RRHS principal Bob McGreevy retires

Ken Johnston
Editor

Just shy of 30 years, Rainy River High School Principal Bob McGreevy, is retiring at the end of this school year.
McGreevy began his career with the local public school board in Lac La Croix in September of 1977. At the time he was in need of a teaching job, something that was hard to come by in his home town of the day, Kingston, Ont. He had no idea where Lac La Croix was but took the job and brought his wife Brig along. “I knew where Thunder Bay was, but no clue where Lac La Croix was.”
Coming from the city, life at Lac La Croix was a bit different. “I had a one room log cabin for a classroom with 20 kids in the entire school.” Brig volunteered at the library there. He taught math, science and shop.
RRHS principal of the day, Jack Cameron, flew out to Lac La Croix and told Bob, “He needed a math and science teacher and a basketball coach.” The McGreevy’s accepted and in the following school year moved to Rainy River.
Figuring on staying a few years and then heading back to Eastern Ontario, they never imagined that nearly 30 years later they would be retiring in Rainy River.
“I had a job I really enjoyed, we laid down some roots, had some kids and the rest is history,” said McGreevy last week.
His career evolved over time. In 1986 he became involved in a project that would change the way students learned for many years and even up until this date. He took a year and a half off from teaching math and science and worked on a pilot project at RRHS, Fort High and Donald Young School (Emo). “It focused on using computers to improve students writing schools.” He worked with english teachers across the board. When done it became very clear that computers were going to play a vital role in future education. “Today everything is done on computers,” said Bob.
While working in the district he had the opportunity to meet some great people. Eventually he had the opportunity to do some work on regional curriculum. It was then one day while marking papers that he said to himself, “I want to do something different, not the same for 15 years.” Learning that through good leadership positive changes can be made, he decided to spend the next six or seven summers going to school to become a principal.
Eventually he became Vice-principal at RRHS and then Principal. He said one of his biggest challenges has been to balance the needs of the staff against the needs of parents and students. But he said last week that being both a teacher and parent before has helped him understand.
Of his accomplishments as Principal, McGreevy is proud to have been involved in the hiring of almost all the staff currently working at RRHS. “I think we have the best staff in the system!” He said things are also the most stable in terms of staff retention than they have been in years. Not so many years ago new teachers would come and then leave after two years.
McGreevy also said that the students at RRHS are for the most part really good kids. He recalls some difficult classes early in his career but noted, “One has to be faced with challenging classes to learn to teach.”
Despite steadily declining enrollments he is also pleased that the school has managed to maintain a high number of extracurricular options noting that he is presently getting ready to sign an agreement for another sports coop with Baudette that would see RRHS kids have the option to compete in swimming and girls baseball.
He said he will miss getting to know the kids and new staff next year. For now his only plans are to do some travelling with his wife who retired last year as librarian at RRHS. He loves to do wood working and hopes to do more of that as he settles into retirement in Rainy River.
He said that several students he taught pleasantly surprised him in where they ended up after RRHS. He named Jamie Kanter who has his PHD in Science and Andrew Hogue who has also excelled at University. “It is really surprising for a small school how many kids leave and do very well for themselves,” said Bob.