After three years in Fort Albany, Kara had paid off her
student loans and saved enough money to finance a month-
long trip to Southeast Asia. She ended up staying more than
a year, travelling, experiencing different cultures and at one
point taking a seven-week course at the Thai Massage
School of Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand. She also
volunteered at schools in Malaysia, Laos and Cambodia,
where she was often moved by the generosity of people who
had little to give.
“Then I met someone in Borneo who was home visiting
his family, and we went to New Zealand together, where I
was able to support myself by teaching in Waldorf schools,”
says Kara. “I really liked their focus on integrated, holistic
learning. It reinforced some of the ideas I’d been forming
around education.”
While in New Zealand, Kara developed severe
pneumonia and had to be rushed to hospital, where she was
diagnosed with a collapsed lung. Six months later, she
became ill again, and the doctor recommended she return to
Canada for medical care. “By then, I had been gone a couple
of years and was homesick, so I took his advice,” she says.
“In retrospect, that probably saved my life.”
What the New Zealand physicians had believed to be
scar tissue caused by Kara’s pneumonia turned out instead
to be a tumour. Two weeks after diagnosing neuroendocrine
small cell cancer, a thoracic surgeon in Sudbury removed a
six-centimetre malignant mass from her lung. “I was 29 and
otherwise extremely healthy, so it came as a complete shock,
even though I suspected something bigger was happening
in my body,” she says.
While recovering in North Bay, Kara also experienced a
reverse form of culture shock. The relative affluence and “first
world problems” of home jarred with her memories of people
who had few material possessions and lived a much simpler
life. Once she had regained her health, she was determined to
find employment in an area where she could put to use some
of the new skills and knowledge she’d acquired.
Having qualified in special education before going
abroad, Kara was hired on a year’s contract at a school in
Matheson, Ontario. From there she moved to the tiny
community of Gogama, where she became principal of one
of the country’s last remaining one-room schools. Her focus
on differentiated learning and “teaching to
each child” proved invaluable with children
who spanned multiple grade levels and often
had special needs.
Kara was then offered the position of vice-
principal in a brand-new composite school
in Kirkland Lake that replaced two existing
schools spanning Grades 7 through 13. “As a
relatively young admin person, I knew I would
be tested ... and for a few years, I loved it,”
she says.