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Teacher Returns to General Brock
By Lisa Queen
The Scarborough Mirror
June 2007
As a visiting puppet show about the dangers of drug and alcohol abuse wrapped up in the gym of General Brock Public School, principal Ralph Walker brought in a lost golden retriever puppy caught scampering in the kindergarten playground.
As students fawned over the tagless dog, Walker asked if any of the children could identify its owner.
Within moments, a youngster suggested the puppy lived across the street from the Scarborough school.
The happy ending gave puppeteer Pat Cochar, who has spent all her 68 years living in the same Leaside home, an opportunity to recall a similar incident in the same school gym five decades earlier.
The woman who began her teaching career as a Grade 1 teacher at General Brock on June 1, 1957, explained the front of the stage used to be exposed years ago.
A cat took the opportunity to dart inside, leading to fruitless efforts by teachers to coax the animal from the stage’s framework.
Cochar also recounted the time when a handful of teachers and about 40 students were forced to spend the night in General Brock’s gym.
They were at the school the night of Feb. 25, 1960 for a winter concert when a blizzard blew in.
Teachers promised to drive home children who lived in apartments too far away from the school for a snowstorm walk. But they soon found their cars buried under mounds of snow in the parking lot.
So an impromptu sleepover was born. Parents within walking distance brought over food and provisions for the “campers,” which even included a snowplow driver stopped in his tracks by the blizzard.
Activities and games, including a volleyball game at 3 a.m., were quickly organized. The group called a local radio station and were thrilled to hear their voices over the air. The story including photos taken by Cochar, appeared on the front page of the first edition of the now defunct Toronto Telegram newspaper the next morning. However, it was bumped off later editions to make room for the announcement of Princess Margaret’s engagement to Lord Snowdon.
Cochar was originally hired to teach Grade 5 students, but was thrilled when she landed a Grade 1 class.
"I loved the younger kids,” she said, recalling how young she was herself. “I was into my fourth year of teaching before I could legally vote or drink.”
She spent four years at General Brock before spending the rest of her 40-year teaching career in Etobicoke. For the last decade, she has been a volunteer puppeteer, taking shows about social issues to schools in the Greater Toronto Area. The bulk of her time in Etobicoke was spent with the Thistletown Regional Centre for children with autism and developmental disorders. She trained as a child and youth worker and also attended York University part-time, where she earned an honours degree in psychology and social work. Cochar became a course director at York, teaching teachers about exceptional behaviours.
“Working with children who had emotional problems was extremely rewarding. One had to adapt to their frame of reference,” she said.
“You could work for months with a child with autism before you could get them to establish eye contact or get them to verbalize a single word. And that single word would be such a victory until you realize the reality of the situation of what would be considered ‘normal” for a child that age.”
For the last nine years, Cochar and her daughter, Bobbi, have been involved in interactive puppet shows with students. They began with an organization called Camp Quality which helps children with cancer. Now they volunteer with The Concerned Kids, which deals with many social issues such as substance abuse and bullying. Spending half a century helping children has been a joy, Cochar said. “Touching the lives of children is satisfying and rewarding.”
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