Meet city’s oldest university grad
Alma Kocialek will don a cap and gown this month after earning her undergraduate degree at 89
Alma Kocialek doesn’t like to talk about her age. But when you’re the oldest person to ever graduate from a Toronto university, it’s a hard topic to avoid.
The 89-year-old Brampton woman will be donning a cap and gown at York University this month, earning a degree in Gender and Women’s Studies a few weeks before her 90th birthday.
It’s a longtime goal for Kocialek, who decided to go back to school in 2011 after her husband died of cancer.
“I decided I’d just get up, get at it. Do something with my life,” said Kocialek, speaking over the phone from her 10thfloor condo. She lives alone, drives and often walks to the lakeshore to picnic and people-watch. While going to school, Kocialek would drive herself to the GO station each day and ride the bus to York.
“I decided I’d just get up, get at it. Do something with my life.” ALMA KOCIALEK YORK UNIVERSITY STUDENT WHO DECIDED TO PURSUE WOMEN’S STUDIES
“All my friends had their doctorate or masters or whatever. And I said I want a degree. I want to accomplish something.”
Kocialek first started a degree at York University in 1978, with the hope of becoming a clinical psychologist. But with family responsibilities and a business that she had just started, she had to take a step back from her studies. Decades later, she decided to try a new subject.
“I thought, I’m a woman and there’s Women’s Studies — let’s see about that!”
Kocialek talks with enthusiasm about some of the topics she studied: prostitution laws, missing and murdered Indigenous women and advancements in gender equality.
Kocialek said she was particularly interested in the plight of marginalized women trying to find employment in Canada. Helping people find work is close to Kocialek’s heart — she started her own personnel company in the 1970s and says helping people find jobs was an “extremely rewarding” experience.
Jan Kainer, one of her professors at York, said Kocialek brought a valuable perspective to the class, offering her much younger classmates first-hand memories about what it was like to be a working woman in the 1970s.
“She talked a lot about how patronizing and chauvinistic the attitudes of the day were,” said Kainer, adding that Kocialek came to almost every class, regardless of the weather.
Kocialek didn’t just teach younger stu- dents — she became friends with them.
“We’d sit and giggle and laugh,” she said. “It kept me young, too.”
But Kocialek said some aspects of a gender studies degree were a bit harder to handle — like talking about sex when there were men in the class.
“Sometimes I thought of crawling underneath my desk, I was so embarrassed,” said Kocialek, laughing.
“I got over it. Those guys knew more about sex than I do!”
Kocialek also says she faced lot of criticism from people saying she was too old — to drive, to go back to school or even to carry a sack of cat litter up to her condo. She shrugs it off.
“Just because you might have a certain colour of hair doesn’t make you weak and feeble,” she said.
At the University of Toronto, the oldest graduate on record was Clive Davies, who graduated at age 79 in 2016.
Davies said he was motivated to finish his degree later in life by a sense of “unfinished business.”
“I think in many cases, my peers probably feel very much the same way. They feel they’ve just missed something in life and they’re determined to catch up,” said Davies, adding that he enjoyed being around young people on campus.
Kocialek’s graduation date is set for June 21, and daughter Judy Brock said she’ll be so proud to watch her “effervescent” mother walk across the convocation stage. Her mother watched her earn three degrees, said Brock. Now, the roles are reversed.