Don McFadyen

Don McFadyen, one of a small handful of original NorQuest College graduates

Celebrating 50 years with a student pioneer

NorQuest College is 50 years old this year. However, the seeds of growth for one of Alberta’s most educationally-diverse institutions were planted in the years and months prior to 1965.

Don McFadyen, who was one of hundreds of people on hand to celebrate the milestone at a  party outside the downtown campus September 12 is a retired high school shop teacher from Spruce Grove. He is one of a small group of students who are NorQuest’s (or at least what became NorQuest) first-ever graduates.

“We were the class they didn’t know what to do with,” said the 68-year-old who finished Grade 12 upgrading in the late fall of 1964, for what was then simply known as Alberta technical and vocational training. As an institution, it later became Alberta Vocational Centre on February 17, 1965; Alberta Vocational College in 1990; and finally named NorQuest College in 1998.

“We were being shuffled around Edmonton and eventually moved into space in the new NAIT Tower Building,” said McFadyen of the early years.

“There was drywall and plastic draped over everything and tradesmen working. Once one room would get finished we would move into it, then NAIT would move someone else into that room and we would have to move somewhere else. But through it all we were part of something vibrant. I look back now and see how much it helped us and how we were all pioneers of a great program that is still running today.”

McFadyen was among the ranks of Edmonton’s unemployed in the mid to early ‘60s who took the call from the Government of Alberta to improve their skills and employability. On unemployment insurance (the predecessor to employment insurance), he took a chance on the fledgling program.

“All of us really wanted to go on to university at some stage,” he said.

Looking back, McFadyen can’t speculate what might have become of him had he decided not to take the government’s offer to train while on unemployment insurance, but his life’s outcomes speak volumes about the value of the training he did take.

“I graduated from vocational education at the U of A and I taught in the Country of Parkland for 25 years!”

And now, 50 years after making a life-changing decision that resulted in a rewarding career in teaching, he still sees the same value being offered through NorQuest College.

“You still have a lot of kids who don’t graduate from Grade 12 so they leave to enter the workforce without an opportunity to climb the ladder of success, and that’s what NorQuest still provides: the rungs to success.”

And he’s not just speaking from a student point of view. In 2003, he returned to NorQuest to teach a class in drafting. The class was part of the English as a Second Language (ESL) curriculum, showcasing the college’s ability to match needed and employable skills with the foundational learning that helps integrate newcomers into Canadian society.