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You know that expression – it’s not the destination that is important: it is the journey.  I didn’t really know it at the time, but even as a young fellow, I was always a little uncertain about the destination; like the bear, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know that the only thing I would see over the mountain was ‘the other side of the mountain’.  I grew up in a large family – six kids and two parents – kind of ordinary for the 50s and 60s, but it was the time that I was laying the groundwork so to speak for the wanderlust that took hold of me in the early 80s.  We lived on a farm north of London, Ontario for 12 years of my life and then moved three kilometres to a plot of land bordering a large forest and duck preserve for my teens. What I remember most of those summer days from the age of 6 or so was my mother opening the screen door once breakfast was finished, saying, ‘Out you go’… If you get hungry come back, if not, be home by five.’ She really did not want us hanging around, so we didn’t. I know now that she was building resilience in us. The blessings of that freedom meant that I did not know I was supposed to worry about safety, where home was, my next meal. I never thought about what I was going to do when I grew up and no one asked. Weird, eh, and lucky?

School was not a stress for me. I had a good time at all three levels of schooling with the notable exception of CALCULUS!!  Probably too good a time. Halfway through my first Bachelors, I found a direction – the theatre and more specifically musical theatre and more specifically than that – Gilbert and Sullivan.  I should have known I would be attracted to G and S since my Dad started the G and S Society at Western when I was two, so I was steeped in it from a tender age.  University became only a vehicle for me to learn as much as possible about stagecraft.

I am not sure what possessed me, but I thought I had enough talent and hutzpah to make it in show business. After a few years and coming to the realization that every time I got a new gig, I was earning less money and the theatre was smaller, I took a hit and gave up that dream. Needless to say, that was a big shot to the ego and it took me a year to get over it. Thankfully, I had Tanya, who not only stayed by me but also gave me the space to crawl out of that gutter of despair by myself.  My experiences with community theatre groups – directing and producing shows – made me realize I could teach.  Since I had heard that old saying so much growing up, “those that cannot do, teach,” I thought I should learn the craft and so went back to school to get a B.Ed.  To fill out my schedule, I took a Teaching English as a Second Language qualification course. 1982 was not a great year to graduate from Teacher’s College in Ontario.  Literally, no one in my class of 150 got a job offer after graduation.  On a whim, I had applied to an international school in Tokyo as the ESL coordinator and drama teacher. That was my first overseas job.

From then on, the story gets more like a travelogue than anything else.  Here are the places we lived from 1983 until now, not taking into account the visits to many more:

• Japan (Tokyo)
• Canada (Ottawa) 
• Canada (Kingston),
• New Zealand (Wellington) 
• Canada (Kingston) 
• China (Beijing) 
• Canada (Kingston),
• Bosnia-Herzegovina (Sarajevo)
• Hong Kong,
• Australia (Perth) 
• Canada (Halifax)

In between and during those jobs, we traveled incessantly.  The best trip was when we left Australia, we were literally of no-fixed address for 6 months wandering around southeast and south Asia for 3 months and Europe for the other three.

Probably by now, you all know the blurb being used to describe my last ten years here at Dalhousie - the first teacher for the full program to start in 2010 (7 students); expanded our programming and outreach so that in the course of a year now, we have about 1000 students per year; TESL Nova Scotia President; Languages Canada Board member; CALDO Board member; EduNova mentor; Halifax Partnerships connector; numerous Dalhousie committees.  These are all great and I am proud of the work, but the proudest thing for me is the incredibly talented, selfless, dedicated team of instructors and staff that I had a part in building.  With Jennifer now at the helm, and with your support, Open Learning and Career Development’s ELS Department will continue to make a difference in the lives of countless more people.

Regards,
David

As an acknowledgment of David’s retirement, the members of the English Language Studies department have renamed a grant program that he was instrumental in creating. Going forward, it will be known as the David Packer Grant for English Language Studies. For more information on the grant, please visit our Bursaries & Grants page. We wish you all the best in retirement, David! Thank you for the valuable contributions you have made to Dalhousie University.