Exemplifying the power of being a Big Brother
He has been described as a parttime big brother, part-time uncle, part-time father and part-time best friend.
Tom Thornton has been a mentor for more than half his life as part of various branches of Big Brothers Big Sisters.
The 80-year-old Niagara-on-the-Lake resident was recently honoured by the City of Niagara Falls for 50 years of volunteering, including many years with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Niagara Falls.
He was also recently honoured by the organization, which has created a Tom Thornton Volunteer Award to be presented to worthy individuals who have had a positive impact on Big Brothers Big Sisters.
“There’s always a discussion between the big and little as to who got most out of the relationship,” said Thornton.
“I have to tell you, I really believe I got more out of it than my littles did, and they’ll tell you the exact opposite. It’s a giving, loving relationship that you would have like it was your little brother.”
Thornton, who doesn’t have any children of his own, is originally from Montreal.
“I was on the road 80 per cent of the year for most of my business career.”
His wife Janet has a son who lives in Nebraska.
Thornton said it was in the 1960s when he heard an ad on the radio promoting the need for big brothers while going to work one morning in Toronto.
He was close to the Big Brothers centre on Jarvis Street, so he decided to stop in and register for an appointment to become a big brother.
During the ensuing 50 years, Thornton said he has been a big brother to three people and an inschool mentor for two others.
He said his first little brother was a 12-year-old named Pat, who was a “tough one at first, but turned out to be a fantastic young man.”
“I spent a lot of time with him trying to keep him away from some young people that were not a good influence on him, and it succeeded,” said Thornton.
“He … ended up in Cyprus in a peacekeeping tour in the military. I’ve lost track of him and I would love to find him again.”
His second little brother was a sixyear-old boy who moved with his mother to Canada from Scotland.
The boy — Ron Bartleet — lived a couple of blocks from Thornton in north Toronto before moving to St. Catharines.
Thornton himself moved to Niagara 17 years ago and the two have remained close friends.
“Ron and I play golf together, we go to dinner and lunch — we do all kinds of things,” he said.
“When he graduated from university, we were there for his graduation. We were there for his wedding. We were there when (Bartleet and his wife’s) child was born.”
Thornton said over the years, he has participated in car rallies with his little brothers, taught them how to skate, play hockey and baseball.
“Its been an amazing ride for me and for my little brothers and inschool mentees,” he said.
“So rewarding to see the changes that take place in these young people, and what they’ve turned out to be. As my little brother said the other night — I’m part-time big brother, part-time uncle, part-time father and part-time best friend.”
Thornton has also been on the board of directors for Big Brothers Big Sisters in Peel, as well as in Niagara Falls, where he met his third little brother, Matt.
Thornton said he recently resigned from the Niagara Falls board, but still works on various agency committees, including fundraising.
Bartleet, who is now 53, said he and his mom were fairly new to Canada when he first met Thornton.
“Tom, at first, was a big brother and was someone ... to hang around with. Right away we bonded around sports and cars. We’d get together almost every week and do normal stuff that quite often dads and sons would do. Over the years that kind of flourished into more of a favourite uncle type of a relationship, and at times a father-son relationship.”
Bartleet said when he was younger, he “hated” school and Thornton was concerned he might drop out of high school.
He said Thornton quietly convinced him to stay in school.
“Since I was a little kid he just sort of slowly, very subtly, would say ‘when’ you go to university, you’ll get to experience this, ‘when’ you’ve finished university, you’ll get to do this. It was never ‘if,’ it was always ‘when.’ Even though I hated school, somehow it stayed in there that I had to get to university and I had to get through university.”
Bartleet is now a financial planner in St. Catharines.
He said he’s fortunate to have had Thornton as a mentor throughout his formative years, which led him to want to become a big brother himself.
“Most often you’re dealing with single moms and … they’re economically challenged like my mom was. Here was someone in my life that was living in a really nice house and wearing nice clothes and going on trips and driving nice cars and I got to know him as just a regular person and he always talked like, ‘well, you’ll have this one day.’”
Bartleet said for many kids who are in similar situations to those he was in as a child, “they don’t really believe it’s possible for them.”
“A lot of kids that come from poor families kind of struggle with that inside and think, ‘am I worthy?’”
Bartleet said his mother is a “wonderful” person, and when he was young he used to think “if someone like her isn’t deserving of wealth and better things in life, how can I be?”
“I think when you see someone else close to you that’s a good person, but that is having better success in the other areas of life, you kind of say, ‘hey, Tom is doing it, Tom is a good person, but he is managing to do these other things in life that some of my other family members and my mom aren’t able to do,’ so slowly over time you start to think, ‘you know what, I can do that, I can have that kind of life if I work toward it.’”
Jon Braithwaite, executive director for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Niagara Falls, said Thornton’s match with Bartleet “basically epitomizes the power” of the Big Brothers Big Sisters mentoring program.
“The fact that they have this strong bond and they continue this communication really lends itself to the success of the program,” he said.