Summer’s heat couldn’t make this dream wilt
You think you had a hot summer?
Geoff Allan and Jason McCulloch, brothers in the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (Hamilton), felt the temperatures more than most. You might remember a column in this space on May 21, in which Jason and Geoff announced the beginnings of a vision.
That vision? To build in Hamilton something so needed, something that so answers an urgency in this community, that we should feel its absence like a gap in a bridge — we can’t go forward without it.
Given all that, you wouldn’t think that the establishment of a free dyslexia learning centre would be such an ambitious undertaking. But it is.
When Geoff and Jason, point men on the project for the Scottish Rite (Hamilton) Charitable Foundation, told me about it last spring, Geoff described it thus:
“Getting it started is like pulling a battleship into harbour. With a rope in your mouth.”
After all, a dyslexia learning centre doesn’t just conjure itself into being. Teachers must be lined up. Space created. Bureaucracies appeased. Renovators paid.
Especially a “free” dyslexia centre. But it has to be free because those who need help the most, for their children, for themselves, are often those who can afford it least.
The key would be a huge fundraising gala, with famed comedian Patrick McKenna as host/MC, at which the great bulk of monies required for such a centre would be acquired. That was May.
Over this summer, this hot, often sluggish summer when movement of any kind seemed as slow and laborious as the operation of a draw bridge, here’s what happened.
Jason and Geoff went at it hammer and thongs. They did not relent. When they wanted to flop down they pushed forward.
They lined up no fewer than 30 corporate sponsors. They got dozens to step up with their time, efforts, money. They sold tickets to the gala. And for every commitment, they got leads on even more.
“We’re getting inquiries,” said Geoff. “People are so interested. ‘How do I get involved?’”
Added Jason, “There are families affected (by dyslexia) and we don’t see their faces but this is going to make this a better place.”
Let me tell you something about Jason. He’s a roofer. No, a roofing artist. He’s up there on top of the world, roofing, managing crews of roofers. Close to the sun.
I asked him how the summer was. He smiled wearily. I caught myself. “Ah, I can’t even imagine.” Jason can walk through fire whistling a happy tune but even he admitted this was some kind of summer. But when he went home the other work began. Making the dyslexia centre happen.
“There’ve been sleepless nights,” he said.
“But every day,” said Geoff, “a little chip got taken out of what we had to do.”
Dyslexia affects almost one in four. I know you know someone struggling.
Geoff and Jason show me the building where the centre will be, at back of the beautiful Scottish Rite complex at Queen and King. Hamilton Mason and businessman Shawn Maher joins us.
He wishes he’d had something like the centre that the foundation is
trying to build.
“I wasn’t diagnosed until I was an adult,” Shawn said. “I struggled, completely.” He couldn’t finish high school, until an adult at which time he rocketed ahead, getting the degrees he needed and passing securities exams to be what he is today.
“I build buildings,” he said, smiling. But there was a time he didn’t think he could amount to anything.
And that, times thousands, is why Jason and Geoff work so
bloody hard. There’s just such a little ways to go. If you can only help get over that final hurdle.
Hamilton’s centre will join eight others already started by the Scottish Rite — London, Windsor, Halifax, Barrie, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton and Moncton.
It will do us all such a lot of credit. Please.