Profile on Ron Mason

BY HEATHER McGOWAN

School Plant Officials Association of B.C. (SPOA B.C.) member and past president Ron Mason retired from School District No. 67 (Okanagan-Skaha) in Penticton in 1999; a district that Mason describes as “relatively small.” Almost seven thousand students at tend the 19 schools in the 550square-kilometre district.

Before Mason joined SPOA and began his career with the school district in 1973, he worked for Cominco, a mining company whose headquarters is based in Vancouver. It was there that he developed his management skills. He gives the company credit for his beginnings saying, “Whenever anyone asks me where I went to university, I tell them I went to the ‘University of Cominco’.”

Mason described the transition from construction work to the school division as easy, and noted that the job was still about working with people. “The only dif ference was cleaner clothes,” jokes Mason. “And cleaner language.”

Mason has lived in Penticton since his start with the school district. “I remember visiting [Penticton] before we moved here, and thinking what a great opportunity it would be to land a job and live in the community.” As luck would have it, that’s exactly what happened.

Mason started his 26-year career with the school district as the superintendent of maintenance. In the beginning, Mason says that the district “didn’t have qualified trades people – so I built a team with the best people I could ‘steal’.” He developed quite the reputation for “stealing” workers and bringing them to work in the school district because Mason wanted the best.

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“The best people were already working,” he chuckles, “so I took them.”

Having a team comprised of those people he considered the “ultimate” allowed Mason to develop and maintain a system for the school district that, as superintendent of maintenance, he considers gratifying.

“We never forgot why we were there,” Mason says. “The goal was to create a good, clean, effective learning environment and provide facilities for [school district employees] to do their work.”

Mason notes that while all of the districts are different, during his time with School District No. 67, they “tried to be a leader and, boastfully, were.”

In the fall of 1974, Mason became the zone representative. Nine years later, he was elected president of SPOA B.C. He says that the highlight of his term was preparing for the annual conference.

Mason still attends the annual SPOA conference, and has gone every year since 1973 – with the exception of one year he missed out during a 50-day and 50-night road trip to Alaska.

Now that Mason is retired, he jokes that he is “too busy to work.” He keeps busy with fishing, skiing and his grandchildren, adding that retirement is “the best job I’ve ever had.”