Advent is the four weeks leading up to Christmas. Each year during Advent, I attempt to write my columns based on the themes of Advent. It gets harder each year to find a new approach to the Advent columns, so this year I’m getting personal.
The Christmas story is both universal and personal. This Advent I will share stories from my life that reflect the themes of Advent.
The first theme of Advent is Hope. As I have written so many times before, hope is like a candle in the darkness. Hope is the belief that the sun is still shining even though we cannot see it.
In the 1960s, schools began to prepare female students for work outside the home. Girls were encouraged to study mathematics and science. We were told that a university education would guarantee us a rewarding career. Fortunately, I won a scholarship to attend the University of Saskatchewan and began studying toward a bachelor of science degree. After my marriage in 1969, I took a year out from university and worked in the laboratory of the new Victoria Hospital in Prince Albert. I found the laboratory to be an interesting way to apply the skills and knowledge I had acquired at university. I was fortunate that the hospital began a training program for laboratory technologists; I was among those in the first graduating class. Alas, I had educated myself out of a job in the lab and began to look for work in Prince Albert.
Because I had worked at the hospital and contributed to Unemployment Insurance, I was eligible for UI benefits. I was required to attend an appointment at the UI office each week and show that I had been actively seeking employment.
It was difficult to find work because there were so few opportunities for a graduate lab tech. Indeed, I was an anomaly at the employment office. The workers at the counter took down my information, but they had no idea what a registered medical laboratory technologist actually did! I tried to find work at a department store on Central Avenue but was told, realistically, that with my credentials I would just leave them when I found better work. I had heard that the Fisheries office on 15th Street had a laboratory so I brought in my resume. They looked me in the eye and basically told me they would never hire a married woman because her husband would be jealous when she went out to do fieldwork. (Back then it was legal to discriminate on the basis of gender and marital status.)
I became more and more depressed about my lack of employment. It was one of the darkest times of my life. Although I had a roof over my head and we were not in any real financial distress, I felt like a failure. I felt like my high school teachers had told me a lie and that there really were no opportunities for women in science. I felt hopeless.
On one of my weekly visits to the UI office, I was kept waiting longer than usual to submit my paperwork. The receptionist was kind and supportive, but I could see that my worker was standing at the back, joking with a colleague, while keeping me waiting long past my appointment time. I felt disrespected and dehumanized.
When I got home, I typed a letter to the manager of the UI office telling them about the good work that the receptionist had done and the anger I had felt by being kept waiting so long. Years later, I learned that my letter had been put in the HR file for the receptionist, and was one of the reasons she had been promoted. Sometimes complaints really do make a difference to the system.
Fortunately, the employment office came through and told me the Prince Albert Medical Clinic was looking for a lab tech. I was fortunate to work there for several years until the birth of my first child.
Advent is a time of hope, a belief that good things can come out of darkness and despair. I have lived a privileged life and have not experienced great deprivation or pain. However, I know what it is like to feel useless and dehumanized. Out of the darkness of that time of my life, I was able to find hope.
