West Vancouver
couple tap into
ancient tradition

By Andrew McCredie
Community Editor

ONCE upon a time, mentor-
ing was the way of the world.

The skills inherent to the trades of
the day — blacksmiths, bakers, car-
penters, scholars ete. — were passed
on from the experienced to inexperi-
enced by way of mentoring. In other
words, you, as protégé, learned the
way of your job by watching, listening
and drawing on’ the experiences of
your mentor.

But something happened on the
way to civilization — the mentoring
process stopped.

“Back before there were. any text-
books or form of schooling or work-
place training, the way you learned
anything was by attaching yourself to
someone who was doing what you
wanted to do,” explains Bill Gray,
who with his wife Marilynne operate
The Mentoring Institute out of their
inglewood Avenue home in West
Vancouver. “Very few people had
access to books, so there was no other
source of knowledge.”

But formal education, in the way
of public schooling, put an end to
much of the inherent mentoring
found in our society. The classroom’s
teachers and texts replaced the men-
tor figure in the lives of young stu-
dents.

According to Bill and Marilynne,
we've be paying the price for that fact
ever since.

“In school you spend alot of time
getting knowledge, but its not practi-
cal know-how, not the tricks of the
trade, not the unwritten rules,” says

Bill, adding that some mentoring still .

took place but it was of the
“Godfather-behind-the scene” type
(or, if you like, “The Old Boys
Network”).

“In the mid-1970s, large groups
of people were left out of this informal
mentoring process, in particular
women and minorities.”

So Bill — then an education pro-
fessor at UBC —- launched what was
to become a highly successful mentor-
protégé program matching education

their West Vancouver home.

graduate students with bright kids
from the Vancouver School District.
The program fasted cight years,
and when internal academic politics
stifled Bill, vio by now had teamed
up with Marilynne, the pair packed
their academic bags and launched The
Mentoring Institute (TMI). Like
mary cntreprencurial endeavors, the
carly, formative ycars were lean.
“We're both educators so when we
went out on our own we figured our
clients were going to be school
boards,” recalls Bill. “But after about
three ycars we discovered the educa-
tion system didn’t have the money to
hire us.” Their next move ran counter
to their own backgrounds, but the

NEWS photo Mike Wakefield
MARILYNNE and Bil! Gray operate The Mentoring Institute out of

move into the corporate culture was
just what the mentor ordered.
Matching upper-level executives

In other words... counselor, ad
confidant, master, guri, spiril
instructor, preceptor, educator, tutor,

mentor: #. an experienced and trusted
of the youth Telemachus in Homer’s
(Source: The Concise Oxford Dictionary, 1990)

DEFINING THE ROLES

1978)

pisor, snide,

adviser. [F f. Lf. Gk Mentor advisor
Odysey and Fénelon’s Télémaque]

guidance counselor, therapist,
tual leader, oracle, conch, teacher, pedagogue,
trainer, age, wise man, pundit, expert,
expert, authority, luminary. (Source: The Synonym Finder, J. Rodale,

(mentors) with lower-level workers
(protégés) has proved highly success-
ful for many companies.

The companies that have bought
into the mentoring techniques devel-
oped by the Grays reads like a
Fortune 500 list — Merrill Lynch,
Hewlett-Packard, Pillsbury, Dow
Chemical. And the list continues to
grow. The Mentoring Institute tailor
makes mentoring programs for the
varied clientele that use their services,
and while there isn’t a typical reason
they search out the Gray’s expertise,
Bill says they all share a desire to make

protégé: 1. a person under the jon, patrona
another (Source: The Concise Oxford Dichonary, 1990)

gc, tutelage, etc. of

In other words... dependent, charge, wand, client, protégée, encumbrance.
(Source: Roget A to Z, 1994).

their companies better.

Today, the Gray’s Inglewood
Avenue office — brimming with
McIntosh computers — is equal parts
business office, tele-communications

centre, editing-room and reference
library.

The technology may be advanced,
but the Gray’s message of mentoring
is as old as the hills.

David Wishart photo

SCHOOLCHILDREN watk on the coast road near the Edgewater Inn on the island

of Barbados, a dot in the Caribbean not much bigger than Bowen Island.

EVERYONE comes for
the sun and the sandy
beaches but after a
while they rent a car
and go for a drive.

Islands are Jike that: if -
they are small enough, at any
rate, you want to go around
them,

Barbados, a dot in the
Caribbean not much bigger
than Bowen Island, appears a
perfect candidate for circum-
navigation by car, particularly
when the rental agencies have
a tempting range of topless,
open-sided runabouts.

As for the roads, there are
(some very good) highways
and then there are the others,
a maze of narrow two-lane,
winding strings of whimsey
where sign-posting is any-
body’s guess. Just as the
British took down their road
signs during the war so
German spies would get lost,
perhaps the Bajans did this te
confuse pirates.

Some tourist destinations,

such as the Edgewater Inn,
had signs on every other cor-
ner but ir still took me three
days to find the place.
However this really was a
case of getting there being
half the fun, the main reasor
being that the locals, called
Bajans, are unfailingly cour-
teous,

Once when I was lost in
the dark in Bridgetown a
Bajan had me follow his car
until I was on the right road.
Another time, on foot, a
woman went out of her way
to show me the bus station.

The coast road is easy,
with many places to stop for

superb beaches on the south
and west. We pulled in at
Holetown, where the first
settlers arrived on the Olive
Blossom in 1627. They
cleared the land and planted
tobacco and cotton, then
switched to sugar and quickly
prospered. Slaves from Africa
made it all possible, of
course, and the main traffic
roundabout on the island is
dominated by a big statue of
a black man breaking his
bonds.

Beyond Holetown we
kept the sea on our left, then
cut across country to the
rugged shores of the north-
cast coast where Adantic
rollers crashed into steep
cliffs. We could have trekked
ro Cuckold Point (surely a
story there), but after losing
the road for Edgewater Inn
came across St Nicholas
Abbey, a 17th Century plan-
tation house built by an
Englishman who was later

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