CITP Students Meeting Charlie Gordon in his LOEB office

CITP Students Meeting Charlie Gordon in his LOEB office

Originally uploaded by ocean.flynn

Charlie Gordon was Chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton University when I was working on my PhD in Sociology. He knew Marybell Mitchell well and had followed and admired her PhD dissertation on Inuit politico-social history. My work was closely linked to hers and he followed it with genuine interest. When I graduated with my MA in Canadian Studies (1995) I was uniquely situated as an unofficial but very engaged liaison between the university, the National Gallery of Canada, the urban Inuit community, the Inuit Art Foundation, particularly their Cultural Industries Training Program (1995-2004) and Qaggit. John Shepherd was the first to help me find free classroom space and access free resources on campus to introduce urban Inuit to university life, to make an unfamiliar space a little less intimidating and to take advantage of human and material resources such as the map library, the film library (Michael Jackson), the slide library, and new technologies (Nestor Quirod and Carol Dence). Once I began my PhD c. 2000, John Shepherd, Dennis Forcese and Charlie were the three people who had influence who helped the most in facilitating ongoing access.

This photo was taken as we did one of our first walk-about on campus. It meant a great deal to me that Charlie would take time to make these students feel so warmly welcomed on campus. This was the last group of CITP students I taught so perhaps for this reason they are particularly special. Or perhaps I learned the most from them?

The message on Charlie’s door was a note that said something like, “We are all intelligent here, be kind.” He was.

At one point that had become extremely discouraging for me as I tried to teach a course without any resources [1] and with what seemed to me to be unnecessary blocks put it my path by the departmental administrator. He seemed to go out of his way to make it difficult for me to have an office. I was meeting with students in the cafeteria. When I finally did get a shared office it was so cluttered and messy I had to move things around so there was some room for Carleton University students let alone for the Inuit students. A retired professor from the Classics department ( who had been offered the space by a friend in Sociology and Anthropology, when he lost his in his old department) also had access to this room. One of the more humorous encounters occurred when he arrived in the tiny office, claimed his comfortable chair and sat there and read as I met with these Inuit students! Finally in exasperation I asked Charlie, do I have an office or not? He replied that I did and he offered to make a sign for me in calligraphy with my name on it! He never actually did but it was a sweet thought.

Tom Sherwood, the University’s chaplain and a close friend of Gordon’s described how Charlie was always helping people make connections with each other. On any given day he would talk to 10 different students from 10 different departments.”

Donna, my PhD supervisor and I had met with him on Thursday, xx and we discussed ways in which I could complete my PhD in a sustainable fashion. It was an exciting meeting because we were all on the same wave length. Charlie at first suggested I work as his research assistant which was an amazing offer. And Donna made the counter offer that I work with her as her RA and that my skills with new technologies be exploited. Nothing was put in writing but with these new possibilities it seemed as though I could finish my dissertation even without the OGS and SSHRC. The next day Charlie went to see his oncologist and was told he only had a few weeks to live. He was immediately sent to the Bruyere Hospice where he spent his final days surrounded by many friends and his sister. He received thousands of emails and letters from people all around the world who expressed appreciation for his teaching and mentoring. He died very peacefully.

At the gathering after a memorial service held for him on October 3 in Southam Hall I met his sister and his close friend from California, Sharon, who told me that he often shared updates on my work with the Inuit community as he really believed in it.

In my last months at Carleton as I struggled to find a way to complete my PhD was dealing with Secondary Post Traumatic Stress from working too closely without adequate support with those devastated by the Inuit youth suicide epidemic, Charlie was always there to listen.

Perhaps I wasn’t clear at that time or I wasn’t communicating well enough or perhaps I was really just one of many students that he chatted with in his office everyday . . .

With his death there seemed to be no one who remembered. There was no institutional memory . . Nothing was written . . .

After two years of unproductive meetings with the ombudsman, meetings with Deans, the new Department Chair, letters to the President`s office, conflict resolution with Carleton`s human resources lawyer it was obvious that after Charlie there would never be a creative and fair solution for me that would allow me to complete my PhD in a sustainable fashion. It would have required so little on their part. I had so many unique skills and so much unique professional experience.

The work I had done for Carleton in Nunavut was completely forgotten.

Notes

1. I learned in the course of that year from the Human Resources Lawyer that there was a $50,000 fund set aside for teaching resources sessional lectures like myself. It was a policy to not tell sessional lecturers since $50,000 was not enough to go around. It is not surprising that the departmental administrator was completely unaware of the existence of the fund.

Webliography and Bibliography

Charlie Gordon’s (died 2004-09-27) memorial

1966 – 2004 Charlie Gordon taught at Carleton University. Was he one of the first in the wave of Viet Nam war protesters? Professor Gordon taught at Carleton for 37 years and was renowned for his scholarly research in industrial sociology, and the sociology of the environment. He also studied the nature of movement as seen in social terms, crime and the environment, building codes, and the relationship between design, work, and politics. He was the author of many articles, book chapters, and papers often choosing intriguing titles such as “Goldilocks and the Three Sociologists”. In honour of his countless contributions to the University, Gordon’s legion of friends established an endowment fund to support an annual lecture series in his name. To date, more than 300 faculty, staff and friends have made a contribution.

Uploaded by ocean.flynn on 7 May 08, 12.31PM MDT.