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Retired East Vancouver teacher engages in life-long love of learning at Terraces On Seventh
School was in session. The “students” were lined up in orderly rows, all attentively perched eagerly in their seats, and leading the lesson was their teacher… an eight-year-old Heather Farrar.
“My father always said I was going to be a teacher, ever since I was a little girl,” said the Terraces on Seventh resident, who this year turns 80. “I would line up all my dolls and stuffed animals and I’d be telling them what they were supposed to do.”
And did they listen to her?
“Of course!” Heather said with a quick smile and a laugh.
Heather spent her whole working life as a teacher, dedicating a total of 35 years to helping young students develop and grow at Tecumseh School Annex in East Vancouver.
She delighted in instilling a love of reading in her elementary school-aged students.
“Every afternoon they’d come in and sit in a circle and I’d read to them. At the outset it would be for about 15 minutes, and then some would be picking at their shoes – sometimes it was hard to hold their attention,” she said. “But by the end of the year they’d ask, ‘Can we please have another chapter?’
Because Heather had such a long career in one school, she had the unique opportunity to teach successive generations of the same families.
“I was teaching the children of the children that I had taught,” Heather smiled. “And that was wonderful, because the parents would say to their kids, ‘Now, you have to behave for Miss Farrar.’”
“I’ve always loved to show people things and help them learn,” she adds. “It’s very rewarding.”
While she’s been retired since 1998, Heather said she still has one former student who lives locally and comes to visit her at Terraces On Seventh, the boutique retirement community in Vancouver’s Fairview and South Granville neighbourhood, where she’s lived for the past three years.
“She teaches high school,” Heather shares. “It’s wonderful to see one of my former students go into the same profession. It’s like someone gave you a gold star.”
Heather has a high level of praise for the Terraces On Seventh community that she now calls home, which is close to everything she needs
“Before coming here, I lived in an apartment nearby at 12th and Burrard, and I’ve always gone to the clinic next door, so I liked the area,” she said. “I didn’t have to change my bank, my doctor, or anything in order to move here. Plus, you’ve got Granville (Ave.) for shopping, the library, grocery shopping, and pretty much everything else you need nearby.”
But it’s the people and the sense of community at Terraces on Seventh Heather said she values the most. As a life-long learner, she enjoys the variety of activities offered that are designed to sharpen the mind.
“There’s Word-in-a-Word where you are challenged to make as many words from the letters in one longer word,” she said.
Perk is the name of another activity with unique challenges that change from session to session, such as reading a story with the text turned upside down.
“Of course, I am good at that,” Heather laughed. “Being a teacher, I’d always be looking down at the kids’ work.”
She’s also a keen member of the In Stitches group, which draws together knitters who make mittens, hats, scarves, and blankets for new moms in need and their babies.
“I knitted a total of 39 blankets last year,” Heather said. “Together, we knitted so much we were able to fill seven garbage bags full. Giving to help make peoples’ lives better in some way makes you feel better.”
Outside of Terraces On Seventh, Heather is a keen hockey fan and always makes sure to catch her beloved Vancouver Canucks on TV.
Recently, on a trip organized by Terraces On Seventh, Heather was honoured to be chosen to drop the puck before a recent Richmond Sockeyes game. The opportunity took her back to her early days growing up in Rossland, B.C.
“The Rossland Warriors, Trail Smoke Eaters, and the Penticton Vees, they were all teams I’d cheer for,” Heather said, adding she still loves being a fan, whether it’s watching on TV or being at the rink in person.
“I am very bad. I yell and scream and get upset with the referees,” she reveals. “It’s hard to hold back sometimes, so much so that my late partner said to me, ‘Heather, never play poker. You can tell by your face exactly how you’re feeling.”
Showcasing talents helps foster a sense of community at Terraces On Seventh
Joy Gaze had a revelation to share with her audience.
On stage as part of a review of performers at Terraces on Seventh, she stood there on her own as she prepared for what she had to say next.
“I looked at them and quietly said, ‘I’ve got something to tell you… I have a secret lover,’” she revealed as a wave of astonishment fanned out across the room. “You could hear the gasps and whispers,” laughed Mrs. Gaze, 96, who has been a resident at the boutique independent and assisted retirement community in Vancouver’s Fairview and South Granville area for over 16 years.
“I told a made up story about how my ‘lover’ came with me everywhere — to dinner, shopping, and even into the bathroom as my lover held my hand in the shower,” she chuckled, with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes.
“I went on and on, padding it out, then started to cry when talking about how when you have to go to hospital they don’t allow them to come with you.” Awash in a flood of tears and sadness, Mrs. Gaze slowly exited the stage, only to return, this time proudly wheeling along a walker, her almost constant companion, and introducing it as her ‘secret lover.’
It was a triumphant moment for Mrs. Gaze, a goal she longs to achieve as a seasoned community theatre performer. “It’s that bit of theatre magic when you have done a good enough job that your audience believes you’re actually the character you are playing,” she explained.
“It’s such a thrill when you know you’ve got them,” she added. “When I told my son Christopher (artistic director of Vancouver’s Bard On The Beach) what I did, he said, ‘Mom, you are so wicked!’”
The love of performing started for Mrs. Gaze as a child growing up in southern England. She remembers one of her first roles as a magical faerie in a production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. “I was about five-years old, and despite the director’s repeated pleas, I would not stay put on stage. ‘Faeries never stand still,’ I told the director!”
Eventually, she did comply, staying stationary in character just long enough until the scene was over, then proceeded to flit about the stage.
“Christopher threatened he’d put that role in the program for a Bard production, 91 years after I first played it,” Mrs. Gaze smiled.
Mrs. Gaze’s theatre patronage continues to this day. “I do go to the Arts Club and other smaller theatres to see live performances when I can, but at 96-years old, I am beginning to think I like my bed more,” she quipped.
With her performing days few and far between now, Mrs. Gaze prefers to foster the spirit of community at Terraces On Seventh, where she has helped to establish and organize a variety of creative programs, such as talent nights and a charitable knitting group called In Stitches.
“I was watching America’s Got Talent and Canada’s Got Talent on TV and thought to myself, Terraces has got talent, too,” Mrs. Gaze recalls. “So, I asked around about what other residents did before they came here, and what I found out was amazing.”
She discovered there were those with skills making silver jewelry, woodworking, and looming, among plenty of other artistic talents.
Each Tuesday afternoon, Mrs. Gaze gathers her In Stitches group together to make blankets for young mothers. “We knit sweaters, hats, scarves, mittens, baby blankets, and also collect money for charity.”
To showcase their efforts, each November, In Stitches puts on a display of what its members have created throughout the year. “We filled an area with displays of all the interesting pursuits and skills people had,” Mrs. Gaze shares. “Then, people could go see our review show to see performances by live performers.”
“Overall, we come up with quite a lot,” Mrs.Gaze said. “It’s like grains of sand – you gather together a few and you begin to develop a little mound which can help make a difference.”
It’s that sense of making an impact which fosters a vibrant community at Terraces On Seventh.
“I simply love it here. We are very fortunate, thoroughly spoiled, and extremely well looked after,” Mrs. Gaze raves. “There’s always something going on and it’s wonderful to be a part of it.