Shirley and I finally interviewed Evelyn de la Giroday, we both agreed she would be an ideal replacement, younger, experienced, and willing to be firm if necessary. I was very disappointed to learn that Ev was pregnant and that she wanted to spend quite a while with her baby before returning to work. “What about bringing the baby to the office, where you could nurse her and still work?” I asked.
Ev was a bit dubious, but we agreed to try it out. After Ruthie was born, we set up a playpen in my office at the University of British Columbia while Ev worked in the room adjacent. It worked very well. The baby slept a lot, and besides, I was out of the office most of the time anyway. Evelyn could feed or change the baby in the privacy of my office and still carry out her duties. What surprised me was the protest raised by faculty and students. Ruthie very seldom cried loudly enough to be heard outside my office, but people became aware there was a baby around, and rather than being intrigued by the experiment, academics were indignant at what they felt was an inappropriate presence in their hallowed halls. Fortunately the arrangement worked for long enough for Ev to be happy to find a sitter to take care of Ruth at home, and Ev worked for me for years after.
BEING A PARENT IS the most important thing I have done in life, and I have always been completely committed to my children, though not in the same way my father was. Through my childhood memories, it seems to me my father devoted a huge amount of his time to me. Whether at work or play, he included me on his trips, which were important parts of my formative years, and he spent hours listening to my childish prattle and questions, trying to respond and answer as fully as he could. I have failed to emulate that with my children.
After my first marriage had ended, I endeavored to be with the children every day I was in Vancouver and was aided by Joane's generosity in allowing me unrestricted access to them. But often my mind was distracted, not totally focused on them but off somewhere else. I was too selfish to give myself over to being Dad 100 percent, and I regret that, not only for the children's sake but also for my own. I was just unable to give myself totally to the moment and fully enjoy them.
Joane was my first love, and though we have met less and less often over the years, she has always had my greatest respect and gratitude for the years we did spend together and for never using the children as a weapon to punish me for my shortcomings. They had been conceived in love. When our marriage ended, we didn't negotiate conditions for the amount of money I would pay her in alimony because, as she told the stunned lawyer, “I trust Dave.” I have always tried to live up to that faith. I supported Joane so that she could be a full-time mother, a job she did wonderfully.
When I told Joane seven years after our separation that my remarriage was going to be a financial strain, without a word of protest she told me she could resume her career now that Laura, our youngest, was in school. Well trained as a lab technician at Ryerson Institute of Technology in Toronto and experienced with the electron microscope at the University of Chicago, Joane was soon running the lab for Pat and Edith McGeer, the famous neurobiology team at UBC.
Tamiko went away to McGill University in Montreal and studied biology. She hoped to improve her French while she was there but was disappointed at how easy it was to continue speaking English. At McGill, Tamiko fell in love with Eduardo Campos, a Chilean Canadian who was enrolled in engineering and was a computer whiz. They married after graduation and decided to have a footloose life, working for periods and saving enough to travel to different parts of the world. They had decided they would forgo a family for a more gypsylike life.
But Eduardo's Latin American parents felt it was a mistake, and I did too. When Tamiko approached thirty, she began to reassess the decision, and in 1990 she gave birth to Tamo, my first grandson, and three years later to Midori, my first and (so far) only granddaughter. Tamiko has become one of those supermoms, holding down a job as a chromosome analyst in a hospital while caring for two supercharged children who have grown to be star athletes. Eduardo has used his fluency in Spanish and English to take jobs working in South America and spends a lot of time away from home. In many ways, Tami is repeating the role Tara has played in our home, multitasking because of the absence of her partner much of the time.
Tamo and Midori were born when Sarika was still a child, so suddenly I had a young daughter and grandchildren when I was spending a lot of time away. It has been unfair to my grandchildren that I have not had the time with them I wished for. I loved attending basketball games to cheer Sev and Sarika when they played in high school but have seldom been in town when Tamo and Midori have had hockey, soccer, snowboarding, and football competitions.
Grandchildren are such a delight because the relationship is so different from the relationship with one's children. Every human relationship — between lovers, parents, or children — has moments of frustration, anger, and resentment. It's inevitable, because we are human beings with fallibilities and needs that may conflict with those of others. But in a loving relationship, we work these conflicts out, and the benefits and joys more than offset those awkward or trying moments.