“Try new things” says two-time Algonquin graduate

Posted on Thursday, June 28th, 2018

Cathy Yantha didn’t enrol at Algonquin until 2000, but she graduated in 1967.

No, really.

Yantha didn’t enrol at Algonquin in the mid-1960s, because it didn’t exist. She was already a student in the Marketing and Advertising program at the Ontario Vocational Centre on Woodroffe Avenue when OVC amalgamated with the Eastern Ontario Institute of Technology in 1967 to create Algonquin, one of more than 20 Ontario colleges launched about the same time.

Yantha didn’t enrol at Algonquin, she was annexed.

When she finally did formally enrol at Algonquin 33 years later, it was in the Pembroke campus’s Social Service Worker program, a springboard to her third career and, as it turned out, to even closer ties to her alma mater. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Yantha says she ended up in the Marketing and Advertising program at what would become Algonquin almost by accident. She met the program’s instructor at a career event at Lansdowne Park half-a-century ago. “He started talking about advertising and marketing, about television and radio, and it caught my interest. I knew right then and there I was going to take the program.”

Yantha says the emphasis was on marketing rather than advertising, but the program covered the bases, from practical lessons taught in a retail store/classroom on the campus to introductory courses in broadcasting and journalism.

“The best part about going to school that year — it was a class of 24, and we were all between the ages of 18 and 22 — was that there were 20 guys and four girls in that class. The odds were great,” she says with a laugh.

“We became a close group. We did everything together.”

After graduation, Yantha was hired at Ottawa radio station CFRA to write advertising copy. Within a few years she was writing and producing TV commercials at CJOH (CTV Ottawa). That led to a job producing sports and special event programming at CBOT (CBC Ottawa), anything from the opening of Parliament to a state funeral.

Her broadcasting career would take her to Vancouver and back to Ottawa before she decided to settle down, get married and move to the Ottawa Valley. There she began a second career, working in retail and running a restaurant with her husband.

By 2000, however, she was looking for a new challenge, and the Social Service Worker program at the Pembroke campus seemed to offer it. Mind you, going back to school at an age when many people are thinking about retirement was “scary,” Yantha says.

“The first day I came to the campus … I got to the bottom of the stairway and I stopped dead and I thought, ‘Cathy, you silly old fool, what are you doing here?’

“I took a deep breath and walked up the stairs, and I said ‘I’ll go to the classroom and if its full 18 year-olds, I’ll stay for the day and I’ll go home and that’ll be it.’ I got into the classroom and it really surprised me. There were five of us that were older students — and I wasn’t the oldest one there.

“It was a tremendous two-year program,” she says, “and the key part was the mature (students) … were all hired before we graduated, because it was the perfect field to go into as a mature students. We have the life experience behind us.”

Her new Algonquin diploma, along with her background running a restaurant, landed her a job overseeing dietary operations and housekeeping at a Pembroke retirement home. But the contacts she made at Algonquin Pembroke would precipitate another career change a couple of years later.

Yantha was invited back to the college to run the campus’s summer job service program. This led to other positions in student employment services until she was eventually overseeing the campus’s co-operative education placements and even teaching some employment readiness courses. Algonquin had put her in a position to gain the experience the college would later use.

Given her career trajectory, Yantha’s advice to current Algonquin students is not surprising: “Don’t be afraid of change. The industry changes, life changes, everything changes. You have to be prepared for change in your life.

“Don’t be afraid to go out and try new things.”


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