Carole Dastous, BA (soc.) 81, BA (phil.) 84, MA (phil.) 93
I graduated three times from Concordia. After my first degree, in sociology, I wasn’t sure where I was headed with my studies or with life in general but I knew one thing for certain: I liked to study and I liked to write. I took a couple of courses with Professor Bogdan Czarnocki, who was the first to compliment me on my writing.
Another compliment later came from Professor Martin Reidy, who some of us nicknamed “Running Shoes Reidy” for his footwear choice in class. After one of my mid-terms, he observed to me, “Writing comes easily to you, Miss Dastous.”
During my undergraduate studies in philosophy, I shadowed Professor Vladimir Zeman, the Kant and Hegel expert at the time. He was my guide through my difficult exploration of the role of ideas in society. I had hoped to do my MA thesis on this until Professor Zeman advised me that such an ambitious and nebulous topic would be more suited to a PhD thesis than to an MA. He was right.
After my final graduation from Concordia in 1993, still not sure what to do, I carried on with lifeguard jobs, moved back in with my father in Outremont, joined the Canadian Ski Patrol as a volunteer weekend patroller and the Canadian Armed Forces’ reserve army as a medic. In September 1997, still without a clear idea of my career, I drove to Calgary in search of a new life and job and to ski in Banff.
In June 1998, I wrote a story about my drive cross-country and my settling down in Calgary. I sent the story to the Calgary Herald. As I never expected it to be published, I didn’t put much effort into polishing it. Lo and behold, the Herald gave my story the headline “Westward Ho!” and published it that June. The next month my story also appeared in the Montreal Gazette. Today, I know better than to send publishers anything less than my best effort!
So, in 1998, I got a hint of where I belonged and what I ought to be doing for a living, or at least for a hobby, but I didn’t pay attention. All I did was frame the Herald and Gazette clippings on a wall.
For the next decade I worked at a series of unrelated jobs. But after being laid off by Bell, I decided to apply to the journalism program at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT). “This is your chance to look into journalism, and to see how good a writer you really are,” I thought to myself. “You were good at Concordia, you should be good there too.” I was admitted and began in September 2010. I was 51.
My first few weeks at SAIT were a succession of Eureka moments: at last, I was (again) in a place where words and ideas mattered, and in the company of people for whom those things mattered too.
I graduated from SAIT in May 2012 and spent the next two years at weekly newspapers in small towns in northern Alberta. As I write this, I am making plans to take my better-late-thannever career back to Calgary to, I hope, a new job in communications, and to jumpstart a freelancewriting career (the latter as part of my retirement plan).
At the end of the day, all the writing, research and thinking I did while at Concordia helped prepare me for SAIT and for work that I enjoy so much that it doesn’t really feel like work. I’m not a square peg in a round hole anymore.
Better late than never, indeed.