English teacher’s firecracker spirit and zest for life were an inspiration to thousands of students.
Teacher fondly remembered for her insightful ‘Chrisisms’
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a teacher with a penchant for literature, a firecracker spirit and innumerable witty words of wisdom will leave a lasting impression.
Christine Klein’s funeral was a testament to the hundreds of lives she touched, especially during her 22 years teaching English at Edmonton’s Archbishop MacDonald High School. More than 1,200 people walked though the doors of St. Joseph’s Basilica on Nov. 19.
Students past and present remembered her love for Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. They remembered the bellyaching giggle fits they’d endure after hearing one of her many zany sayings, known as “Chrisisms.” But most of all, they remembered her nurturing guidance and wide, contagious smile.
“She was one of a kind,” said her husband, Murray Klein. “She could meet somebody once and they would remember her. She had such an outrageous personality.
“Because of the way she lived her life, it was easy for her to say she had no regrets.”
Chris died Nov. 13 at the age of 50 after an 11-month battle with cancer. Born into a Polish family, Christine Matemisz grew up in Edmonton.
She first laid eyes on Murray — or “Big Mur,” as she called him — at the Clareview drugstore where he worked as a pharmacist.
“She asked me out, because I never would’ve had the nerve to ask her,” he recalled with a smile.
They started dating in 1983 and got married in July 1986. Chris finished her education degree at the University of Alberta that year and was offered a job in the small town of Vimy. Three years later, she was hired at Archbishop MacDonald High School, where she taught until her death.
Murray and Chris had two sons, Brett and Evan.
Family and friends were important to Chris. She was always organizing a family event or exotic trips to Maui, Mexico, Belize, North Africa, China, England or out to the family cabin at Lac Ste. Anne.
Over the years, she brought three dogs and two horses into the family, too. Chris began horse jumping three years ago after beginner riding lessons morphed into a stallion of an obsession that eventually yielded many ribbons.
Chris’s students were also like children to her. She never missed a single Mac High graduation.
In a school where many of the students were scienceand math-oriented, Chris’s goal was to foster a love for literature and she had a knack for lighting a fire underneath the aspirations of each and every teenager.
“She had this thing that she did every single day. She would call it her attendance question,” said Gale Rault, a fellow English teacher at Mac and a longtime friend. “And so she would ask all these crazy personal questions that seemed irrelevant to the kids, but what she was doing was stimulating their thinking on a more thematic level. It would be this hilarious thing where she would get to know them and they would get to know each other in the classroom.
“No one that I’ve ever seen would have a classroom roaring with laughter so loud that down the hallway, teachers would be coming out of their rooms to go find out what was going on.”
Rault remembers the many times that Chris would walk into her classroom unannounced. She’d rouse the students into a frenzy, either making them laugh at her outlandish interpretations of literature or sympathize with the underdog in works like T.S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman.
“She used to say, ‘Oh my God, I made myself cry again talking about (Death of a Salesman’s) Willy Loman.’ She could get so caught up in it that she’d have to go out into the hallway and cry. It was really a joy to teach with someone who could leap into the literature with so much passion.”
Chris taught Vanessa Grabia drama and English in Grade 11 in 1994. Grabia remembers how her beloved teacher and mentor would set her straight if she was “going off the rails.” One of Grabia’s favourite memories — and one that led her to work in academic administration at the U of A — was in Grade 12 when she told Chris that she had been accepted into the university’s engineering program. “Mrs. Klein was like, ‘ What
are you doing?! You’ll ruin your life!” Grabia said with a laugh.
“She was really upset with me for going into engineering! Obviously I could’ve gone into engineering, I could’ve done it, but there was something about her reaction. She saw in me what I didn’t see in me. I ended up changing my major from engineering and instead going into arts and taking a comparative literature degree and taking a master’s degree. Talk about someone changing your life.”
Chris got sick in the summer of 2011 and was diagnosed with pancreatitis. She didn’t return to teaching that fall.
In December 2011, a followup MRI scan showed cancerous spots had appeared on her pancreas, and had spread to her lungs, liver and ovaries.
The doctors gave her three months to live.
Always a fighter, Chris chose the most potent chemotherapy option available and continued to do everything from travelling to renovating the lake-house kitchen to walking the dogs.
Chris had come up with many wild “Chrisisms” over the years. She would toss her golden hair to the side and blurt out one of her clever gems: “Nothing from 1994 should be in your possession!”; “Hey, people, we aren’t splitting the atom”; “There is only room for one diva here”; or “I’m too pretty for math.” But one of her most memorable Chrisisms emerged during her illness: “Cancer may take my life, but it will not take my days.”
She told Murray from the onset that if she was going to die, she wanted to plan her own funeral.
Although her wishes to serve wine for the funeral reception (booze wasn’t allowed in the church) were unsuccessful, she did manage to compile a book nearly 40 pages long filled with endearing tales and heartfelt memories.
“She said, ‘You know how you go to a funeral early to get a seat? This way people can read about me and they won’t be bored!’ ” Murray said.
The 1,200 people that packed into St. Joseph’s Basilica were far from bored. Tears flowed as attendees flipped through the book, but so did smiles and quiet bouts of laughter.
At the end of the book was one final Chrisism, one final philosophical crumb reminding those mourning for her heart and wisdom.
“We should practise to let things go,” it read. “We spend too much time feeling badly.”