TMI Volunteer Profile with Jim Cullen
by Dominic Varvaro, November 2024
We’re surrounded by a collection of sculptures and paintings “conceived in the young minds of Quebec’s artist community,” he tells me. The stacked bookshelves on an adjacent wall—replete with Plato, Ovid and Homer—hold the tomes that “founding members had in hand” when first building the Institute’s charter. The nearby wall hosting a list of baccalaureates, starting in 1948, boasts the brain trust that has graced the Institute’s halls and enriched its collective consciousness. He points to these artifacts with awe and pride. I can’t imagine a more appropriate locale to interview Jim Cullen, past president of TMI and long-time volunteer.
Cullen was born in the seaside and coal-mining community of Stellarton, Nova Scotia. His banking father was transferred, with his family, to Montreal in the mid-1950s. Cullen went from an intimate Atlantic Canada community of 5000 to bustling urban NDG, cycling to school, playing hockey in the park, and eventually embracing the influence of the Jesuit Fathers of Loyola High School and College.
He confides that the transfer was difficult for his mother, being so far from family, but the glint I see in his eyes as he recounts the adventures of his youth tells me the transfer was a happy experience for him.
When I ask about the path that led him to the Chicago Divinity School, following the B.A. in Theology he earned through Université de Montréal, he talks of Reverend Elmer O’Brien, a Jesuit who chaired the “newly developed field” of theology studies at Loyola College. Cullen was inspired by how the Reverend “created engagement” when he first heard him speak in a Loyola College auditorium, and by the Reverend’s “deep appreciation of theology.” It was a turning point for Cullen who, until then, had been considering a career in journalism.
His journey of “growth” continued at University of Chicago’s Divinity School in 1966 when he moved to the Baptist Graduate Student Centre. It’s where he taught, attended graduate school, and formed lifelong friendships.
In 1968, back in Montreal, Jim married his fiancée, Maureen. He tells of how they were swept up in the 1968 Democratic Conference protests and of how they “endured…the tremendous turmoil” that then Chicago Mayor Daly’s police crackdown had on university protesters. He was also witness to the cultural stress that a military draft for an unpopular war in Vietnam had on America’s psyche and its “large impact on young people, especially speaking out” in protests and tectonic change of cultural mores.
In the 1970s, in the midst of the province’s language law debates, Cullen returned to Quebec as a religion teacher at Bishop Whelan High School where he saw how enrolment was affected by “stricter language laws changed the composition of the school.” During this time, he completed an M.A. in History and Philosophy of Religion from Concordia.
1980 saw Cullen move to Quebec’s Ministère de l’Éducation. The dossier of responsibilities he managed during his 25-year career was extensive and included elementary and secondary Catholic education, securing Canada-wide funding for minority language education, supporting Services à la communauté anglophone, and representing the province within the Canada-wide Council of Ministers of Education. Most notable, however, was the period of transition where the “English speaking community took greater charge of the education of their children,” as reflected in his hands-on work with Gretta Chambers on the Advisory Board following Pauline Marois’ reform to secularize public schools and create linguistic school boards.
He doesn’t argue when I convey my impression that the Institute is a magnet for critical thinking. As president, a position he held from 2006 to 2010, Cullen supported the way the Institute operated. TMI Director Daniel Schouela echoed the Institute’s appreciation for Cullen’s “wealth of diverse experiences” and for how Cullen “managed our relationships with the Ministry and with Bishop’s [University] with great care and skill, and spearheaded important modifications to TMI’s bylaws.”
I ask him about the governance that evolved under his watch. He praises the groundwork that was laid by his predecessors and also the “beguiling and enchanting” influences of past directors Charlotte Tansey and Martin O’Hara. In the same breath, he recognizes the dedication of the volunteers, many of them women, who “worked during the day and then returned [to TMI] in the evenings” to bring to life the “bold experiment” that is the Institute. Cullen goes on to explain his contention that “the Institute has two roles in the development of adult education,” one of delivering adult education content and the other of conducting adult education research.
As we wrap up, he mentions a 1980 interview that O’Hara conducted with artist, teacher, and TMI graduate Louis Belzile. Cullen maintains that “TMI places art next to text as an interpretive place for students.” It was Belzile’s position, regarding public school art classes and what he described as The Privileged Moment (https://mje.mcgill.ca/article/view/7343), that art is a vital component of early learning pedagogy and that educational institutions must enable and encourage students to exceed pedagogic expectations. Not surprisingly, Cullen contends that the concept applies equally to adult education.
Dominic Varvaro is a writer, photographer, and TMI student. His foodie creations can be found at @thesauceison. You can read more of his writings in Voices: A TMI Writers’ Journal.