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Bette Logan
Born in Toronto in 1937, Bette Logan began teaching elementary school in a small town in Northern Ontario at the age of 19. There, her five children were born. With the breakup of ...показать большеBorn in Toronto in 1937, Bette Logan began teaching elementary school in a small town in Northern Ontario at the age of 19. There, her five children were born. With the breakup of the marriage in 1971, mother and children moved to nearby North Bay where, after a year of full-time attendance at university, she made a career change: the next seven years were spent with the Ontario Ministry of Community and Social Services, first as a Welfare Field Worker and then as a Parental Support Worker, working in conjunction with the Family Court.
In 1975, when North Bay became gripped in the story of a dramatic prison escape and subsequent month-long manhunt, Bette became more and more intrigued with the contrast of the image of dangerous criminal portrayed in the media and the lack of violence reported by his many captives. After his re-incarceration Logan contacted him with a view to collaborating on a book. This venture consumed the next three years and opened her to a whole new life. In 1979, a move to Montreal further widened horizons and enabled her to fulfill a life-long goal of becoming a fluent French-speaker.
In Montreal, Bette held a variety of positions ranging from receptionist to administrator and interpreter of psychological tests to teacher of English as a Second Language to adults. Finding that satisfying, she pursued the interest by teaching English for a year in Thailand, first at a Teachers’ College , then at the Canada School in a UNHCR refugee camp, where she taught Literacy to Laotian, Cambodian and Vietnamese who had been cleared to emigrate to Canada. Back home, she spent four years as a Residential Counsellor at Canada’s National Ballet School in Toronto, after which she returned to Thailand to teach in the same college. Her path then led her to a hospice at a nearby Buddhist temple, where she cared for AIDS patients as a volunteer for two years.
The next adventure took place in Mexico where the Casa de los Amigos, a Quaker Centre in Mexico City, was the venue for another volunteer stint of six months. Having fallen in love with that city, she stayed on, teaching English to adults for the next three years.
Retirement has brought Bette more time for travelling, taking courses, and most importantly, writing a memoir—recollections of her life, related mostly through letters written to the incarcerated erstwhile escaper.
Other interests—besides spending time with friends and family—include involvement in her Quaker meeting and in the wider Quaker community. In this respect she recently served as Friend in Residence at the Quaker Study Centre in Birmingham in the UK. Contemplating the myriad stories dancing in her head, anxious to be written, consumes the rest of her time.показать меньше