MONDAY, MAY 11, 2020 WATERLOO REGION RECORDA3

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It might seem harsh that em-ployees at Conestoga Collegeare being forced to use up alltheir paid vacation days for theyear by the beginning of August.

But it’s merely the first drop ofrain in the thunderstorm that’scoming.

“We’ve got to get ready for anew world,” said college presi-dent John Tibbits.

Tibbits says the COVID-19pandemic is “the biggest exter-nal threat to college opera-tions” since Conestoga began,53 years ago.

Although it’s hard to predictexactly what the next few yearswill look like, the college islooking at a $50-million to $70-million loss in revenue this fis-cal year. Its annual operatingbudget is about $400 million.

All college campuses closed inmid-March in response to thepandemic. The spring term ishappening online, beginningMay 19.

The fall term is a questionmark. But there will be disrup-tion.

Among institutes of higher ed-ucation, Conestoga is particu-larly vulnerable. There are twomain reasons. First, it reliesheavily on a hands-on learningenvironment. That environ-ment must undergo a profoundchange if the college can openin September.

Second, more than half its stu-dents are from outside Canada.The college had nearly 11,000enrolled this year, more thanUniversity of Waterloo andWilfrid Laurier Universitycombined. But that made it dif-ficult for the college when trav-el is restricted.

Already there are 1,000 fewerforeign students starting springterm than the college expected,creating a tuition shortfall of$10 million.

Here are just some of thechanges Conestoga anticipatesas it approaches the 2020-21school year:á To control the spread of thevirus, masks will be worn byeveryone and technology will

be used to ensure there is nocrowding in the buildings. Thatmeans additional cost.á Instead of having 24 studentsin a lab at one time, procedureswill change to allow, say, eightstudents in at a time so thatphysical distancing can bemaintained. That means threeshifts in one lab (morning, af-ternoon and evening), withdeep cleaning between shifts.Both the cleaner and the labinstructor will need to workmore hours and be paid more.á To make room for thesesmaller groups of students,continuing education classeswill be suspended.á Millions of dollars will bespent to adjust the curriculumand train instructors and stafffor remote learning. Virtual re-ality, embedded video and sim-ulated environments will takethe place of classroom equip-ment and experiences.á Some training programs, in-cluding for personal supportworkers and health-care work-ers, will expand.á To ease the financial crunch,renovations will have to wait at

the Reuter Drive building inCambridge, which the collegehad bought in order to house itstrades training programs.That’s $45 to $50 million in ex-penses that can be put off tilllater. But not forever.á Fewer Canadian first-yearstudents are expected to start inthe fall, leading to another lossof revenue. Because highschools have experienced ma-jor disruption too, and becauseof widespread unemployment,Tibbits thinks many Grade 12students will prefer to repeattheir final year in high schoolfor free, rather than pay tocome to college.á Hundreds of college staff po-sitions are expected to disap-pear. Some people have alreadybeen laid off and others likelywill be. Some were expecting tobe hired to teach, and won’t beoffered contracts. Others havebeen given incentives to retire. á After the massive govern-ment stimulus spending comesthe massive deficits, and thenthe austerity. Tibbits said Al-berta and Manitoba alreadyhave made “significant cuts” in

their funding of post-secondaryeducation. He is bracing for thesame in Ontario.

There is a long road ahead.Many experts are predictingsecond and third waves of out-breaks, with two or three yearsbefore the virus is finally undercontrol.

The uncertainty is the hardestpart. Tibbits says it’s not like anearthquake that happens justonce, and then you clean up andmove on. “It’s aftershock afteraftershock,” he said.

Back to the forced vacation:The union says it may be dam-aging to employees’ mentalhealth if they go 11 months with-out paid time off. The college,which wants to free itself of theliability, says employees willhave opportunities to take un-paid vacation if they need abreak.

On the ground, that’s deeplyunfortunate for employees.From 30,000 feet above, it’s al-most invisible.Luisa D’Amato is a Waterloo Region-based staff columnist for the Record.Reach her via email: ldamato@there-cord.com

Conestoga College drives into a thunderstormLuisaD’Amato

OPINION

CAMBRIDGE — Matthijs Zwaal, 16,likes to play soccer, make musicand hang out with friends in hisDutch town. He has a job afterschool stocking shelves at thesupermarket.

Oh, and he’s reaching out toCanada to find out all he canabout an airman named KenMasterson, who died fightingthe Nazis in the Second WorldWar.

“I live in freedom and it’s sonormal to me,” Matthijs ex-plains, over the internet fromhis home in the Netherlands.

“But it should be special, be-cause you see on the news somany countries where it isn’t asnormal as for us, to live in free-dom. I think that’s why I wantto honour the people who gavetheir lives for my freedom.”

Ken Masterson was an airgunner with the Royal Canadi-an Air Force. He died at 20, shotdown over Nazi-occupied Hol-land in 1943.

“He looked so young, just aninnocent young boy,” Matthijssaid, unsettled by the picture ofKen in his military file. “It hitme. It was special to see thatsuch a young boy had given hislife for me.”

Ken Masterson was born inGalt and raised in Preston. Heenlisted at 18 and he died withina year of going overseas at 19.

Like Matthijs, Ken likedsports. He grew up playinghockey and baseball. He hunt-ed, swam, canoed and cycled.

Matthijs enjoys music. Heplays guitar, piano and saxo-phone. Ken enjoyed photogra-phy. He liked to develop filmand print pictures.

Ken liked to hang out withfriends, too. He went lookingfor some in England in Novem-ber 1942, feeling homesick sixmonths after leaving Canada.

“I thought I’d drop in the Bea-ver club, hoping to see someonefrom home,” he wrote in a letterhome. “There’s a story aboutthat place — ‘Go there and you’llsee someone from home.’”

Ken saw no one he knew at theLondon club. He left disap-pointed after an hour. But rightthere in the street, he bumpedinto an old pal from Preston.

“We had a darn good chat untilIhad to go to Liverpool Street tocatch a train,” he wrote.

Ken and Matthijs are not kin.They are connected by a ceme-tery in Matthijs’s hometown ofHaaksbergen, a town of 25,000near the German border. Ken’sname is on a grave there.

He died with his crewmates

when their twin-engine Wel-lington bomber fell from thenight sky into a nearby field.

“The story in the family wasthat he wanted to actually go towar to complete his training,and return and be the commer-cial pilot that he had alwaysdreamed about doing,” said KenMasterson, his nephew of thesame name.

Before Ken enlisted in the airforce, he took flying lessons andcompleted an hour of solo fly-ing. He yearned to do morethan spray metal, brush shoesor build furniture, all jobs heheld before answering the callto arms.

“He was very smart,” saidMasterson, 60. “Those oppor-tunities didn’t really appeal tohim.”

Ken’s father drove a milk cartand a taxi. After his parentssplit, Ken was raised by his sin-gle mother, Daisy Masterson.She believed in arts and educa-tion and raised three childrenon Queen Street in Preston inthe hardscrabble 1930s.

“She made all of their clothes.

They were the best-dressedkids in town because she couldfancy-stitch,” said Masterson,her grandson.

Ken grew up to become ayoung man who played trickson his sister, flew large-scalemodel airplanes with his broth-er, and attracted girlfriendshere and in England.

On May 13, 1943, Ken and fourcrewmates took off from Eng-land just before midnight tobomb the German city of Bo-chum. The crew was part of theRCAF’s 426 Thunderbirdsquadron.

Enemy searchlights capturedtheir bomber, lighting it up for15 minutes before it reached thetarget. This made them a primetarget for anti-aircraft fire. Flakexploded around them.

Pilot Leslie Sutherland wasforced to take evasive actionand descend. Damage fromshrapnel forced the crew to jet-tison the bombs just after 2 a.m.

The damaged plane turned to-ward home and managed toland safely in England at 5:25a.m. on May 14.

Nine days after that close call,Ken and his crewmates took offat night to bomb Dortmund, anindustrial city in Germany. Itwas a clear night which helped91 planes drop more than 2,000tons of bombs within an hour,setting many buildings ablaze.Smoke rose thousands of feet incolumns.

The enemy sent up nightfighters to stem the attack. AGerman air ace reportedly tar-geted their bomber on its re-turn, shooting it down overHolland just before 1:30 a.m. onMay 24.

All on board were killed. To-day they are counted among426 aircrew lost by the Thun-derbird squadron during thewar.

Matthijs, a history-loving stu-dent, began to research thecrew after joining a Dutch re-membrance project that aimsto turn the men into more thannames on a stone by honouringthem in a book. Students andothers are researching 20 Alliedcombatants buried in hishometown.

He searched military records,scoured the internet, and sentemails to faraway families andto an Ontario newspaper re-porter. He practised the Englishhe has learned in part by watch-ing films and by reading onlineabout history and music.

Matthijs connected with theOntario family of pilot LeslieSutherland, who died withMasterson. Sutherland’s namegraces a Royal Canadian Legionbranch near Sarnia.

The branch has put a charredpiece of their downed bomberon display. Sutherland’s neph-ew found it at the crash site in1977.

Matthijs also connected withKen Masterson in Kitchener,who provided wartime photo-graphs of his namesake uncle.

Masterson is proud of the un-cle he never met, and warmedby the outreach Matthijs ismaking. On the sacrifice his un-cle made, his feelings are mixed.Complicated.

“I believe he believed in thecause,” he said.

Masterson recalls how hisgrandmother mourned her old-est child every RemembranceDay. “She cried and cried andcried.” At times when he seesthe world engage in war afterwar, he laments that his uncledied in vain.

“I’m so frustrated with theworld, that we don’t seem to belearning,” he said.

Matthijs feels that Ken and hiscrewmates died so that he canhang out with his friends, enjoythe Pink Floyd music he loves,study what he wants, work as hedesires, and plan a future hechooses.

They stood up to Nazi tyrannyand lie forever in his home-town. Seventy-five years aftervictory, he will not forget them. Jeff Outhit is a Waterloo Region-based general assignment reporterfor the Record. Reach him via email:jouthit@therecord.com

‘He looked so young, just an innocent young boy’ Dutch teen, 16, embracesthe Preston airman shot down over his town in 1943JEFF OUTHIT WATERLOO REGION RECORD

Matthijs Zwaal, 16, at the grave of Ken Masterson, shot down over Nazi-occupied Holland in 1943. COURTESY OF MATTHIJS ZWAAL

Dutch teen Matthijs Zwaalwas startled by the youth ofKen Masterson in thisphotograph from Masterson’smilitary file.