Never Too Late for Adventure

McLeodsIt’s usually recent university grads who travel oversees to teach, before settling down to build careers, families and homes. Ray McLeod (BA’66) and his wife Maureen (BEd’66) are proof that such an adventure is possible at any time of life.

The couple, who are in their 60s, has just returned to Calgary after nine years of living abroad. They traveled to Asia to teach English, spending five years in Japan and another several years in China. 

“In the spring of 1996, I happened to talk with someone who had just returned from teaching English in Japan,” says Ray. “It seemed like an interesting possibility for two people whose vocational lives were at an ebb and whose two children were now adults.”

Ray had tackled many challenges in his work life up to that point. He’d taught with the Calgary Board of Education for several years, was a manager with the Vocational and Rehabilitation Research Institute, had written a travel book and even dabbled in photography and real estate sales.

Maureen had also been a teacher and her 11-year job with a Calgary land and house developer was ending when the couple decided to try something new.

“We have always been a little unconventional,” admits Ray. In 1979, for example, they bought a motor home, packed up their kids and circumnavigated North America and Mexico for about 10 months.

Their time in Asia was an experience that changed their lives. “[Our years abroad gave] me a view of the world that would have been impossible to get in any other fashion,” says Ray. “We also came to appreciate the little things in overseas life: the ability to communicate despite the language barrier when both parties are willing participants, the small jubilation at finding a familiar product in a most unfamiliar setting, or discovering a small ‘why’ in the culture that surrounds you.”

Still, it feels good to be back in Calgary, says Ray. He jokes that aside from the price of real estate, it’s like they never left.

There has been a period of adjustment. “The daily experience of Canadian wealth and position is greater now for us, because we measure it more against the way the majority of the Earth’s population lives,” says Ray. “We are truly fortunate to be Canadians.”

As the McLeods settle back into their lives in Calgary, each is trying something slightly new once again.

Maureen is working as a freelance writer, marketing a weekly newspaper column. (She had once been at editor at the Gauntlet.) Ray is developing a series of seminars, one on how to deliver powerful presentations and the other on preparing people to live and work overseas.

He’s also selling his photography—images from around the world that he’s collected from his many travels.

After so many years of feeling like “foreigners” in another land, they’re happy to be home once again.

By Leslie Strudwick