Friends, family and students past and present gathered in front of Mackenzie Community School last week to pay tribute to a long-time teacher who “made a difference.”
Bill Patterson taught at Mackenzie High School from 1964 to 1995.
Last Wednesday morning, a bench crafted by students at Mackenzie under the direction of teacher Matt McEwen was dedicated in Bill’s memory.
In a proposal to the school board requesting the bench last year, Bill’s wife Darlene Patterson said his legacy of “experiential outdoor education connecting students, teachers and communities in nature is worthy of public recognition and reminder.”
A long-time science teacher and staff supporter of Mackenzie’s Trekkers, Bill’s “greatest accomplishment in education” was the creation of the Tamarack program in 1990.
One former student, who later became a teacher himself and took over the Tamarack program after Bill’s retirement, John Steer said Patterson was a “thoughtful educator” who felt that both teachers and students should be “passionate and inventive and open-minded” about education.
“He always said to me when we were sitting in a canoe that he didn’t want education to be paint by numbers, he wanted it to be a Picasso”…
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