Features Education Leadership
Contributor To Our Profession: Spring 2002

Tell us a little about yourself?

I am an avid cottager and find it difficult to wait until the snow melts and the cottage is accessible. It is in the call of the loons and the howl of the wolves in the stillness of the night that I am reminded of the oneness of all creation. It is here that my soul is renewed and my body is energized.

Wendy was presented with the “annual award for meritorious service” for 2001 from the Ontario Massage Therapists Association at their annual “Hands Together” conference this past March. Congratulations Wendy!

Professional Profile:

My first profession was nursing and I suppose in many ways it has traveled the professional road with me. I have taught since 1969 including students of nursing, Para medicine and massage therapy. The common theme of my professional life has been in my role as educator. It matters greatly to me how students learn and in particular how they learn to think and problem solve utilizing an ever expanding knowledge base.

Influential people or experiences leading you to this profession and career.

Jean W. Spalding taught me when I was a nursing student, mentored me as a beginning teacher and was my colleague until she passed away two years ago. She lived by the motto “I give that you may give.” It hasn’t mattered in what field of health care I have found myself, her words continue to ring true and give focus and meaning to my life. She was an excellent educator and role model. She knew her students, their strengths and weaknesses, their interests and avocations and she cared deeply about the whole person. Hopefully I have managed to live up to her standard in my interactions with students.

Most cherished experience or accomplishment. Why?

Life long learning is a phrase we hear from many sources. I went back to school at 45 to become a RMT. What a pleasure it was to be a student again. To learn for the sheer joy of learning and to gain skills that help in a real way each and every client. My time at Sutherland-Chan was a wonderful learning time and an opportunity to continue the personal process of self-understanding.

Hope for our profession in the near and distant future.

My passion for the profession is to move Massage Therapy education to a place of equality with other health care providers. If we are to be respected by the larger health care community and if we are to have a say in the direction of health care delivery in the future, we have to be able to sit at the table and speak the language of research based practice. This means we need to prepare some massage therapists at Masters and PHD levels to achieve these goals. The strength of the profession will be to have diversity in the educational preparation with diploma and degree graduates providing quality client care that reflects best practice based on research.

Words of wisdom.

Technology will bring us many opportunities for learning. We will need wisdom to choose wisely those opportunities that nurture different parts of our being never loosing site of the whole.