THE INFORMER PAGE 2

MARCH 10, 1992

Joy Smith: preaiing Currents for Change

When Joy Smith enters a room, everyone knows it.
She doesn’t have to say anything — her bubble of
energy fills the air around her.

Joy has been creating currents at Capilano College
for 22 years. She is a great source of College history;
with a mind that delights in English lit, psychology, and
history, she’s never shy of a fact, and has pinned down
the chronology of the college and its many forms since
she joined it in 1970.

Did people know that the C portable that was just
removed was the original administration building?

That was where Joy’s first office was, a cubbyhole,
as she describes it. “That was the last piece of the
original college. We watched the famous hockey game
there.” (Russia vs. Canada) “I felt quite bereft when it
was gone.”

Curiously enough, as she approaches retirement
(sometime in the next year or two) renovations in the
Extension department have bisected her large win-
dowed office and moved her back to the “cubbyhole”
environment. She laughs, “I’ve just suffered the ulti-
mate ignominy, after 22 years, I’ve lost half my office.”

On the recommendation of a neighbour, Joy started
working for the College in Sept. ’70 as secretary of the
Community Services program with coordinator and
Geography instructor Garth Edge. It was a busy office.
They offered community discussions, focus groups, a
small program teaching languages, interior design, and
ran a series with the Squamish Indian band. “I was
hired by Alan Smith,” she remembers, “and I earned
$1.90 an hour. After two years, I got a 10 cent an hour
raise.”

By 1974 she was working full time, and through the
first Stevenson Kellogg job review, became known as

community services assistant, the title she still holds
today. She worked on course development, ads, registra-
tion, brochures, and answered the phones. “Basically, I
was a one-woman band,” says Joy. Through that period,
her husband John (whom she met in Calgary 33 years
ago) and two children barely saw her. At the beginning
of terms, she’d come home to grab a bite to eat, then
race out the door again to register classes all over the
North Shore.

As Joy talks, she drops the names of College loca-
tions casually, though it’s a confusing litany to the
uninitiated: West Van, Mathers, Welch, Lynnmour,
Premier Street, and back to Lynnmour; she was obvi-
ously familiar with every one of them, from the inside
out.

Two years into her part-time job, Joy started taking
advantage of Cap courses herself. “The fall of "72 found
me sitting in Frank Reid’s first year French Class in
Highlands United Church (yet another College site in
the early years). I just loved it. I felt that I'd died and
gone to heaven.” Over the next few years her job was too
busy to allow her to take courses, but in the early ’80s
she picked up courses again, studying English, Fine Art,
History, Psychology, and some Business Management.
Her pians upon retirement inciude finishing the degree
she has begun, though asked what it will be in, she
replies as many undergrads do: “I’m not sure yet,
there’s so much to learn. I always thought it would be
English; now it could be history or psychology. They all
interest me.”

Joy, born and raised in Cheshire, England came to
Canada at the age of 25. She lived in Calgary for a few
years and was planning a trip to Australia when she
met her husband to be, John. They moved to Vancouver,
lived in the west end for a time, then moved over to
West Van where they have lived ever since.

A great traveller, Joy has returned to her home
country many times, and has explored many other
corners of the globe as well. She escorted an educational
tour of the eastern Mediterranean and travelled with
the popular Extension-led tours to New York. “Ah, she
smiles, “It was wonderful! Out of ten nights, I was in
the theatre nine of them. We saw "Cats", Jeremy Irons
in "The Right Thing", "Moon for the Misbegotten,"
Dustin Hoffman in "Death of a Salesman”: she lists
them off quickly, not needing to search for the names.
“We also saw two ballets, visited galleries and went to
Carnegie Hall.” The New York tours, led by Rose Nau-
mann and Paul Azaroff, were one of the most popular
activities in Extension, she says. “We did it for six
years.”

Later this spring, Joy will be taking off on a tour of

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