THE HEAVY LIFTERS - Stanstead College

Stanstead Staff:
Working Above and Beyond
If you’re going to do laundry
for close to 200 kids, you
need to have a system.
That means, for example,
making sure labels are on
every piece of clothing –
except socks. Socks get
thrown into a mesh bag with
the students name on it.
“Can you imagine going
through a load and checking
every sock for nametags?” says Alta
Sheldon, head of housekeeping at
Stanstead College. Alta has worked 27 of
her 32 years here in the laundry where
she and the rest of the staff process
about 28 loads a day.
“They keep us busy here,” she says.
If a label is missing from a
piece of dirty clothing that
comes in, it gets passed on to
Dian Middleton who is pretty
handy with a label and a
sewing machine. She also sews
torn uniforms, napkins for the
kitchen, letters on sports uniforms,
plus she cleans the
Davis Annex, the
Advancement Office and the
Health Centre.
“I like it,” she says. “It
keeps me busy. There’s
always something to be
done somewhere, some
little extra.”
Doing that “little extra” and
doing it with pride makes
Stanstead’s team of non-faculty
employees so invaluable. They quite
simply keep the school running.
“The great thing is these are
not people who work from 8 to
4,” says Headmaster Michael
Wolfe, who hosts monthly coffee
breaks in his home for the
16
maintenance, housecleaning and driving staff. “They go above
and beyond. They recognize that in a boarding school like ours,
they often have to work after hours, late at night. And there’s
never hesitation on their part. They’re a part of the family.”
It’s not just keeping things clean and tidy for the students. It’s
taking care of the vast grounds and the buildings, some of which
are closing in on a century of use.
“The big fear is Colby,” says Mike Séguin, head of maintenance
and supervisor of five full-time and one part-time worker.
“If a pipe breaks, the damage goes down a few floors. And all the
pipes in there are old and hidden.”
And then there’s the old boiler system with its underground
pipes running between buildings.
“Every year in the fall, when we turn on the heat, we cross our
fingers that there are no underground breaks. This year we
weren’t so lucky,” says Séguin.
Séguin manages a daily list of scheduled tasks plus requests
that come in from all corners of the school. Then there’s the
unforeseen stuff, like the snowstorms that kept the ploughs
rolling and the shovels flying this past winter.
It’s actually the unpredictable nature of the job that appeals to
Kevin Lafond, who began working at the College last summer.
He’d worked several years in front of a computer at a local granite
shop and found himself looking out the window and wishing
Housekeeping