Remembering John Belcher

By Hedy Korbee

John Belcher, a beloved former Birch Cliff Public School teacher who influenced a generation of students, died on May 17 at the end of a courageous journey with cancer. He was 69. 

Belcher began his teaching career in 1973 and arrived at Birch Cliff in 1989, where he taught Grade 7 and 8 students with warmth and friendship combined with an old school sense of structure and firmness.

His unique teaching style and strength of character made him a role model and inspiration for thousands of students, many of whom turned to social media when they learned of his death.

“Rest In Peace to the greatest teacher to ever grace Birch Cliff’s classrooms – Mr. Belcher,” wrote David Patterson on Facebook.  Patterson, who graduated in 2002, said in an interview that he wishes he had a chance to say goodbye to a teacher who impacted people’s lives more than he will ever know. “He was the most influential teacher I ever had a chance to learn under and there are lessons from him that I still remember today,” Patterson said.

Jake Harding is another graduate who said he stills feels the spirit of Mr. Belcher 15 years after he left Birch Cliff PS.

“I’ve only met a few people whose influence has been strong enough to stay with me through the test of time,” Harding said. “Thanks to him I have a thirst for history, a thirst for reading, for writing, politics, language, and a thirst for continuous learning.  What other teacher tells his students they can’t graduate if they can’t recite the opening line of A Tale of Two Cities?”

“A great man”

“He’s just a great man. And when you take a great man and you make him into a teacher, good things happen,” said Jim Sheppard, the former Birch Cliff principal who worked with Belcher.

John Belcher and Greg Gourley at the Legion celebrating the 100th anniversary of Birch Cliff PS.

Sheppard was close friends with Belcher for decades, along with former French teacher Greg Gourley.

“He knew those kids’ names right off the bat,” Gourley said. “He was big on posture, big on paying attention, big on eye contact, all without making a production of it.  In the classroom, the kids worked independently.  ‘Here’s your math lesson, get it done.’ If the kid wasn’t getting it they would be in after school, a lot of them voluntarily to get Mr. Belcher’s focus to help them.”

In all of his years at Birch Cliff, Sheppard said Belcher never once sent a student to the principal’s office for discipline.

“He gave people value,” said Laura Calce, who took over teaching history shortly after her friend and mentor retired in 2004. “No matter who you were — teacher, student, new teacher, old teacher — he made everything you said seem important. He made everything you DID seem important.”

“He was the kind of person where students were running cross-country and could be in dead last and he would give them their time in such a way that they were like, “Yes, I beat that time!”  He made it all important,” Calce said.

Belcher’s love of sports

Belcher, with his trademark fedora and clipboard, was a familiar figure in the playground and earned the nickname of “Bear” Bryant from his colleagues.  He was a huge Toronto Blue Jays fan (seasons tickets since 1977) and ran a robust intramural softball league at Birch Cliff, where all the teams were named after the Jays farm teams. In his final year of teaching, he guided the senior boys to a TDSB pennant.

Doug Whiteside, who graduated from Birch Cliff in 1990, said Belcher was one of the few teachers he’s met who made learning enjoyable, particularly for boys.

“He cared enough to delve into our interests such as sports and history,” Whiteside wrote on Facebook. “He was also a numbers guy and made connections between math concepts and topics that kids could identify with. A great teacher in my opinion, who helped to redirect a lot of boys who easily could have gone the other way.”

Belcher was also renown for using old-time phrases that the students loved.  “Run like the Dickens!” he would exclaim during cross country.  “Don’t let the cat out of the bag,” he would urge his students.  Soon-to-be graduates were told, “We’re going to turn you loose and you’re going to produce.”  And perhaps most famous of all:  “Stop, look and listen before you cross the street. Use your eyes, use your ears, before you use your feet.”

Extraordinary history teacher

Belcher’s passion for history was legendary and he taught it with his typical enthusiasm.  Every time he mentioned Confederation, students were expected to shout “1867! 1867! “1867!”, which they did with relish. It’s been said that history teachers at Birchmount Collegiate could always tell which of their students came from Birch Cliff.

And then there was the famous history project.

Grade 7 and 8 students were required to submit a massive Canadian history report with a very strict set of rules. It had to be handwritten in cursive script, fill an entire notebook, and include multiple drawings completed by hand, of which a certain number needed to be maps.  The text had to be single-spaced and every single line had to finish at the right-hand side of the page. Belcher told his students that this is a project they would keep for the rest of their lives and many of them have.

“The kids lived for it,”, Calce said.  “I can picture him with his head down and his eyes sort of looking over the top of his glasses saying, ‘Now this is very important preparation (for high school)”, Calce said.  

Under Belcher’s supervision, Remembrance Day was not just a solemn occasion, but an opportunity to learn about the sacrifice of Canadian veterans by visiting them at Branch 13 of the Royal Canadian Legion.

Not only did the students research and write speeches and create presentations, posters, and poppies, Sheppard said Belcher made them carry their chairs down the street to the Legion so their parents would have somewhere to sit.

He was equally passionate about the school’s history.  He buried a time capsule as one of the organizers of Birch Cliff’s 75th anniversary and was on hand to dig it up at the celebration of the school’s 100th birthday in 2016. David Patterson said there was a lineup at the reunion to talk to Belcher and shake his hand, and he was happy to be in it.

“Big event, little event, it didn’t matter,” Calce said.  “His enthusiasm was out there and everybody saw it. And I think he led by example that way for the kids. You put your heart and soul into that and you make it worth your while.”  

John Belcher, presiding over the Birch Cliff PS 100th anniversary celebration in Sept. 2016.

Belcher also put his heart and soul into a book he spent much of his life writing about the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis Tennessee. He believed that James Earl Ray, who was convicted of the murder, was innocent. He was in good company – King’s family and Rev. Jesse Jackson also think Ray was framed in a conspiracy. 

According to Sheppard and Gourley, Belcher became interested in the King assassination after James Earl Ray fled Memphis for Toronto. One day, when a teenaged John Belcher was getting his passport photo taken, the FBI and RCMP barged in and tore the photo studio apart looking for Ray’s passport pictures. So began Belcher’s lifelong determination to discover the truth, a journey that in itself sounds like a spy novel and includes visits to the site of Camp X, the WWII secret spy training school in Whitby and Camp 30, a Bowmanville POW camp for German soldiers.

The book was never finished but Sheppard and Gourley said American universities are interested in acquiring Belcher’s research.

Cancer diagnosis

Shortly after his retirement, Belcher was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a type of cancer that forms in white blood cells.  His prognosis was not good and Belcher volunteered for a clinical trial involving stem cells. He improved his odds and was able to live life to the best of his ability for more than a decade.

In the end, he “continued being John,” said Gourley.  He slowed down, was accepting of his fate, but never gave up.

Setting an example until he could do so no longer.

Jake Harding summed up Belcher’s legacy this way:  “I’ll never forget Mr. Belcher, just like I’ll never forget the year of Confederation – “1867 1867 1867″.  In the minds and hearts of his students, Mr. B. will never die.”

Funeral arrangements

Visitation for John Belcher will be held on Thurs. May 23 from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm at the McDougall & Brown Funeral Home Scarborough Chapel at 2900 Kingston Rd. in Scarborough.

A funeral service will follow from 1:00 pm to 2:30 pm.

Burial will be held from 2:45 pm – 3:00 pm at Pine Hills Cemetery at 625 Birchmount Rd. 

A reception will be held from 3:00 PM to 5:00 PM at the McDougall & Brown Funeral Home Scarborough Chapel.