Celebrating 60 Years of Social Work

The fiery founding Dean of the Faculty of Social Welfare, Dr. Tim Tyler 

The Faculty of Social Work invites alumni, current students, faculty and community members to celebrate 60 years of innovation and impact. We begin our 60 faces of social work with a look back at the faculty’s first dean, who set a trailblazing trajectory of the new school in 1966.

It has been a remarkable 60 years for the Faculty of Social Work. The faculty has become one of the largest schools of social work in Canada and one of the top schools in north America in terms of research productivity. Over the decades the innovative faculty grew to provide education across Alberta, and its talented and passionate graduates and researchers have had a profound impact in many ways. 

The school has graduated Members of the Legislative Assembly, international and local community development leaders and, of course, generations of impactful social workers who have helped millions while re-imagining what the discipline of social work can accomplish. 

A stormy beginning 

The fledgling faculty began when the University of Alberta decided to develop two new programs – library sciences which stayed at the University of Alberta and social work – which went to the new University of Calgary, making Social Welfare one of the University of Calgary’s founding faculties.

“Of course, nobody in the new university had a clue about what social work was or whether they even wanted it!” recalled Dr. Tim Tyler, PhD, the faculty’s fiery founding Dean. Tyler was the catalyst and even when I interviewed him for this article, at age 92, he was an imposing, and somewhat intimidating personality principled, unbowed, unrepentant and above all unapologetic. 

It was the fall of 2016 and I had just started with the faculty a month or so prior, so I was already a little nervous about interviewing Tyler who was something of a legendary figure. In just a few minutes in I understood why there was – to put it mildly – a little friction around his appointment as dean in 1966.

I began poorly, by asking him what he remembered about the founding of the Faculty of Social Work. He paused, fixed me with a withering gaze, and said, “Not social work – social welfare!” 

“If you want to help people, you do it with legislation, not with sitting down with them and talking about their problems,” he said flatly. Even after 50 years he remained singularly focused on the role of social work – er welfare - as an instrument to change social policy. 

“I grew up during Depression on a farm with nothing.  James Shaver was the Methodist minister who founded the agrarian political movement called the CCF that later became the NDP. He just made so much sense to me … a minister, a Protestant minister, talking about the poor, in Winnipeg when he said, ‘We have to do something. We have to change politics in Canada. We have to have better legislation.’”

This was the fire that forged Tyler’s steely determination. After training pilots in the Second World War he went to university and completed a commerce degree, which he says “didn't appeal” to him. He then did a year of social work at UBC. A few years later he did his master's degree in social work at the University of Toronto. Where he says he came to understand “the true different models of social work.”

An educational path that focused on training adult students

Interestingly Tyler then decided to pursue a fellowship to study Industrial Education at UCLA to better understand the most effective methods of training adults in the workforce, following a suggestion from his supervisor Roby Kidd, PhD, who believed that graduate students – especially after the war – were adults with some life experience, and merited a different educational approach than undergraduates. The UCLA fellowship led to Tyler being offered a Kellogg foundation grant to pursue his PhD under the guidance of Herbert Hunsaker, at Columbia University, where he worked on Hunsaker’s famous study that helped to move nursing education from hospitals to universities.

Tyler then came to Calgary where he became the Director of Research for the United Way and working with the provincial government began chipping away at issues like child welfare, authoring a report that recommended that churches should close their orphanages and that the provincial government should take responsibility for the children. 

At that time, the new Alberta Association of Social Workers along with the Junior League and several other organizations persuaded the University of Alberta to create the social work program that was subsequently given to the University of Calgary. An advisory committee that included academic representatives from established programs at the University of Michigan and the University of California, Berkley, interviewed Tyler and recommended him as the right man for the job.

“I got a call from the president of the University of Calgary and I had never met him,” said Tyler. “He said, ‘Would you be interested being appointed the director of the social work school we're going to establish?’ I didn't say, ‘Maybe’, I said, ‘Sure.’ The social work committee practically had a heart attack. They couldn't believe it. They knew nothing about my background.”

Not surprisingly Tyler incorporated much of what he had learned about adult education when setting the course for his faculty, and for Calgary in 1966, his methods were somewhat unorthodox. 

Education that honours mature students

“Graduate education in social work should very much honour self-directed, mature students,” he said. “They've already got a degree. Some of them are married with children. They have a lot of experience, maybe less now than after the war, but still, you should honour them. These are adult students, they better learn what to find out and to figure what's right for them. When they graduate, they better have a model that suits them.”

Tyler said the “wild independence” as he ironically put it, that he gave his students didn’t exactly appeal to university administration, which led to frequent clashes with the Dean of Graduate Studies, adding to President Armstrong’s list of headaches with the new Social Welfare Dean.

He recalled receiving a phone call from President Armstrong soon after he was appointed. “So why do you think the president of the university phoned me and sid, ‘I want to talk to you?’ It was because social workers in Alberta were appalled. They signed a petition to get rid of me!” He recalled with a chuckle. “The clinical social workers in Alberta were quite outraged with my approach to developing a school that had a lot of policy orientation.” 

A turning point for the faculty

Tyler recalls inviting the disgruntled social workers to come in for a discussion where he promptly presented them with a lengthy lecture on the history of social work vs. social welfare. In the end he said he managed to assuage their fears and even recruited some of his fiercest critics.

“Did they want to teach, or did they want to just keep being critical?” Recalled Tyler. “Well, they all joined me.” 

This exact moment, when Tyler brought in his fiercest critics to create a larger tent, was in hindsight a defining moment in the faculty’s evolution since it brought in the voice of the clinician and case worker who began to negotiate a balance between Tyler’s strong focus on policy – mezzo and macro social work – with the crucial stream of clinical research, both of which continue to this day.

When I asked Tim to reflect on the tumultuous founding of the faculty some 50 years later, he paused for at least a minute and gazed out the window of sunny apartment living room. Traffic and grasscutting sounds filled the room. I cleared my throat uneasily as he turned around to face me once more. His serious demeanor softened, he cracked wry smile and said with a chuckle, “Well, I had a good ten years.” 

The first graduate, seniors’ champion Patricia Allen, MSW

Patricia Allen (MSW ’69) had a life-long passion for working with seniors which led to the creation of the Kerby Centre and most recently new scholarship focusing on gerontology.  

A survey of the names of graduates from the Faculty of Social Welfare / Social Work over the last 60 years, includes so many who have had a huge impact on people’s lives and on society. 

In fact, you don’t have to go past the first name, Patricia Edith Allen (MSW’69) to find a name that became synonymous with senior’s advocacy in Alberta. 

Patricia Allen was one of the founders of the Kerby Centre and a lifelong advocate and champion of senior’s rights.

Allen was the first student to graduate from the new Faculty of Social Welfare, that reflected founding Dean Tim Tyler’s focus on public policy change and advocacy. So, it’s not surprising that when Patricia graduated, she was already primed and prepared to make a difference. 

As her husband Grant Allen recalled during an interview in 2016, “After getting her Master’s degree, Patricia held a workshop on retirement planning where she noted a lot of policy decisions were being made for seniors without their input. 

“She believed that seniors should have more influence on what was happening to them instead of accepting decisions from people who didn't ask them what they wanted.” 

That experience led Patricia to form the Senior Citizens Central Council, an advocacy group that met in the basement of the Central United Church in downtown Calgary. 

When Mount Royal College left their downtown campus in 1972, the persuasive Allen convinced the Lougheed government to rent them the building at 1133, 7 Avenue SW for $1 a year.

Reflecting her social work training, Allen was passionate about ensuring that seniors were active participants in any research or policy decisions that involved them. She was also focused on ensuring that seniors had the best quality of life possible and drove service initiatives including a wellness centre, tax filing, grocery-delivery and the Kerby Rotary shelter that helped seniors affected by family violence.

When Patricia passed away suddenly in April 2016,  Grant decided to do something in Patricia’s name, so he created the Patricia Allen scholarship in the Faculty of Social Work. 

Fittingly the scholarship is earmarked for a student with a passion for helping seniors.  “I didn't want Patricia's name to be forgotten,” he said simply and with obvious emotion. 

Fittingly, generations of students will keep Patricia Allen’s name and mission alive studying the same issues that Allen attacked with such fiery passion her whole life. 

“I would like the students who receive this scholarship to know that Patricia was a very compassionate person who really never thought of herself,” said Allen, who was also incredibly active in supporting Kerby having donated more than 15,000 hours to the Centre over his lifetime, including assisting in the design and renovation of the facility. 

“I think seniors generally are kind of a forgotten group of people,” he added thoughtfully. “Maybe this will help to bring it to the fore.”

Social Work professor Dr. Betty Bastien, PhD, championed the inclusion of Indigenous Ways of Knowing into the academy and into Alberta post-secondary education. Her landmark book Blackfoot Ways of Knowing: The Worldview of the Siksikaitsitapi is still used as a foundational text.

Dr. Betty Bastien was part of the Faculty of Social Work for more than two decades as a student, teacher, researcher, and co-creator of the faculty’s community learning circle’s curriculum. Bastien was a trailblazer in the truest sense of the word. Her scholarship, work, determination, and passionate advocacy created a new way and in doing so, opened a path for others to follow.

As former social work dean Dr. Jackie Sieppert wrote in a letter supporting the University of Calgary Arch Award she received in 2017, “Dr. Bastien is recognized internationally for her leadership in strengthening Indigenous communities. Her vision and passion have helped create community-based healing approaches that restore Indigenous communities and provide a path toward reconciliation.”

In advancing Indigenous ways of knowing in the academy, she created dialogue where there was little previously, and opened a pathway for generations of Indigenous social workers to come. In that way, her change was seismic, creating parallel pathways of accreditation and perhaps helping to bring more Indigenous social workers into the profession and thereby helping to de-colonize the profession itself.

The path to relational accountability

As a child, when Betty Bastien would leave her beautiful home on the Piikani nation, where the rippling grasslands roll up against the snow-capped foothills, she would roll through the surrounding towns, Pincher Creek, Lethbridge, Cardston and she would wonder at the differences.

Why did they have so much stuff? So much of everything? Why did life seem so much easier for the settler children and their families?

“The differences were so stark,” she told me. “I didn't understand them.”

The desire to understand the yawning gulf propelled her forward into a life of action and purpose. A life that changed so much and created a better future for so many.

I had the rare opportunity and privilege to interview Betty Bastien in 2017 while I was still fairly new to the Faculty of Social Work and probably didn’t fully appreciate what a privilege it was to have the gift of an hour with her. It was an amazing time for Dr. Bastien, she was being recognized with a prestigious UCalgary Arch Award after formally retiring and at the same time she was feverishly working to create a paradigm-shifting full Indigenous curriculum at Red Crow College.

She told me that in some ways, she felt her life had come full circle. From learning Western knowledge and paradigms, to blending that knowledge with Blackfoot ways of knowing, to a new and better perspective.

“It's like all that knowledge I got from the West, in getting a PHD and all the education I received. Then working with Indigenous knowledge and that whole sense of blending that knowledge into the West. Now I get it all as Indigenous. Now I sit in that paradigm in terms of the Indigenous practice of social work.

“It has been a wonderful journey.”

Her journey initially began in sociology, where she attempted to better understand the gulf between Western and Indigenous Peoples. She said that degree helped create a structural understanding of Canada.

“I wanted to work in that area,” she said, “to be of service for Indigenous people. That's kind of what we're told as we're in our own upbringing, our own socialization, our communities, to support our nation.”

To that end, she knew she needed more education to do the things she wanted to do, so after graduating she accepted the University of Calgary’s offer and did her Bachelor of Social Work (BSW).

Like many, she says there was one professor and one course during her BSW that really changed her life – Dr. Jacqueline Ismael’s course in social policy.

“That course,” she said, “gave me a perspective of where and how to make a difference in terms of providing services that are relevant to the needs of the people who we were providing services to. Also, the whole notion of social justice, how to work in the social service area and to be an advocate for marginalized peoples. That course really gave me a sense of where I needed to go in my life, in my practice and gave depth to what I can do.”

It was during her Master of Social Work, focused on social policy and service delivery, that she found the approach, in Ismael’s terms, the relevancy, for those she wanted to help. In studying how institutions work and how services are constructed for the marginalized, she began developing what she described as an Indigenous management paradigm.

“It was using our (Blackfoot) values to provide services that really are based on relational accountability,” she explained. “That really provided an opening of how I could start to practise from an Indigenous perspective.”

How our language creates and defines us

As she began to “really go into depth” on the Blackfoot paradigm she struggled to find a way to teach this knowledge to her students. At the same time, she was taking on the heroic task of developing and bringing Indigenous knowledge systems into the academy.

“It starts with the heart,” she told me. “We called it Indigenous science. It's really that connection. I would say in a sense a spirituality, but people make it sound like it’s faith or something like that. It's really what we call the universal intelligence. There's a word – synchronicity. It's that holistic nature. That holistic, organic, relational nature of an Indigenous paradigm. And it starts with the heart.”

Her life brought her to a place where her heart could write the book that she knew needed to be written: Blackfoot Ways of Knowing: The Worldview of the Siksikaitsitapi.

The book, considered a touchstone for many Indigenous scholars, outlined how for the Blackfoot, knowledge is experiential, participatory and ultimately sacred. She mapped out her own journey of coming to know, and how important the language we use is to our understanding of the world:

“You come from basic assumptions, which have been proven by quantum mechanics. It's an indivisible universe. Indivisible. We are interconnected, interdependent, reciprocal. It's a circle. Everything is in the moment and now. Our people knew this, I mean, we've been here 20,000 years. Colonization destroyed that, but this understanding was always there.”

“That is our way. That is how we understand the universe to work. When you think this way there are natural ethical principles and how to conduct ourselves. Our languages hold all that information.”

Language. Betty explained that the Blackfoot understood that we create our world, we create understanding, for better or worse, with the words we choose and the meanings we give them. They are literally the most powerful tool, and in colonization they are a weapon that inflicts one way of knowing the world while erasing another.

Forging a new way

That’s why fighting for Indigenous language, culture and ceremony were so important to Betty along with notions of reciprocal responsibilities and interdependence. It’s also why she eventually left her position teaching in the Western system, even if the subject was Native American Studies.

“It doesn't nurture you as an academic or a person,” she said. “It was very cut and dry. It was always comparing Western and Indigenous paradigms, and it was comparisons made from a Western point of view, what some have called a systemic violence.”

It was about that time that salvation came from an unlikely source, the academy itself. Her former dean, Dr. Gayla Rogers, also a woman of vision, approached her with a unique proposition, to come back to teaching, but explicitly not from a Western lens. 

The faculty was pioneering an innovative distance-learning initiative that set out to embrace Indigenous ways of knowing, and Gayla knew that Betty was just the woman for the job.

Betty agreed, on the condition she be allowed to work from home, and then set about putting the principles she had developed into action. Even years later Bastien spoke with emotion recalling that period in her life.

“I just get blown away now when I look at what they had given me!” she said. “I really want to acknowledge how the University of Calgary created a space for me to practise my Indigenous knowledge and how we connect it to the ceremonies and to the land. Those are all the essential parts. Colonization destroyed all those parts, and those were the essential parts the University of Calgary gave me so that I could work.”

And work she did. The position seemed to engage everything that she carried within her, including her PhD in integral studies where she had begun to develop the bones of what an Indigenized curriculum might look like. She threw herself into helping build the Learning Circles curriculum and said she loved it, “deepening and immersing” herself in knowledge to be able to teach it.

She worked for the better part of two decades, once again blazing a trail that made it possible for other schools to follow, while simultaneously creating a curriculum that resonated with generations of social workers in rural and remote communities across Alberta. But the scope of her work, like her impact, was vast. Besides being an educator, she was also a researcher, she also worked inside social service and child welfare systems, and she spoke out frequently, a fierce advocate who brought awareness and change.

The circle begins again

In describing her legacy, her husband, Henry Big Throat said simply, “She became an institution. She led the creation of the Indigenous BSW and an Indigenous MSW which was recognized and accredited by the Canadian Association for Social Work Education and accredited by the National Indigenous Accreditation Board.”