“Effective leaders are great simplifiers. They’re great listeners, they feel what the people around them feel, they’re sensitive to what is going on in the community or whatever sort of activity that they’re engaged in.”
That was the message RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson instilled in grade 10 and 11 students at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic High School in Guelph on Jan. 9.
He was the recipient of the school’s National Leadership Award, for which a ceremony was held in conjunction with a celebration for the 200th birthday of Canada’s first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald.
“[The award can be presented] to primarily any Canadian demonstrating exemplary qualities of leadership in all walks: political, athletic, entertainment, so if you look at our wall of notables we cover the range,” said Paul Zuccala, head of Canadian and world studies at Lourdes.
The school has a history of bringing in famous Canadian leaders, Zuccala continued.
“One of the first awards was presented to the sitting prime minister of Canada [Brian Mulroney],” he explained. “He came to talk about national unity because we had referendum issues and the context of referendum issues and Canadian unity but from there it’s snowballed.”
Paulson’s position as RCMP commissioner is what inspired the school to honour him for Macdonald’s Jan. 11 bicentennial birthday.
“John A. started the first police force in Canada which was the North-West Mounted Police, and the North-West Mounted Police today are the RCMP,” explained Joe Tersigni, former history teacher and current board member of the Wellington Catholic District School Board.
“So when we were thinking about the 200th anniversary, who could we get that would really represent John A. – and it’s the commissioner.”
Paulson spoke to a group of over 200 grade 10 students and a couple of grade 11 classes about leadership. He emphasized the importance of students discovering their personal vision early on and executing that vision in a similar way to Macdonald.
“So what was Sir John A.’s vision?” Paulson said early on in his speech.
“This country, this great county of Canada that he was able to see the need to put together a police force like the North-West Mounted Police, soon to become the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, to go out and put order to this country and to give it some hope of coming together.”
After putting in some compelling arguments for why students should consider joining the RCMP, Paulson concluded saying, “Really I want you to be the next leaders, I want you to be thinking about what leadership means for you and your reality and your context and if it wouldn’t kill you join the RCMP.”
Paulson was animated throughout his speech, addressing students who were dressed as Macdonald, his wife, and Lord Strathcona (a railway magistrate) when making a reference to Canada’s first prime minister.
Paulson also gamely answered all the questions students posed to him, including everything from who his favourite Canadian leader is to the controversy surrounding the October shooting in Ottawa to the most interesting international figure he has met.
“My whole thing is this is a major event and kids need to hear leadership, you can’t teach this from a text book, no teacher could,” Tersigni said.
“But if you bring them here and he talks about leadership and you say, ‘Ah, I might not have known him before he got here but I know him now and he was a pretty cool guy.’”
For Lourdes principal Mike MacPherson, Paulson’s talk was more than just exposure to a Canadian leader, it was a way to shed light on a career pathway students may not have thought about previously.
“To have an opportunity for great Canadian leaders to come and speak to our students, it’s inspiring, it’s educational, it’s learning focused, and as you see the way that we’ve run this assembly today it’s all student driven and student voice which is so important in today’s educational philosophy,” MacPherson said.
“He took the time to meet students and talk to them and he challenged them as well and invited them to careers with the RCMP, so a big part of what we do now is helping students to find pathways.”
Though Tersigni has now retired from Lourdes, Zuccala is planning to continue the tradition of bringing in influential Canadians to speak to students. He said he’s hoping to garner more student involvement in selecting candidates to invite to the school.
The next leadership award will be presented at the school’s Flag Day celebration in mid-February but the name of the recipient has not yet been released.
