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Remarkable Teacher

Karen Robinson.

Setting the Stage

Actress Karen Robinson reflects on the teacher whose kindness made all the difference.

BY Richard Ouzounian
PHOTOS: IAN WATSON/CBC (above); COURTESY OF PHYLLIS JONES (below)

If you're a fan of CBC-TV comedy, then you're bound to be a fan of Karen Robinson. The award-winning performer spent six seasons on Schitt's Creek as the sardonic town councillor Ronnie Lee, throwing shade wherever she glanced. Now, she's holding down the fort on Pretty Hard Cases as the take-no-prisoners boss, Inspector Edwina Shanks.

"It's a gas of a show," she says, with a trademark booming laugh. "Great cast. Great scripts. All I have to do is show up and wear good suits."

Robinson is having her moment in the sun right now, the result of a lengthy and successful career. She's been hard at work for decades, collecting honours for her theatre performances from coast-to-coast, as well as a Canadian Screen Award in 2019 for her performance in the TV series Mary Kills People.

The actress radiates confidence, but she'll tell you it doesn't come from her long list of screen credits or the trophy shelf full of awards. Instead, Robinson says her self-assurance can be traced back to the influence of Phyllis Jones, her Grade 9 geography teacher who also taught her in Grades 10 and 11 preparing her for her final CXC (Caribbean Examination Council) at Meadowbrook High School in Kingston, Jamaica.

"All it takes to change your life is to have someone look you in the eye, smile at you and accept you for who you are," says Robinson.

It's not that the actress was a shrinking violet as a student. Far from it. Robinson, the youngest of four children, says she always knew she wanted to perform. She laughs as she recalls her stage debut at a Christmas concert at the age of four singing "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus." "I was so short they had to put me on a stool so people could see me."

Despite all the exterior bravado, though, by the time Robinson reached the age of 13, she says she was going through teenage angst and didn't know where she fit in the world.

"She was the kind of student you couldn't ignore," Jones recalls, "with a loud voice and a big smile on her face. But I thought to myself, ‘Inside, she's a lonely girl.'"

Robinson describes herself back then as "a rabidly pubescent, strange young child. It's such a difficult time. You can't control the rate at which your body is developing, how loud your voice is coming out of you, or how fast your heart is beating when this week's crush walked by."

Jones sighs, remembering Robinson at that age. "What could you do with a child like that? You could just be there for her."

And so Jones did just that. Not only in the classroom, but, most memorably, every day at lunch. "Her office was close to my homeroom," Robinson remembers. "During lunch periods I remember I'd just go to her office."

Jones has a memory of looking up from her desk one day and seeing Robinson's smiling face saying "Hellooooo, Miiiiiiiiiss!" Her imitation of how Robinson loves to elongate her vowels is devastatingly precise.

"For most of my years growing up, my mother used to travel to New York for work as a private duty nurse and stay there seven months a year." This was due to economic necessity, and Robinson never questioned her mother's love and dedication to the family. She says both her parents were "unflaggingly dedicated. They made it work, and we all found ways to cope." She adds, "I was parented extremely well by my father and the aunties and household helpers who would take care of us, but the day-to-day mothering wasn't there. It left a void. It's not something that I have any hard feelings about, but I do think that little Karen spent all those formative years looking for substitute mothers."

Hearing Robinson's reflection, Jones says, softly, "Oh, my goodness. I never realized that at the time. I knew that she really clung to me a great deal. She came into my office and she was comfortable there."

Robinson talks about the power a teacher can have on an impressionable teenager. "When I was a teen, all grown-ups looked like impossibly liberated people. They didn't have to wear school uniforms. They had disposable cash. They were on this pedestal surrounded by a cloud of mystery with all this knowledge."

Phyllis Jones.
Phyllis Jones taught Robinson at Meadowbrook High School in Jamaica, from Grade 9 to 11.

But in the end, that wasn't what made Jones so memorable to Robinson. "No," she says. "I'll tell you what it was. She was kind. And it's taken me a lifetime to realize how powerful kindness can be."

Jones is moved to hear the influence she had on Robinson, but also surprised. "She would look around my office, pick up books and just ask me questions. That's what I remember."

Robinson says, "She made time for me. She also had a sense of humour, which you had to have when dealing with me, along with time and energy and patience. I wasn't a bad girl. I wasn't wayward. But I was needy." She adds, "Puberty had not been kind. I didn't belong anywhere. I wasn't one of the popular kids, or a nerd or a geek. It was a Herculean feat to take care of me."

Jones remembers things somewhat differently. "If she was disrupting the class, I would just think ‘Oh, that's Karen.' She was dramatic and whatever she said was at the top of her voice, but you couldn't help but love her."

In terms of pedagogy, Robinson recalls, "She knew her stuff, she was a great communicator and she had that amazing sense of humour. You listened and you learned."

Jones remembers Robinson as "a girl who was most at home using words. She always did well, but I would still keep encouraging her to do better."

The two have stayed in touch through the years. Robinson at times alerts Jones when there's a new performance to catch on television. And when she gets a chance to watch, Jones says, "It is a thrill. It is an absolute delight."

Robinson even returned once to Meadowbrook High School to accept an honour, and Jones invited her to speak to her class. "I told the students that I was just doing what I have always been doing since I was a child, only now I'm getting paid for it."

Jones recalls the students asking Robinson what made her so successful and offers her best imitation of the actress, saying "It's my faaaaaaaace that got me all the paaaaaaaaarts.' But she adds, more seriously, "When I see Karen, I see somebody who doesn't take no for an answer."

Robinson thinks for a moment about how to sum up her thoughts on Jones. "She taught me so very much, but I can't recall a specific piece of advice." But then she pauses and continues. "Wait, there's one." Robinson says that whatever she was going through — whatever her teenage self felt was a problem or a defeat —Jones always gave her the reassuring sense that the sun would, in fact, come up tomorrow.

In this profile, notable Canadians honour the teachers who have made a difference in their lives and have embraced the College's Ethical Standards for the Teaching Profession, which are care, respect, trust and integrity.