"I didn't have time to be lonely," she explains. And as for the l2-year-old son still at home, "It was my husband's turn now. He had been away working in the Territories for years, so it was a good time for him and Todd to spend some time together."

Betti is eager for more skills and knowledge. Now a worker in a group home for mentally and physically handicapped adults, Betty has taken courses in sign language for the deaf, typing, embroidery, cake-decorating, silver- smithing, jewellery-making, pattern-drafting, lapidary and linograph work. Now she is taking two Memorial University courses - a psychology course on human development ("a help to my work now"), and a criminology course ("very few of us know our rights"). She also meets monthly via teleconference with crafts council members in seven other Labrador communities scattered along the coast.

"It's all an asset, all these different things", she explains. There is so much to learn. I get angry with people who sit and complain. I saw a plaque which said "I used to wish someone would do something until I realized that someone was me".

Does she have any regrets about the decades it took her to get her education?

"It was years before there was a school system for me," she answers, but adds, "I'm glad I did it my way."

Reta Crane Saunders has two homes: her own, with a husband and three children ranging from six to 13, and Libra House, the transition shelter for battered women where she works. She also has determination determination to educate herself in every way she can.

"I feel I'm really hungry for knowledge like a sponge. The reality is that I can't just pick up my husband and family and go somewhere to university as I would like to, so I'm going to do the next best thing: to take advantage of all the opportunities that are here. "

Those opportunities have included courses in first aid, bead-working, wood-carving, literacy-training, physical fitness, typing, effective writing, and a correspondence course in working with the disabled. There have also been workshops and practical training in crisis intervention lectures, role-playing and networking.

Recently, Reta was in Toronto along with other rural women from across Canada, to study ways to build more effective local organizations. She has taken a personality-indicator course, and has begun a demanding two-year course in reality therapy, together with ten others from the central Labrador area. But hand in hand with these courses have been the informal learning opportunities.

"I think one of the greatest learning experiences for me was being a volunteer on the Libra House committee. I learned about land- lord-tenant dealings, leases, evictions, incorporation, grant and proposal writing, TV and radio interviews, PR, the different levels of government and how they work, and lobbying. "

Reta is part of a teleconference network, working to start a provincial association against family violence. Now that the original five groups have expanded to 11, they have decided on a constitution and are planning to incorporate.

Besides the teleconference system, Reta finds National Film Board Films and videos very effective tools. She also appreciates educational TV especially consumer programs.

Ultimately, she feels, "you share just about everything you learn with colleagues, staff, friends and family. People are the greatest source of education." She goes on to explain: at conferences, for example, you learn more from the interactions afterwards and in between the sessions than from the sessions themselves. Our greatest lesson is in living, so if you share other people's lives, you're learning a lot."

"Knowledge is wealth to me," Reta says. "Some people want to collect their pennies; I want to collect knowledge that's what's valuable to me. Life is a continuous learning experience. So as long as opportunities to learn are there, I'll be taking them."

Laura Jackson in an extension coordinator for the Extension Division of Memorial University, and lives in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Labrador.