My father who came from Jamaica to go to McGill, and my mother, a Holocaust survivor, met at a McGill party in 1952. They married and brought up seven children in Mont-Saint-Hilaire, Québec. My parents ensured we were bilingual and academically focused. In 1972, when an ‘early acceptance’ to McGill University arrived, I felt so proud. I finished my undergraduate (BEd) and graduate (MA) degrees in Education while two of my siblings, Janet and Julian Falconer, attended other faculties at McGill.
The daily walk from the train station on the old Dorchester Blvd. to the top of the hill on McTavish is a touchstone for so many of my memories. I grew up over those years, subsequently finding a teaching job in French before my undergraduate graduation date in 1977 and finishing my MA in Educational Leadership and Administration in 1988 after having moved to Toronto to work with the Toronto District School Board.
I have always been proud of the degrees from my alma mater and I credit my graduate studies and my thesis for the beginning of my interest in transforming educational leadership.
It was during my years at McGill that I learned to be proud and comfortable in my Jewish racialized self, thriving in the International Students’ Association in the basement of the Student Union where I got to learn from present and future Black leaders. The Sorority Gamma Phi Beta was another opportunity to feel a sense of belonging. We were an oddish collection of diverse, smart and fun women who looked and sounded nothing like the other pledge classes across campus. These McGill experiences taught me as much about myself and others as my academic pursuits.
My dad died in June 2020, his BSc Honour’s Chemistry (1951) and Doctorate from McGill (1956), a springboard to success for Dr. Errol Falconer and his entire family. He attended almost every Homecoming reunion for his Chemistry class and was but one of many brilliant young Jamaican minds that shaped McGill and that were shaped by McGill in the 1950s.
I attended McGill as I struggled to understand who I was and what I was capable of. Today, as the Interim Director of Education at Toronto District School Board, the largest and most diverse school board in Canada, I work with teams of educator leaders to inspire students to reach high, to think they too are worthy of the same kind of University my parents gifted me with. I also work every day to identify the barriers to success that could have impacted me negatively had I not had the strong network of support both at McGill and in my close family and friends.
Yes, McGill’s Faculty of Education certainly helped make me, but I would like to think that the many new and struggling immigrant and first-generation Quebec families such as ours, in turn, made McGill the University I hope it continues to aspire to be.