Sharon Kashani, Teacher (*Very* Cool Obit.)
Bill Schenley
Catherine Dunphy, obituary writer
If you build it, they will come. Sharon Kashani learned that the hard
way in 1979 in her native Iran when the government closed an
American-style school where she worked and then later the subsequent
secret school she ran out of her own home.
But almost 20 years later, in 1998, she experienced it again - but
this time in a positive way - when she and her staff wept and laughed
aloud in joy as parents dropped off their kids in front of her own
gorgeous new school.
Sitting on 5.7 hectares at the end of a winding industrial road, the
Aurora Montessori School is much more than an attractive and welcoming
building. It is Kashani's vision of a perfect learning environment for
children. and it represents everything she believed in.
She chose the terra cotta tiles in the foyer, the material for the
kitchen counter, the curtains, the carpet. Every classroom had windows
for natural lighting.
But her pièce de résistance - what she was most proud of - was the
school's Children's Village: the vegetable and flower gardens planted
and tended by the schoolchildren, the water fountain and the animal
compound where children tend and feed the sheep and goats she rented
each spring and fall.
"She's in every part of the school, every brick," said Susan Mueller,
school vice-principal.
Kashani died in October shortly after she turned 49 and three years
after she was first diagnosed with cancer.
Her doctors had given her six months to live, but she and her husband,
Mahmoud Kashani, whose prosperous metals trading business helped her
finance the school, scoured the world looking for a cure.
"Horrendous cancer therapies," said Brenda Glashan, the school's
principal, who marvelled at her boss and friend's inner strength. Even
when racked by pain, Kashani was immaculate and groomed and offering
tea to guests.
A stylish, elegant woman, she'd often be found in the animal pen, high
heels sinking deeper into mud. Glashan remembers her escorting some
visitors around the school and of course to the animals. She came back
with hoof marks all over the back of her pink silk suit, laughing
about the animals' antics.
"She looked beautiful till the day she died," said Mueller, who worked
for Kashani for 16 years. "She never said she was dying. Maybe it was
to keep us from feeling sad, but she always talked about `next summer'
and `when I get better.'"
Born Shokouh Mahmoudi, her father was an Islamic fundamentalist with
strict ideas about the role of women. She took after her mother, who
wanted out from behind the veil. When they divorced, the children were
sent to England where she, as the eldest, helped take care of them.
Her husband said he fell in love with his 16-year-old distant relation
when he watched her sell a pair of jeans to a reluctant customer.
"I gathered my strength and bought a box of chocolates and some roses
and went to her single-room apartment. I proposed to her," he recalled
in an email. "She threw me out."
In 1977, two years after they married, they returned to Iran because
Mahmoud had a job offer there. A graduate in interior design, she
began teaching at an American school that was closed down during the
1979 revolution. Shokouh then started her own school, with "the
cosmetic appearance" of a proper Islamic school. At the same time, she
was travelling to England to study the Montessori education method.
Periodically, officials would close it down anyway, forcing her to
move it to her home.
"I will always remember my husband's face on the first day this
happened," she wrote in 1999 in a letter to her school staff. "I
remember him with sleepy eyes taking a couple of steps towards the
kitchen just to find the cook and the two drivers using our kitchen
table, having their tea break. Afterwards, he told me of his amazement
in the way our dining area and family room was transferred to three
classrooms."
With sons Kamran and Kian, they came to Canada in 1988 and a year
later, Shokouh, now Sharon, opened her first Montessori school in a
rented farmhouse at the corner of the Aurora Sideroad and Bayview Ave.
But 10 years later, when she decided to build her own $14 million
school and grounds, many of the parents of the 127 students held back,
thinking she was going too big, too fast.
"Only 27 kids came with us," said Glashan. "She was so sad that the
parents didn't understand her vision at the time. They were afraid of
risk."
That summer, Mueller and Glashan worked out of a trailer as Kashani
dealt with contractors, striking tradespeople and water damage to
school files.
On Labour Day, weekend workers were still painting and putting down
tiles, but when the students arrived that Tuesday, Kashani was there,
brown eyes warm and flashing, a picture of grace and calm.
Her husband buried her in the family mausoleum in Iran. He put granite
on the floor and planted dozens of different coloured roses around her
tomb. But, he said in an email from Iran, "Canada was her home" and
she had wanted her funeral in a Christian church with active
participation by native Canadians. And that is what took place at the
United Church of Aurora a few days after her death.
Mueller and Glashan have vowed to run the school exactly as their
friend and mentor would have wanted.
They have commissioned an oil painting of Kashani to hang in the
hallway and will install a large chunk of Canadian granite in front of
the school she loved so much.