After he left the bone-chilling cold of northern Canada, Greg MacIsaac spent four years as a schoolteacher in tropical Tanzania where he warmed up long enough to entertain a new job at a Beijing school. His dislike for the cold and his fondness for teaching motivated him to explore the outside world, he says.

 

 

"I wanted to travel and work and I said well, I will become a teacher and teach all over the world," says MacIsaac.

 

Today, after more than 20 years teaching in South America, the Middle East and Africa, it's hard to characterize what MacIsaac does for a living. His formal title at the Western Academy of Beijing, where he's worked for 13 years, is video coordinator. But he's not confined to a camera.

 

MacIsaac, 54, grew up in northwestern Ontario, a paradise for ice hockey enthusiasts and skiers. "The coldest part ever recorded in Canada is only 60 kilometers from my home and it was 73 C below zero," he says. "And so that's why I left, that's why I left for Africa, to warm up."

 

In Tanzania, when he wasn't teaching at the International School of Tanganyika, MacIsaac helped the famous primatologist Dr. Jane Goodall record her work.

 

He also worked with her to create the Roots and Shoots program, a worldwide environmental volunteer effort under the Jane Goodall Institute.

 

At the academy in Beijing, a private school whose student population includes the children of ambassadors and foreign executives, MacIsaac is in charge of all video production, including running an after-school video club for students and capturing major events at the school on video. 

 

Earlier this year, the academy played host to Beijing's first film festival for young people. Short movies made by Chinese and foreign students were judged in a citywide competition opened to 150 Chinese and 10 international schools.

 

MacIsaac envisioned the idea that's set to become an annual event. "The objective was to bring those schools together without any worry about language barriers, to see films together," he says.

 

He also volunteers his services for Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO) including the Special Olympics, various migrant and minority schools in China and one Tibetan group that wanted to raise money to improve access to medicine.

 

He sits on the board of the Canadian China Business Council; he's a representative of the New England Association of Schools and Colleges and the Council of International Schools; he's one of several photographers who published a photo-book on China and he established the Jane Goodall Institute of China in 1998 and sits on its board of directors.

 

And in between, he has managed to squeeze in some small acting roles in Hollywood movies, including a part in an action adventure with Dolph Lundgren that recently wrapped up production in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

 

Of all the things he's involved with, however, his work with NGOs is most rewarding. "To me, what's important is all the volunteer work I do," he says. "That's the most important. It's my work with migrant schools, with the disabled schools, things like that. Those are what I hold dear to my heart."

 

(China Daily June 15, 2007)