For 36 consecutive years retired School District No. 57 Superintendent Jim Imrich started another school year each September; first as a teacher, then as a principal and finally as the School District No. 57 Superintendent until his retirement in 1995.
Over the years Jim Imrich made an immeasurable difference in the lives of countless students, parents, school district staff, and our community as a whole. Here is his story in a nutshell.
Jim Imrich was born in Dawson Creek in 1935 and lived in Sunrise Valley. He attended Parkland Elementary School; a rustic log building with a wood heater situated next to an out house and an old horse barn. The building was not important to him but his education was. From there he continued his education at the South Peace Senior Secondary School and earned scholarships to continue his education.
Jim understood the rewards of hard work. He was raised on a farm and up until his high school graduation he had never been out of the Dawson Creek area. His parents put him on a bus headed to the University of British Columbia where he graduated with a Bachelor of Education degree in 1962. He continued on and earned a Master of Education Degree in 1979 at the University of Victoria.
In the meantime Jim taught at the North Peace High School in Fort St. John, Mount Elizabeth Secondary in Kitimat, teacher and administrator at Prince George Secondary, vice-principal at Lakewood Secondary and principal at Blackburn Junior Secondary, and the College Heights and Duchess Park Secondary schools here in Prince George.
In 1981 Jim became Assistant Superintendent and in 1984 he took on the role as School District No. 57 Superintendent of Schools until his retirement in 1995. That ladies and gentlemen adds up to 54 back to school-school bells for Jim; assuming that he started school when he was six years old.
This is only one third of Jim's story. I have an extensive list of all the volunteer work that Jim has been involved in over the years. Since I have limited space for this column you will just have to believe me when I say Jim has been active in community service to date for approximately 54 years. In fact he was recently named as a Honourary Director with the Prince George Community Foundation. Honourary Directors are prominent citizens in the Prince George area who provide valuable services to the Foundation and the community.
I would need another entire column to tell you about the approximately 25 years of total dedicated community service by his lovely wife Meg. Meg is a totally amazing and positive thinking lady. She has been energetically involved in many levels on many boards and in some very interesting non-profit groups in Prince George. Meg's volunteer work dates all the way back to the mid 60's when she was a volunteer at the Gordon Gallery which is now known as the Prince George Art Gallery.
Jim said his lucky day was when he was teaching in Kitimat and he met a nurse named Meg Henderson. Australian born Meg Henderson graduated from nursing school in Sydney. To make a long story short she took a passenger ship through the Suez Canal to England to practice nursing and didn't like it as much as she thought she would so she immigrated to Canada. She saw a job posting in the Canadian Nursing magazine that "offered everything" and ended up in Kitimat. It was there that Meg met Jim and the rest is history. They have been married for 52 years and together they raised three children; Brad (June) of Kelowna, Doug (Fern) of Vernon and Kathy (Michael) Finch of North Vancouver. Meg said, "We now have nine grand children and the first one graduated from high school this year."
Jim and Meg both agree that Prince George has been a great place to raise their family and that they have no intentions of moving out of this great City of Prince George.
Here are some statistics that Jim gave me that I would like to share with you: Regional District Fraser Fort George School District area covers 52, 000 square kilometers (the Vancouver SD covers 127 square kilometers). The population of the area in 1979-1980 was 100,000 people with 23,500 students. The population today is still 100,000 people with 14,200 students.
