David Wilson grew up in Syracuse, New York, in a happy, comfortable home. He went to school in Syracuse, New York. He got his PhD in Syracuse, New York.
But he sure didn't stay in Syracuse, New York.
By the time he died at 68 of brain cancer on Dec. 8 in Toronto, he had worked, lived or travelled in more than 110 countries. He spoke French, Spanish, Swahili, German, Portuguese well, plus bits and pieces of four other languages. He was learning Mandarin because he said it was the language of the future.
He was always an academic – one of the first people hired in the department of educational planning by the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education after it started up in 1967. He was a respected researcher, known for his knowledge of workforce education and training and vocational systems. He headed up the Comparative and International Education Society of Canada twice, as well as serving as president of that organization's U.S. body and its world council.
But Wilson was no ivory tower, head-in-the-stratosphere, theory-addicted academic. He was a scholar who needed to see for himself – and then make changes. He was justifiably proud of the many schools he helped throughout the Third World, the latest one a community college that opened in Botswana in 2005. He thought nothing of working in Nigeria right after its civil war, in the Philippines when it was still under martial law in the time of Ferdinand Marcos and in Beirut while bombs were exploding.
"His intellectual leadership was really connected to the practical world," said Vandra Masemann, a colleague for 34 years. "He really carried the world in his head."
He could be brusque – people always knew what he thought on issues, Masemann said, and Wilson's daughter Sharyn lovingly described him as a "stubborn SOB" – but he was the one who stood up at a world congress of the international education society in Montreal just after the bloody crackdown in Tiananmen Square and, in a strong statement about human rights and academic freedom, insisted that their next meeting not be held in China.
The world congress never did go to China, Masemann noted.
"He was different from other professors," said Dianne, his youngest child. "He wanted to make a difference."
"The world was his laboratory," said his wife, Susan. He was a specialist in education in developing nations. "To be able to teach it, I have to go there," he said. And so Susan and their first child, Sharyn – and later Michael, James and Dianne, plus the family dog – often went too. "How could I say no?" said Susan.
The travel started in 1965 when he got a Ford Foundation grant to work as an educational planner in Malawi for close to two years. He, Susan and Sharyn moved to Zomba, then the capital. "It was a very gentle country then. We never stayed still. We took advantage of it all," Susan recalled.
Wilson fell in love with the country, indeed the whole continent of Africa. They left reluctantly, and in what would become typical for the family, made an adventure of it by sailing up the west coast of Africa on the last ship to go through the Suez Canal.
In 1967, they returned to their North York home and Wilson went back to OISE, where he taught for four years. A UNESCO contract sent the family to Nigeria in 1971, just after the country's civil war. Unlike Malawi, this experience was a nightmare. They lived in a small house with snakes behind the stove and open sewage out behind. There were few other expats there at the time, amid a general feeling of unease.
"Sometimes you would go out in the car and someone would have put a log across the road," recalled Susan. "You knew then that you had to turn around."
The children, unhappy, asked their parents why they were there. "He'd say, because somebody had to be here helping," Susan said.
Wilson took another leave from OISE in 1977 to work for the Asian Development Bank in Manila, where the family lived the diplomatic lifestyle with swimming and movie nights at the local club. But while he had become a Canadian citizen, Susan kept her American passport as a safeguard, in case they needed the help of more than one embassy should they be forced to pull out quickly.
The family relocated one last time, when Wilson spent a sabbatical in Australia in 1981. After one return trip to Malawi in 1985, the family stayed in North York to ensure the children got into university, while Wilson continued to travel, working on shorter-term projects in Bangladesh and Burma, in South America and Sudan.
"He loved everything he did," said Dianne. "He would say, `I want to make Third World countries into Second World countries.'"
Here in Canada, he mentored many students, especially those from other countries.
In 1971 Abate Wori Abate was a refugee from Sudan – he had come to Canada in 1967 as a stateless person on a United Nations passport – and attending university in Nelson, B.C., when he got a call from a man who introduced himself as Wilson.
"You have to understand how it affected me to have someone across the continent find me. I was new to Canada and about the only African in Nelson, B.C.," he recalled.
Wilson was organizing an international conference on Sudan the following June. He sent Abate an airplane ticket and paid for his hotel. Abate had been at loose ends and considering returning to Africa. After the conference, Wilson took him out to lunch and talked him into going for a master's degree. Then he pulled out the application form to study development education at OISE.
Wilson subsequently got him research jobs with himself or other professors, once even contacting the OISE maintenance supervisor to get Abate some work.
"He used to show up at my place with groceries," he said.
Abate's interest in vocational training – he has a PhD now and works with the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities – was sparked by his research work for Wilson.
"Honestly, if you look at what a human being can do to another, he was not only my role model, he was my guide," he said. "My life now is because of Mzee."
Mzee is a Swahili term for old man, but is used to show affection and respect for someone's rank and accomplishments.
"Mzee wasn't just an academic," Abate said. "He was the CEO of the global village."
cdunphy@thestar.ca
