Vera Mary Good, 104, on Mar. 19, at Norview Lodge in Simcoe, ON. Born to a Mennonite farm family in Hawkesville, ON, Good completed Grade 8 and then took a job at Kaufmann Rubber. She completed Grades 9 to 12 privately while working, and graduated Grade 13 at Kitchener Waterloo Collegiate top of her class. She was awarded a $100 scholarship, enough to pay tuition for the one-year program at Stratford Teachers College. Upon graduation, Good took a position teaching in a one-room school in Breslau, but hungry for adventure she signed up to volunteer with the Mennonite Central Committee and went to serve as a secretary in MCC’s India headquarters. After three years, she returned to her studies, earning a degree in Social Work from Goshen College in Indiana and later a Master’s Degree in Education for Gifted Children from Northwestern. That was followed by a PhD in Education from Columbia University. Good eventually returned to Canada and started teaching in Etobicoke where she became the region’s second female principal and first female inspector for the Ontario Ministry of Education. Good was part of the original team that launched educational television in Ontario in 1965 and the original producer of Gemini Award-winning pre-school series Polka Dot Door. She worked with TVO in an executive producer capacity for 15 years. In June of 2010, she was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Wilfred Laurier University. Legally blind by that time, she delivered the convocation address to a standing ovation. Good’s life is chronicled in 2017 biography The Exceptional Vera Good: A Life Beyond the Polka Dot Door.
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