First Appeared in the Barrie Advance
Sunday Aug 20, 2006

The unique and limitless Geoff Booth
(Guest Column by Elaine Murray)

My 83-year-old father has macular degeneration but he constantly amazes me with his feats of visionary prowess. The other day I was having lunch with him at my parents’ house, when I noticed an ant scavenging for crumbs under the kitchen table. “Oh, there’s an ant,” says I. With nary a pause in chewing, he briefly glances down and squishes it. Dead. An ant. This is a man who has challenges recognizing the faces of people he has known for years. But yet when forced to defend his domestic domicile against the ravages of a creature smaller than a piece of rice, he’s suddenly Dead-Eye Dan.

I’ve recently made the acquaintance of another equally fascinating, visually challenged individual. Termed legally blind at 18, Oro Station’s Geoff Booth is a professor with Georgian College’s Institute of University Partnership and Advanced Studies. Geoff has a diploma in journalism, a B.A. and Masters and is currently working on his doctorate in Education. He’s a multi-instrumentalist – accomplished on guitar, mandolin and harmonica. He has even performed at folk festivals, including Mariposa. And to top it all off, he bikes 45 minutes to work nearly every day to Georgian’s Orillia Campus where he teaches politics and history. Now while Geoff can be a bit of a crazy man, he doesn’t have a death wish. He bikes along the rail trail and is a popular carpool passenger with fellow faculty members during bad weather.

Born with one eye that never developed, Geoff was fitted with an artificial one at six months of age. While he has never had binocular vision, his sight was perfect until the age of 12 when, in an unfortunate twist of events, he was hit in the good eye causing a hemorrhage and eventual scarring to the retina. In explaining his condition, Geoff compares himself to a traditional 35mm camera. “It’s not the lens that is damaged but the film,” he says. “When an image hits my retina (the film), this is when it gets garbled or distorted.” Similar to those afflicted with macular degeneration, Geoff relies mainly on his peripheral vision.

Despite his “less-than-perfect” vision, Geoff had limited problems at school – at any level. It wasn’t until he went to university that he purchased a Close Circuit Television (CCT) to help him with all the reading.

After graduating from Centennial’s journalism program – and before amassing the many letters after his name – Geoff landed a job, ironically, with an automotive magazine. But since moving up the journalistic job chain would involve working for a community newspaper and he didn’t drive, he knew this career was short-lived. Returning to school, he enrolled into the University of Toronto’s Bachelor of Commerce program but an elective history class changed the course of his life. Eschewing the corporate career path, he threw away his calculator, started growing his hair and stopped trimming his beard. Graduating in the ‘90s, there was a deficit of teaching positions so he went back to U of T for his Masters in History of Education. A friend suggested he investigate teaching possibilities at Georgian and there happened to be an opening teaching politics – Geoff’s minor – so he was thrilled.

Geoff says that teaching hasn’t presented him with too many concerns. His toughest issue is marking handwritten exams. He asks students to try and write neatly, but after 20 minutes they usually give in to exam frenzy. He also asks them not to write in pencil since it doesn’t show up too well on his CCT. Geoff jokes that his students have one advantage in that if they ever skip his class they don’t have to worry about avoiding him in the hallways afterwards – just don’t say hello.

But Geoff was glad a special someone – his future wife Julianne – said hello to him when he attended the CNIB camp in MacTier in 1983. She was a camp counsellor. Marrying in 2000, Geoff says the long courtship gave them the ability to recognize things in a relationship that other people don’t. “You know how far to go,” Geoff says. “How many beers you can have before she gives you the look or how much you can say before she just tells you to shut up – those kinds of things,” he laughs. “And I’m lucky and grateful to have met someone with a lot of patience.”

During his post-secondary school years, Geoff spent five summers as a camp counsellor in MacTier; he also reconnected with the kids at the W. Ross Macdonald School for the Blind in Brantford when he was back at school. He is also active with the Oro-Medonte Historical Association. In addition, Geoff has volunteered with the Barrie Learning Centre talking to adult students about his educational path. He tells them, “You can be unique in the struggle you have, but you’re not limited in what you can do because of it.”

Well-spoken Geoff. You’ve certainly shown us you’re both unique and limitless.

(Elaine Murray is a local writer who has hijacked the column of the vacationing Donna Douglas.)

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