With a lull in the action at St. Thomas city hall and with most area municipal governments, what better time to present a heartwarming story about the power of believing, especially at Christmas time?
Early in December, a note was sent to the myFM newsroom about a full-day kindergarten teacher at John Wise Public School in St. Thomas who was just days away from retirement, following a lengthy career.
It’s a retirement story with an inspirational difference. Teacher Ruth Brown planned to retire only after fulfilling a long-time dream that neatly wrapped up a popular Christmas storybook, her love of teaching students in kindergarten and her pending last day in the classroom into one fairytale that came to life.
Let’s begin.
With a few weeks left before retiring, some like to ease into that final day of work.
Certainly not the case for Ruth Brown, whose dream was to rush headlong toward retirement like an express train.
The Polar Express, if you want to know.
A teacher for 34 years, Brown’s last few weeks at John Wise Public School were spent organizing a pair of train trips to the North Pole – or Port Stanley in this case – with 280 kindergarten and Grade 1 students.
“Kindergarten is just there, it’s my happy place. I mean I just fit so well there and I love that age of children.
“And then when I was getting close to retirement, probably like a couple years out, I was thinking, oh it’d be so great to finish my career at Christmas and take the kids all on a train trip, the Polar Express.
“And I never even considered whether that’d be possible, whether it would be, you know, like it was just kind of just out there, it was just a dream.”
For Brown, nothing says Christmas like a reading of the 1985 children’s book The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg.
“And so every year that I taught kindergarten, pretty much every year at Christmas time I would read The Polar Express to kids and I happen to have a conductor hat, so I’d always put on my hat and read the story and it was just always so magical, right? I just loved it.”
Through a friend, Brown was able to contact Port Stanley Terminal Rail and the administration there affirmed that, indeed, they could make that happen.
A train would pull up to John Wise Public School and board the youngsters for the trip south to Port Stanley, serving as the North Pole for this magical outing.
And so two trips were organized for Dec. 10 and 11.
You see, it all comes down to believing.
And weeks of preparation while learning all about trains and their colourful connection to St. Thomas.
“So I was able to do a lot of prep leading up to it about a little bit about trains, train history, train safety. We built trains, we made trains out of cardboard boxes.
“I had a model railway where they were able to build out of Lego things around the train track that was St. Thomas.
“And we put Jumbo up there. It was just the whole thing just built up to the finale.
“When three weeks before, they learned they were going to go on a train and they couldn’t believe it, they were going on a real train.
“And then two weeks before I said they were going to be going on the Polar Express and we started talking about the story and the excitement of it all and the first gift of Christmas and they’d all received the silver bell, so the build-up was fantastic.”
And then, it was train time.
“They saw the train draw up and then they were all in their pajamas just like in the story.
“We went down to Port Stanley, they met Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus down there and some elves and we’d done it all up as the North Pole and they received their silver bell and a little red velvet bag and both the bell and the bag said ‘Believe’ on it.”
No detail was overlooked, even the tickets to board The Polar Express.
“So when it came to the day of and they received their gold tickets and one of the ECEs had made the gold ticket huge, it was like a six-inch gold ticket and she’d laminated them all and I was the conductor along with one of my sons and we punched all their tickets as they got onto the train.
“We just reenacted basically the whole story. So it was just amazing, absolutely amazing. We had Christmas songs going, the trains were all decorated up and I was able to take the microphone in the train so I was able to talk about individual kids and what their pyjamas were and what they were seeing out the window.
“We had hung up woodland animals along the tracks in the trees so that it was like an ‘I spy’ because in the story they looked out and they saw animals.
“I was able to get some foil balloons and we hung up about, I don’t know, 25 or 30 of them along the track so it was like an I spy on both sides of the train so kids on both sides could see it.
“It was just… yeah, it was everything that I had imagined plus more like it was amazing.”
Without a doubt, a dream come true for Brown.
“I was smiling the whole time. I just … yeah, I just sometimes had to pinch myself and think this is actually really happening.”
The trip back to school included a couple of surprise visitors.
“And then Santa and Mrs. Claus came onto the train on the way back and spoke to them all individually. And we had elves dressed up who all interacted with them.
In Brown’s excitement, she forgot a lead-up to the entire adventure.
“I had laid electrical tape down on the hallway floors to make it look like train tracks all the way around all the classrooms and into the gym where I have my classes.
“So for three weeks leading up to it, every time I picked up their class I would give them a little tear-off ticket and I would put my conductor hat on and punch their little ticket to get them used to knowing they had to hand a ticket in to get on the train and it got punched.
“So when it was the day of and they actually received their huge gold ticket, they were like, you know, over the moon. Yeah, so it was just … it was magical. It was fabulous.”
When all is said and done, it’s difficult to determine who was more excited, the teacher or her students.
“And there was so much talk afterward from parents and the kids. Like I spoke to 150 kids after about their favourite part.
“And kids normally just copy each other when they’re, you know, saying what they like, but hardly a repeat. Like it was amazing to hear all their stories and comments about what was so special to them.
“So I just thought the train ride, the Santa, the Polar Express, there’d be so many elements.
“Oh yeah, and even the candy cane. It was so funny. Like, I don’t know if it’s because our kids are, you know, some of them are low income, but I don’t know whether it was getting the candy cane from the elf and the conversation with it or eating it on the train. I don’t know. But even the candy cane on the way home was like a highlight for them.
“It’s just… it was just so powerful and so interesting to hear all their stories afterward and even the stories about the bell, because they knew the little boy in the story had lost his bell and where they were hiding the bell in all the different places in the house.
“But a lot of them said the bell was with them under the covers in bed every night. It was just… oh my goodness. I had such a great last week. So that happened the Wednesday before my last week. And so the last week was just all that chitter-chatter about it. And to me, that was just as exciting as the trip because of their own excitement and all their stories from home.”
And less than two weeks later, Brown’s more than three-decade teaching career reached the end of the tracks at the station in triumphant fashion.
“I knew I was going to go out with a bang that way. But that’s kind of like my style. I kind of do things big when I do things.”
Every good story has a sequel and for Ruth Brown, well, keep an eye open down that track for an approaching headlight.
SAYING’YES’ TO A LOT OF THINGS IN 2024
Just as Ruth Brown enjoyed a spectacular closing chapter to her teaching career, St. Thomas Mayor Joe Preston is feeling pretty good about the past year and what he and members of council were able to accomplish.
We caught up with Preston just before Christmas as he was enjoying downtime during the holiday lull.
He pointed out that 2024 was, in fact, a carryover from the previous year.
“We knew we had started some big things, but 2024 became that, okay, now we’ve got a lot to do. And funny enough, we got it almost all done.
“As a mayor with a council like mine, I just keep saying, look at all the stuff we were able to say ‘Yes’ to and actually accomplish in the year. And the largest year ever in building permits by a long way.
“We’ve got to change how the graph looks because now one year stands out of it just so much, and only a couple of those permits, little ones, were from the PowerCo site.”
He continued, “The rest is just so much growth going on in our community and in every other industry and in all forms of housing.
“I know we talked a bit about budgeting and using reserve funds, but that’s what they’re for. Because of extreme growth or good growth over the last three or four years, we were able to stock up reserve funds and say, well, here’s a use for them.”
“And so that gives me great thought as to what the future looks like because all of those are great revenue sources moving forward and not attached yet to the biggest prize we’ve won with PowerCo.
“So 2024 has that, and all year long, everywhere you looked, something was being built. Another business was locating downtown.
“A road construction project that was probably, under normal circumstances, five or ten years out was being completed. It’s quite significant.”
Preston is acutely aware there are ratepayers out there who have concerns about the costs associated with this rapid growth.
“I know we talked a bit about budgeting and using reserve funds, but that’s what they’re for. Because of extreme growth or good growth over the last three or four years, we were able to stock up reserve funds and say, well, here’s a use for them.
“I think every so often it’s like prying stuff out of the treasurer’s hand, but that’s why we do things like that. We put it away for the year when it will make a cushioned difference, and that’s what we did this year.”
It was also a busy year from an events perspective, reminded Preston.
“How about Oktoberfest? How about Nostalgia Nights? How about Pumpkin Prowl and Light Up Talbot? We added four really significantly better events this year across our community.
“And if you look at the downtown right now, you’ve never seen this level of involvement. I mean, I can go back to my time as the Downtown Development Board chair and trying to work with Iron Horse (the Iron Horse Festival from past years).
“And it was almost a battle between merchants and the festival. Now look at the events we’ve had because merchants are involved.”
Continuing with the health of the downtown, Preston pointed to a key element necessary for a vibrant core business area.
“We are responsible for housing across St. Thomas and Elgin and we are supposed to get on it and do it and that’s truly what we’ve done right. If you’re going to take on a little debt take it on for affordable housing.”
“We think that part of the downtown revitalization is the number of new merchants but it’s also the special constable system that we put in place and many other communities are now mimicking.
“Put the special constables downtown, make them friends of the merchants. And they are. They know everybody’s name and I couldn’t have guessed that it would work this well.
“And now in the 2025 budget to add two or three more people to the special constable team is significant in our community.”
What is turning heads in other municipalities is the approach St. Thomas has taken to housing.
“Look, Danielle’s (Danielle Neilson, the city’s Manager of Housing Stability Services) my hero and she gets really quite shy when I say that. Our work with Indwell and we think one more project coming up this year with Indwell will be drastically significant.
“And projects already underway and going like Tiny Hope and the Eastwood project (on Highview Avenue).
“And then another Indwell project this year will take us so close to being able to make our emergency shelter a smaller place and that’s that was the goal all along.
“I mean it’s special that many other communities have come to visit us to see how we have done it and how we didn’t break the bank doing it.
“We are responsible for housing across St. Thomas and Elgin and we are supposed to get on it and do it and that’s truly what we’ve done right.
“If you’re going to take on a little debt take it on for affordable housing.”
COMING UP
On Jan. 16, members of council will be asked to formally endorse the 2025 capital and operating budgets.
During a couple of deliberation sessions last month, city treasurer Dan Sheridan was able to present a draft budget with a 3.93 per cent increase to municipal property tax levy this year.
A full percentage point down from the initial hike.
To accomplish that, Sheridan had to come up with $1.5 million in savings, which he accomplished by using federal gas tax money for capital budget projects.
An additional $450,000 or so was taken out of reserves to finally break ground next year on the long overdue new animal shelter adjacent to the Douglas J. Tarry Sports Complex.
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And a reminder, I can be heard weekday afternoons as news anchor and reporter on 94.1 myFM in St. Thomas. As always, your comments and input are appreciated.
