Chronicle 2019

By Allison MacLachlan 2005

A lthough her years behind the ivy are long in the past, Nancy Russell is still learning. And while her love of learning wasn’t always apparent – she remembers being called a “guttersnipe” for causing mischief in Latin class – a commitment to current events, education and exploring the world runs deep through her life. Now 88 years old, Nancy is an active member of the Academy for Lifelong Learning, a volunteer- run organization that holds study groups across 30 subjects. Groups meet regularly at the University of Toronto and instead of inviting lecturers, they present research and run discussions themselves. Nancy does all of the work on her iPad. She is currently part of one group studying China and another on the Arctic – an area of particular interest as her two daughters live in the North. Nancy also started in a science group but laughs that she failed out before Christmas. She loves the social element, the diverse mix of learners and the feeling of being at home in a like-minded group of intellectually curious people. “It keeps me alive,” she says. Although she discovered the Academy a dozen years ago, Nancy’s interest in exploring the world started early. After graduating from Havergal, she spent a year in Switzerland. When she returned to Toronto, her peers had already been at university for a year. “They would tell me: you’re nothing if you haven’t taken philosophy and you’re nothing if you haven’t got a boyfriend,” Nancy recalls. “I hadn’t taken philosophy and I didn’t have a boyfriend. But I liked to counter them with: you’re nothing if you haven’t been abroad.”

Travel and exploration continued to enrich Nancy’s life. After university, she worked at the Canadian embassy in Greece and then at the Canadian Institute of International Affairs, editing a journal and helping to run study groups. Then, she spent a decade at the Canadian Executive Service Organization, an international economic development engine that deploys volunteers to developing countries. Nancy participated too, travelling to Thailand with her late husband to teach English at the Asian Institute of Technology. In recent years, Nancy’s travels have taken her cruising from Vancouver to Tokyo, with a journey through the icy lagoons of the Northeast Passage up to Alaska. Last summer, she and her daughter took a road trip to the Inuvik hamlet of Tuktoyaktuk. Fittingly, Nancy’s granddaughter Jennifer coordinates the exchange program at Havergal. And her husband’s nephew, Darryl Reiter, teaches computers and geography in the Junior School and created the nature trail on the school grounds. Outside of the Academy, Nancy is in a book group at her retirement residence, and when we talked, she had recently had a letter to the editor published in The Globe and Mail . Asked for the secret to a long and fulfilling life, Nancy credits her interest in politics, art, music and travel – and looking outward to see where one can contribute. “Stay with what’s happening in the world,” she says. “My age group can support a lot of things. Get interested in what you’re supporting, whatever that is. There’s much that this age offers – adventure, a chance to help and a chance to care.”

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PHOTO: SUSAN PINK