Advocacy is also important to Ida. She was outraged when one of her students was fired from his job with the County because of his low literacy skills and was concerned for a woman who measured the cleaning fluids for her job in the hospital by "glugs". One female student would only give Ida her first name. Ida accepted that, knowing that there could never be an official record of the student's participation in the program. Ida is particularly generous towards a group of lonely but fun loving Newfoundlanders who are also part of the program ("I'm not sure though, if they should be registered for literacy or ESL!" Ida laughed.)

We had lunch in a little restaurant down the street and were joined by Diane Ernst, one of the students in Ida's program. We talked about many things, being a student, learning to play golf and raising children. The time flew by. I looked at my watch and realized I was due to be on the road to Sundre.

Fifteen minutes later, heading west on Highway 27 and enjoying the first glimpse of the mountains, I thought of a story Ida had told me earlier about George, a man in his mid-forties who had come bursting into her office one day to tell her that he had written his first love note.

"That's great!" Ida told him.

"Do you want to know what it said?" George asked.

"Oh no, that's OK."

"But I want to tell you."

Ida put her pen down and looked up at George. "Ok, sure," she said. "What did the note say?"

"'Gone downtown'," George beamed.

Ida had looked at me and said, "It rook me awhile to realize what all was said in that note. I thought how never before had he been able to read and write and how in those two words he was saying to his wife - 'I'm going downtown, I want you to know that and I'll be back soon'. He called it a 'love note' and it really was."

I was to meet SHARON FITZSIMONDS at the Sundre Elementary School. I stropped at the school office to ask where I would find her. The bell rang and suddenly the halls were filled with small children and lots of noise. I followed the school secretary through the corridors ra the back of the phys. ed. office, where, behind a long bookshelf, Sharon has a small work space.

We decided to hold our interview in the staff room. There was a popcorn sale in progress that day so there were teachers and little helpers popping and bagging popcorn at the far end of the room. We made ourselves comfortable in two big upholstered chairs.

Sharon was instrumental in starting Project Read Soon, the literacy program I had just visited in Olds. She was serving on the Sundre Family and Community Support Services Board in the fall of 1986, when the board was planning new projects for the upcoming year. Sharon had worked with ESL students in Red Deer before moving to Sundre and knew that literacy was an issue people were talking more and more about. She volunteered to do a "needs assessment" to see if there was a need for a literacy program in the Sundre area.

"We had a committee of three people to investigate the idea," Sharon raId me. "Then one person moved away and the other had a baby so I just kept going on my own. I stumbled along for 8 months, visiting one literacy program, getting ideas, then following up leads and names to visit another program."