Cathy Gallagher was forced to retire at 65, but un-retired after the mandatory retirement was nixed seven years later
In 2001, Cathy Gallagher retired from teaching. But when she wanted to come back a few years later she couldn’t – mandatory retirement at 65 was the law.
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She became a piano player on cruise ships for a few years. Then in 2008, when mandatory retirement ended in B.C., she paid $80 to renew her teaching certificate. In 2009, she moved north to work as a special needs teacher at the Blueberry River First Nation school near Fort St. John.
She is still teaching music at the Squiala First Nation Montessori school near Chilliwack 15 years later.
She is now 83 years old.
“She is proud to share that she’s the oldest surviving certified teacher in B.C.,” said Steffi Munshaw, the principal of Squiala school.
“It’s not even a joke — we acknowledge that none of our staff can keep up to her. She’s got so much energy, passion and drive, it’s phenomenal.”
Gallagher is supposed to be working only two days a week, but recently has been working five days because her students are giving a concert at the school on Dec. 19.
“The kids love it so much, it’s just a joy to do,” said Gallagher. “I can’t quit on them, I can’t let them down. Basically, I try to fulfill the needs of the children, what they want to play. I make it happen.”
The truly remarkable thing is that she lives down the street from the Sylvia Hotel in Vancouver’s West End. She commutes 220 kilometres a day to Chilliwack and back home.
“I used to go at 5:30 (a.m.) when it was nice, because it’s quiet and I like to be early,” she said. “Now it’s so dark, I leave about 7. … Sometimes it takes two and-a-half hours because of traffic.”
Her dedication is quite something given that she started teaching in Indiana back in 1963.
“I remember Nov. 22, 1963, the assassination of (U.S. president John) Kennedy,” she recounts. “My students screamed and screamed. I didn’t know what to do, so I just had the kids pray.”
Gallagher has led a singular life. She was born in Jakarta, Indonesia, on July 24, 1941. Her heritage is Indonesian-Chinese and her maiden name was Kwee.
“When I say I’m Cathy Gallagher, they look, because they expect some Irish lady,” she said.
Her father was a diplomat, and she grew up in Indonesia, Hong Kong, the Netherlands and finally the United States, where her dad was Indonesia’s consul-general to the United Nations in New York.
His diplomatic career ended following a bloody coup in Indonesia in 1965. Her parents fled to England, and she didn’t see them for 16 years.
As a result of all her travelling growing up, she speaks five languages: Dutch, Indonesian, English, Cantonese and French.
She obtained a degree at Saint Mary’s college in Notre Dame, Indiana, where she married English professor Joe Gallagher. When he was hired by Simon Fraser University in 1965, they moved to B.C. and raised three kids, including CBC radio host Margaret Gallagher and actor Patrick Gallagher.
“Did you ever see A Night At The Museum?” she said. “Attila the Hun, that’s my kid.”
Her main teaching gig was at Barrowtown Elementary in Abbotsford, where she taught for three decades.
She always felt an affiliation with First Nations. During a sabbatical from her teaching job in Abbotsford, she taught at a Nisga’a Nation school in northwest B.C. When she resumed teaching post-retirement, she taught at Blueberry River First Nation, Prophet River First Nation near Fort Nelson, and at the Squiala First Nation.
“I was teaching special needs all these years,” said Gallagher, who has a master’s degree in music education from UBC. “Everybody thinks it’s such a hard job, but it isn’t. I look at the children and find out what their interest is.”
Teaching her students music means a lot of preparation, though.
“Many of them have problems reading or writing, so I use multi-sensory things they can see,” she explains.
“There’s a lot of preparation to make a song come alive. I draw and make pictures so that they would understand the song. I make all these charts so the song comes alive to my kids.”
She also gets to work early.
“One of the secrets in a class with no discipline is everything has to be ready,” she said. “You also have to have alternatives if something doesn’t work.”
She has enough energy to power a small city. To keep her musical chops up, she performs on her keyboard at Savary Island Pie Company in West Vancouver on Sunday afternoons.
“I discovered Bee Gees, so I’m learning Bee Gees songs,” she said. “I can’t do all the disco ones, but I do How Deep Is Your Love, How To Mend A Broken Heart, Words. I discovered Bohemian Rhapsody (by Queen) during my COVID.”
She no longer performs on cruise ships, but loves to travel on them and to be at sea.
“I told my daughter, I just want to be scattered in the ocean (when I die), because it touches all the countries, touches where I come from.”
