Speaker 1: It's sort of a one room school. A dozen children
Speaker 1: aged eight through fourteen come here Monday through Thursday to
Speaker 1: share education with Cameron. The bottom line for me is
Speaker 1: that all children are geniuses, are natural naturally wise initially,
Speaker 1: and I think that children to varying degrees get restricted
Speaker 1: and damaged by the way they get treated. Like Raffie.
Speaker 1: Brent Cameron also had a vision, one that centered entirely
Speaker 1: around his daughter, Atlanta. I'm Atlanta Cameron, and I'm Brent
Speaker 1: and Maureen Cameron's daughter. I was the kid that said
Speaker 1: I don't like school, it's not working for me, and uh,
Speaker 1: I thought it was extraordinary that they said, Okay, let's
Speaker 1: do something about that. Atlanta Cameron was put at the
Speaker 1: center of everything her parents did. They sacrificed a lot
Speaker 1: to give her the perfect childhood, or rather their version
Speaker 1: of the perfect childhood. My dad mentioned that he was
Speaker 1: really scared to have a kid and actually hadn't thought
Speaker 1: he wanted kids because he'd been so terribly lonely in
Speaker 1: his childhood. There wasn't a lot of communication or discussion
Speaker 1: or not no talking about feelings. So it was an
Speaker 1: epiphany for him to have a child and realize he
Speaker 1: could do it differently. This episode is about what happens
Speaker 1: when parents do everything possible to create the ideal environment
Speaker 1: for their child. It's like Raphie's child honoring philosophy come
Speaker 1: to life, but does it work. I'm Chris Garcia and
Speaker 1: this is Finding Raffie, a ten part series from My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio and Fatherly in partnership with Rococo Punch, about
Speaker 1: the life, philosophy, and the work of Raffie, the man
Speaker 1: behind the music. It was the early nineties when Raffie
Speaker 1: came across the Cameron family story across the front of
Speaker 1: the magazine. Read the headline a new model and Education,
Speaker 1: and Atlanta Cameron was the future story. Her article would
Speaker 1: inspire Raffie. It would begin to lay the foundation for
Speaker 1: his child honoring work. But today's story begins almost a
Speaker 1: decade earlier. So let me set the scene. If you
Speaker 1: had walked in, you would have walked into a sixteen
Speaker 1: foot geodesic dome which was perched down on the lake.
Speaker 1: We had a fireplace going, we had two midwives there,
Speaker 1: and yeah, we had a home birth. Wait no, not
Speaker 1: that far back. Fast forward a few years tone before
Speaker 1: Atlanta was featured in any news stories. She said something
Speaker 1: to her parents that any six year old might say,
Speaker 1: I don't like school. And I think that's a pretty
Speaker 1: normal thing for kids to say if they're shy or
Speaker 1: it's just not feeling right for them. They toured me around,
Speaker 1: tried out different places, and I just said, I don't
Speaker 1: like it. I can't. I just I don't like it.
Speaker 1: Why can't I just keep learning from you? Remember she's six.
Speaker 1: And then my dad said, okay, well I'll quit my
Speaker 1: job and I'll start a school. It's too bad Brent
Speaker 1: wasn't here that we could talk more about this. That's
Speaker 1: Maureen Cameron, Atlanta's mom. Brent Cameron, Atlanta's dad passed away
Speaker 1: from cancer in two thousand and twelve, which is why
Speaker 1: you won't hear from him today. But he had a
Speaker 1: big impact on the people he met along the way.
Speaker 1: He looked like the epitome of a hippie, six ft
Speaker 1: something other, big, huge hair coveralls. He was very charismatic,
Speaker 1: a very strong personality. I was exciting to be with him,
Speaker 1: like everything was going to be an adventure, you know,
Speaker 1: because there weren't that many rules. It was all explore
Speaker 1: this explore that the family relocated to Vancouver, from a
Speaker 1: rural part of British Columbia. After a recession shut down
Speaker 1: their small health food store, they moved to the city
Speaker 1: to find work and eventually to open a school geared
Speaker 1: specifically towards Atlanta called Wonder Tree. So I've been listed
Speaker 1: as the co founder, but I always said it was
Speaker 1: more extraordinary that that they started it. As crazy as
Speaker 1: it sounds like, it seems like the bigger choice, but
Speaker 1: my dad had been a teacher in different kinds of
Speaker 1: schools already, so he could. He knew that there his
Speaker 1: ways to do it. So I think I was that
Speaker 1: spark that said like, hey, I'm interested in something different.
Speaker 1: He's like, I know how to do something different, and
Speaker 1: and I have the skills and the knowledge and the passion.
Speaker 1: Let's go for it. He would call newspapers and say, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have a school. I'm starting, and everyone loved
Speaker 1: it until they asked how many students, and when he
Speaker 1: said my daughter and that's it, the parents would go
Speaker 1: I'll wait. Finally, one brave parent enrolled their child in
Speaker 1: Wonder Treat and the Cameron's learning experiment was off and running.
Speaker 1: Soon the school was at capacity, that is, twelve students,
Speaker 1: which is what Brent determined to be the perfect size.
Speaker 1: We didn't have funding in the beginning, and he didn't
Speaker 1: want to charge very much for people to come so
Speaker 1: that people could afford it. I remember that we would
Speaker 1: go behind office supply companies and would go to their
Speaker 1: dumpster full of paper that they were just throwing out,
Speaker 1: and so that's how we got our paper for the school.
Speaker 1: At first, my dad used to say, we're rich, and
Speaker 1: I'd say what, And I'd get so excited. I'm like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, we're rich. And he'd be like, because
Speaker 1: we have each other, and I'd go but like, it
Speaker 1: chokes me up thinking about it now because I don't
Speaker 1: have him anymore. He just saw that so much of
Speaker 1: what was going on our society started when we're young,
Speaker 1: when we're kids, and if we're not seen as whole humans,
Speaker 1: if we're just seen as you know, that this industrialized
Speaker 1: model of schooling kind of being in parallel with the
Speaker 1: industrialization of our society. Right. We didn't always go to school,
Speaker 1: and it's become such a gospel that you you go
Speaker 1: to school and this is the only way to learn
Speaker 1: is if you can't learn outside of school. So we
Speaker 1: left the classroom and did real world projects as much
Speaker 1: as possible, because it's really important to understand quote unquote
Speaker 1: the real world and not just live in a little
Speaker 1: school bubble. Right. The kids made all of the decisions.
Speaker 1: They got to decide what to spend tuition money on,
Speaker 1: meaning they chose who they wanted to hire and what
Speaker 1: they wanted to learn. Like clowning. They hired an expert
Speaker 1: clown for that. But they also did things that were
Speaker 1: pretty incredible, like learn how to code before that was
Speaker 1: even a thing kids did so I don't know, if
Speaker 1: you know the old school max they were like a
Speaker 1: screen and everything. So the carrying case was about, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know, three ft by four ft and very heavy.
Speaker 1: Kids would carry those home for the weekend and bring
Speaker 1: their computer home as if they were portable. They got
Speaker 1: so good at computers that a local power company hired
Speaker 1: them to make a computer program for their business and
Speaker 1: paid them a lot of money. They got paid was
Speaker 1: it fifty third thousand fifty dollars? He was very interested
Speaker 1: in taking away labels and really meeting children where they
Speaker 1: were and saying, how can I help you learn and
Speaker 1: be the best you. Meanwhile, the Cameron's juggled a lot
Speaker 1: to see Prince Vision through the school, finances, the press,
Speaker 1: parenting workshops, community potlocks. Plus Maureen was also working full
Speaker 1: time as a nurse to keep the family afloat. But
Speaker 1: then she had a bad car accident and had to
Speaker 1: find another source of income, so they opened a home
Speaker 1: schooling branch of Wonder Tree, which Maureen ran. It was
Speaker 1: seven practically, I mean not entirely, but we kind of
Speaker 1: were living, breathing and eating it. It was all consuming,
Speaker 1: for sure, for my parents to run this school. And
Speaker 1: so I remember going to bed listening to them working
Speaker 1: in the office across the hall. For me waking up
Speaker 1: and they were working. I became very independent because they
Speaker 1: were too busy working away, and so I'd be like,
Speaker 1: oh well, and then I just figure it out. He
Speaker 1: would mythologize things about me because I was part of
Speaker 1: the school that he was promoting and talking about. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I became a mythology and and this thing. For instance,
Speaker 1: Atlanta says she didn't learn how to read until she
Speaker 1: was nine, and Brent would put his own spin on
Speaker 1: her story. He sometimes claimed she was eleven. It was
Speaker 1: his way of embellishing the school's narrative that kids learning
Speaker 1: should be self directed. He had a habit of doing
Speaker 1: things like that. He would be very good at underestimating
Speaker 1: some things and overdoing so, as all good storytellers to. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The pressure that I felt was to turn out well.
Speaker 1: I was the first example of the school of this
Speaker 1: learning model, and so I better turn out well so
Speaker 1: that I can show, yes, my parents did this crazy thing.
Speaker 1: They sacrifice so much financially, emotionally, whatever they've sacrificed so
Speaker 1: much made this amazing thing. And oh boy, I better
Speaker 1: turn out well because I'm the one. It's like, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm the one as an example of Look, I turned
Speaker 1: out like this, so that means it works. Eventually, the
Speaker 1: pressure of all the hours of work took a toll
Speaker 1: on the Camerons. After ten years, Brent walked away from
Speaker 1: Wonder Tree. At this point, Atlanta was fifteen. My dad
Speaker 1: could see that I was a teenager and could use
Speaker 1: some community, and he needed a break and just needed
Speaker 1: a little pause. So Hi homeschooled for a couple of years.
Speaker 1: It was a bit lonely, um and sometimes I wonder like, oh,
Speaker 1: should I have gone to normal school just to try it?
Speaker 1: Out or what would have that been like, but he
Speaker 1: still had so much passion for running an independent school.
Speaker 1: After a brief hiatus, Brent started another school and once
Speaker 1: again Atlanta was at the center of it. Yeah, to
Speaker 1: be the wonder child is what people would often say.
Speaker 1: I would just go, Okay, I have some understanding what
Speaker 1: it must be like to be famous, because you get
Speaker 1: this identity that's like kind of outside of who you
Speaker 1: are that people are responding to today. We continue our
Speaker 1: education series with a profile of a Vancouver school so
Speaker 1: innovative it isn't even called a school. My name's Alanna
Speaker 1: Cameron and I've been here for about a year and
Speaker 1: a half. I think that maybe more who knows. And
Speaker 1: the reason I'm here is I helped create it. They
Speaker 1: called it Virtual High Virtual because it was originally supposed
Speaker 1: to be all online. It would be like a wonder
Speaker 1: Tree for teenagers. The virtual part didn't last long though.
Speaker 1: We got a house, this large mansion house that like
Speaker 1: had lots of floors and rooms, but the idea was
Speaker 1: it could be a meeting place. Well, we ended up
Speaker 1: going there every day, Like I think almost everyone came
Speaker 1: every day because it was just so exciting to learn
Speaker 1: in person and have mentors and be social together. Like
Speaker 1: at Wondered. The students ran everything and they loved being
Speaker 1: there so much they slept over by choice. They hired
Speaker 1: a mom to chaperone. Meanwhile, people from all over, from
Speaker 1: academics to celebrities, came to visit this ramshackle mansion run
Speaker 1: by teenagers. My dad had this great idea of giving
Speaker 1: out awards of excellence to people we thought were doing
Speaker 1: exceptional things in the world. So Linus Pauling, Jane Goodall,
Speaker 1: Boba Tundla Tunji. So we got to go to their
Speaker 1: talks and then go backstage and have a chat and say, hey,
Speaker 1: we think you're excellent. We run this crazy school, and
Speaker 1: we're giving you an award from our crazy school. And
Speaker 1: so Michael Moore actually came after a documentary premier. Now
Speaker 1: 'am Chomsky. Now I'm chomps Chomsky as well. Yeah, I know,
Speaker 1: so fun. Gnome Chomsky, the father of modern linguistics and
Speaker 1: the whole nature versus nurture argument. He had to check
Speaker 1: out Virtual High. I think a lot of people were
Speaker 1: fascinated about what was going on. I think it gave
Speaker 1: people some kind of a wow. This is a possibility,
Speaker 1: it's a potential. There's something interesting going on here, and
Speaker 1: I want to be part of it. The school also
Speaker 1: had weekly coffee houses, kind of like an open mic
Speaker 1: for students and their families, and one night Raphie showed up,
Speaker 1: going to take a walk outside today. I'm going to
Speaker 1: see what I can find today. Going to take a
Speaker 1: walk outside today. I'm going to see what I can
Speaker 1: find today. It was like four year old part of
Speaker 1: me that kept saying, it's fee you know, like I
Speaker 1: was like there's a little bit of a fan inside
Speaker 1: of me at all times. But on the outside I
Speaker 1: was a fifteen sixteen year old saying, oh, it's so
Speaker 1: nice to meet you and um, and also so exciting
Speaker 1: that he to see that he truly cares about children,
Speaker 1: that it wasn't an act. I remember being fascinated with
Speaker 1: virtual high and the whole idea of learning by a
Speaker 1: stuff design, you know, on the half of students. So
Speaker 1: I hung up. I went over there and you know,
Speaker 1: kind of soaked up the vibe and talk to people.
Speaker 1: You know. I was just amazed that they trusted the
Speaker 1: learning process, they trusted life, they trusted their daughters, creative
Speaker 1: response to a situation and not many people would be
Speaker 1: able to do what they did, but they chose that.
Speaker 1: And I was intrigued by the outside today, gonna see
Speaker 1: what I can find today. I'm gonna take a walk
Speaker 1: outside today. I'm gonna see what I can find. I
Speaker 1: think he and brent recognized something in each other. Maybe
Speaker 1: maybe it was that shared desire to contribute to the world.
Speaker 1: My dad just felt very lonely most of his childhood. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you've watched Madman and and That, when you see
Speaker 1: the main character go home and pat his kids on
Speaker 1: the head as he walks by them and goes to
Speaker 1: get the newspaper and a drink, like seeing that show
Speaker 1: really hit home for me because I realized, Oh, that's
Speaker 1: what he meant, this non emotionally available experience. So I
Speaker 1: think that's why he liked saying I was a co founder,
Speaker 1: because for him I was that inspiration to go, Wow,
Speaker 1: it can be done so differently. It can be done
Speaker 1: with heart, it can be done with caring, and there's
Speaker 1: another way to do this. After a bit, Paradise got
Speaker 1: a little lost. Brenton Maureen ended up getting a divorce,
Speaker 1: but Brenton Atlanta continued to share a house and a
Speaker 1: life together because you'd moved out and I had you
Speaker 1: moved out of our house and I stayed there, so
Speaker 1: because everything in that house represented a kind of a
Speaker 1: center point of of what was going on with the
Speaker 1: move from Wonder Tree to Virtual High. So it's definitely
Speaker 1: a little confusing. Meanwhile, the school was being run on
Speaker 1: a shoestring budget and things were starting to unravel. I
Speaker 1: think there started being a bit of a slippery slope
Speaker 1: after all the years. I mean, the parents loved him,
Speaker 1: but it's because of my mother that they stayed. We
Speaker 1: had some parents leave because they felt like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: my kids aren't following a curriculum. How are they going
Speaker 1: to be successful in the world. This is crazy. And
Speaker 1: he would just be like, too bad, That's what I'm doing.
Speaker 1: And my mom would soften it and try to bring
Speaker 1: people in and sometimes that worked, and sometimes people would
Speaker 1: leave because they thought it was just too far out
Speaker 1: there and they'd get scared. We're flying by the seat
Speaker 1: of our pants. We were not an official school, so
Speaker 1: we had to charge tuition for our program, and we
Speaker 1: charged pretty much a base rate tuition that just allowed
Speaker 1: us to scrape by. This is Michael Maser. We weren't
Speaker 1: in it to get rich or to be an elite
Speaker 1: prep school for teenagers. Michael co founded Virtual High with
Speaker 1: Brent and he was in the trenches for what happened next.
Speaker 1: Michael said, as the school initially had support through British
Speaker 1: Columbia's Ministry of Education. We tried our our hardest to
Speaker 1: garner that ministry support and they offered it and then
Speaker 1: took it away, and that left us really flat and demoralized.
Speaker 1: Raffie even donated money to try and help. He sang
Speaker 1: it a benefit concert for the school, but it wasn't enough. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: Virtual High didn't make it, and so you can imagine
Speaker 1: my disappointment when we did have to fold it because
Speaker 1: we couldn't seal support from the education ministry despite many
Speaker 1: people's endorsement of what of what we were doing. After
Speaker 1: only three years, Virtual High shut down. Ultimately it came
Speaker 1: down to a lack of funding, or maybe people got
Speaker 1: spooked that the students were running the show instead of
Speaker 1: sitting at their desks taking tests. Either way, it closed
Speaker 1: before the world could really see if this experiment worked. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was definitely sad and felt like untethered in a way.
Speaker 1: It was like suddenly all the strings were cut and
Speaker 1: then we were all just left to our own devices.
Speaker 1: It was a community and it had this beating heart,
Speaker 1: and so once the physical place was gone, it was
Speaker 1: hard to recreate that feeling for sure, because we have
Speaker 1: this shared experience that's really hard to explain two people
Speaker 1: that weren't there. There's this deep connection that just stays. Brent,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, wasn't willing to walk away from
Speaker 1: his vision. He moved virtual high online and kept at it,
Speaker 1: and that's what he was doing until he passed away.
Speaker 1: He did mention when he was in the hospital before
Speaker 1: he passed away that he regretted not having a little
Speaker 1: more time with me and knowing that he missed out
Speaker 1: on some things because he was so focus, so focused
Speaker 1: on his work. He wasn't a normal dad. He had
Speaker 1: all the kids in the school where his children in
Speaker 1: some ways like he was available for everyone. After everything ended,
Speaker 1: Atlanta backpacked through Nepal, but eventually she enrolled in music
Speaker 1: college and that was kind of nice for her to
Speaker 1: try out a place with structure. Then Atlanta found herself
Speaker 1: back in Creston, British Columbia, the small town where she
Speaker 1: was born She now owns and runs a coffee roastery.
Speaker 1: It's called Lark Coffee Roasters, inspired by the saying on
Speaker 1: a lark to do something just for the fun of it.
Speaker 1: That's important to me that whatever I do is because
Speaker 1: of the joined enthusiasm, and that definitely stems directly from
Speaker 1: going to the kind of school that I went to,
Speaker 1: and I miss it. That's one thing like I'm coming
Speaker 1: to terms with is that that it was such a
Speaker 1: rich experience of community, and that sometimes I forget the
Speaker 1: loss of that, that I don't have that in my
Speaker 1: life in the same way since then, just feeling seen
Speaker 1: and heard and held by a group of people is
Speaker 1: such a good experience. So I guess I'm coming to
Speaker 1: terms with the fact that the world is not as
Speaker 1: safe and beautiful as that experience was. It's a little harsher.
Speaker 1: I mean, the world isn't as kind of place as
Speaker 1: as wonder True was. Maureen lives next door to Atlanta,
Speaker 1: and they see each other almost every day. I think
Speaker 1: if you as a woman in your own right, doing
Speaker 1: your own thing, and we kind of keep track of
Speaker 1: each other. And yeah, and because we live in the
Speaker 1: same small community, we can go to events together. Which
Speaker 1: is really nice. I wanted to be seen as myself.
Speaker 1: It wasn't just from the outside world. It was also
Speaker 1: from my family, like, hey, you guys decided to start
Speaker 1: to school and do all these things, which is amazing
Speaker 1: and great, and yet I need to figure out who
Speaker 1: I am outside of this family. And it was such
Speaker 1: a strong narrative that it definitely took some work to
Speaker 1: go like, hey, this is me over here, just as
Speaker 1: I am. So even when you're seen and heard, there's
Speaker 1: still an individual. Is very important part of growing up,
Speaker 1: right m h. Next time on Finding Raffie. Like anyone else.
Speaker 1: You know, I've had periods of my life where you know,
Speaker 1: I've had challenges to go through, but it's always a
Speaker 1: return to love and a return to play. Just a
Speaker 1: little playful Raffie, yeah, baby, So you know, it's just
Speaker 1: my way of enjoying every single day. Joy is not
Speaker 1: something to be postponed. Finding Raffie is a production in
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio and Fatherly in partnership with Rococo Punch.
Speaker 1: It's produced by Catherine Fendalosa, Meredith Hannig, and James Trout.
Speaker 1: Production assistance from Charlotte Livingston. Alex French is our story consultant.
Speaker 1: Our senior producer is Andrea Swahee. Emily Foreman is our editor.
Speaker 1: Fact checking by Andrea Lopez Crusado. Raphae's music is courtesy
Speaker 1: of Troubadour Music Special thanks to Kim Layton at Troubadour
Speaker 1: and the news clips featuring Brenton Atlanta Cameron Our courtesy
Speaker 1: of the CBC. Our executive producers are Jessica Albert and
Speaker 1: John Parotti at Rococo, Punch, Ty Trimble, Mike Rothman and
Speaker 1: Jeff Eisenman at Fatherly and Me. Chris Garcia thank you
Speaker 1: for listening.