Paul Raymond had no intention of returning to Orillia after he left at the end of high school.
He didn’t exactly end his secondary school experience on a high note.
“Orillia was pretty small minded back in my day, in the ’60s,” he said.
He was president of the student council at Orillia District Collegiate and Vocational Institute when the decision was made to put on a skit at school, during which a student dressed as a girl was asked if he had been asked to a holly hop dance.
“No. I’ve been ‘assed’ many times, but not to the holly hop,” he replied.
“We come off the stage and old Mort Winch, the principal — a lovely old man who wasn’t sure what was going on most of the time — was absolutely ashen,” Raymond recalled. “Then we went by old Mr. Post, the vice-principal. He was just apoplectic.”
Raymond was called to the office and told everyone involved in the skit would be expelled.
That didn’t happen, but he did have to take to the school’s PA system and apologize to students and staff.
“Meanwhile, the young staff just loved it,” Raymond said with a laugh. “They were just breaking up at the back. You could see them.”
That expression of “regret” wasn’t enough for the powers that be. Raymond then had to go on CFOR, the local radio station at the time, and apologize to the town.
“Nobody in town knew what the hell I was talking about,” he said.
In 1965, during his graduating year, the student council decided to hold a coffeehouse instead of a dance. A duo from Toronto was paid to come to the school and sing folk songs. They performed Seven Old Ladies — a parody of the much older Oh Dear! What Can the Matter Be? It included the lyric, “Oh, dear. What can the matter be? Seven old ladies were locked in the lavatory.”
“Monday morning, I’m back in the office,” Raymond said, sounding as perplexed as he likely was at the time.
He was admonished for bringing in an act that sang “lewd songs.”
“Lavatory? That’s lewd? I said, ‘This is just stupid.’ I got up and I walked out,” he said.
That was his Footloose moment and, before long, he was dancing his way out of Orillia.
“There was one road heading out of town in September 1965 and I was on it,” he said.
He made his way to Sudbury, where he attended Laurentian University, followed by graduate studies at the University of Waterloo. He went on to earn a bachelor’s degree, then a master’s, in education at the University of Toronto.
Raymond was a teacher before becoming a school administrator.
His career eventually took him to the province’s Ministry of Education, where he spent a decade as a superintendent. It was his job to make sure schools in central Ontario adhered to all the appropriate rules. He was also responsible for inspecting private schools.
He also spent time as director of the Independent Learning Centre, which had 100,000 students taking online courses.
At the age of 52, he retired — for a while.
He started his own consulting business to assist those who wanted to set up private schools.
His wife, Natalie, was the head of a girls’ school in Toronto when she was approached by former Georgian College president Bruce Hill, who had been working in the United Arab Emirates. A princess there wanted to open a private school for girls, using an Ontario curriculum.
Over the three years it took to get the school up and running, Natalie flew and back and forth to help. Raymond also went because the goal was for it to be an accredited Ontario private school.
When Natalie retired from her job, the couple moved there.
They lived in Abu Dhabi from 2004 to 2006.
Raymond had been flying back and forth to Italy in the summers because he was director of Canada College Italy, an English-language school. He became head of that school, a job he held until 2009. The couple then headed back to the United Arab Emirates for another two years.
“So, it was only after retirement that life got interesting,” Raymond said.
He enjoyed the “laid-back” lifestyle in Italy. It was in stark contrast to that of Abu Dhabi.
“Going to Abu Dhabi was a real shock because everything is new and everything is fast. That includes the traffic,” he said, adding, at one point, pedestrians were being killed almost daily.
He recommends it as a place to visit — the money is good for Westerners who work there, too — but “there was an underbelly to the place that wasn’t nice — the abuse of workers.”
“The worker bees, so to speak, lived in camps out in the desert. Worker safety basically didn’t exist,” he said.
Early one morning, his wife was heading to her job when a young woman, who was a maid, jumped in the back of Natalie’s car and said, “Save me. My mistress beats me and she’s taken my passport and I can’t leave.” She was looking for a ride to the Ethiopian embassy.
After returning to Orillia in 2015, Raymond decided golfing and other activities often weren’t cutting it. So, he bought the Hog N’ Penny, a British-style pub downtown.
“It’s fun to just chat with people. There are so many regulars. It’s like Cheers,” he said.
It hasn’t all been fun. Running a small pub can be challenging at the best of times, but it became more difficult after Raymond smashed his elbow during a fall from his roof. In a cast after undergoing surgery, he found himself in the pub’s kitchen when his cook wasn’t available.
He later had a battle with cancer.
“I thought, ‘What am I doing?’ Those old, boring days were pretty good,” he said.
He and his staff, including his son, Mark, who is the manager, have made it work. They know what their customers want — a modest but quality selection of beer and a small but mighty menu.
“If you have a menu with 70 pages, it isn’t being cooked fresh. Keep it small, but make it good,” Raymond said.
With Orillia’s downtown evolving, and the city’s plans for the area and the waterfront in the coming years, he is excited and optimistic — a far cry from the experiences in the ’60s that soured the town for him.
“I never wanted to come back here, not even in 2005, but it’s matured. I’m very optimistic about this town,” he said. “I’m not sure how many more winters I can handle, though.”
This feature appears each Monday. If you have an idea for someone who should be profiled in this space, send your suggestion to [email protected].
