Dr. Gervan Fearon reflects on his first year as GBC president.

If you are looking for someone who exudes a passion for learning, you need not look further than Dr. Gervan Fearon, president of George Brown College (GBC).

Born in England, he spent the first six years of his life there before moving with his family to Jamaica.

At the age of nine, he and his family moved to Toronto. It is here where he grew up, discovered his love of learning, and where he would eventually return to ensure that young minds were able to flourish.

Because of the places he lived before calling Toronto home, Fearon has a sense of being both a newcomer and lifelong Canadian.

“[I] have a really deep appreciation for a sense of being a newcomer to a society, and as well as the aspirations around it. In some senses, my story is common to the immigrant experience, and in some senses is common to the Canadian experience,” said Fearon.

In his family, education was core. He was encouraged to be whatever he wanted, so long as he did end up going into post-secondary education.

“That was kind of a family goal. What that meant to me then is, in some senses, education, teaching and learning has always been a really core part of who I am and what I do, even in my volunteer work and the likes, and I’ve been really fortunate to have some amazing people, teachers in my life that’s been very instrumental in helping me make some really good choices at a crucial point along that line.”

While going through high school, he did not yet have dreams of one day becoming an educator. Fearon says by the time he was through the majority of his first degree – and definitely by the time he was doing his master’s degree – he caught the education bug and knew that was the career path he eventually hoped to end upon.

The first time he taught a class was while he was studying for his master’s degree. The third-year course he taught – in addition to his time as a teaching assistant – was a great experience that helped him strive to do more.

“I think through that process, I kind of got the bug to be in the classroom and to maybe be vulnerable in both what you knew and what you didn’t know. Because when you’re standing in front of a classroom, you don’t know what that next question is. But it does motivate you to both be prepared when you go into the classroom, then when you come out to actually then explore areas that you thought you could do better or that you thought if you knew more you could help your students more. So, very early on doing my master’s [degree I] had a desire to teach and to be part of the education system,” he says.

His education path has taken him many places over the years. From teaching at what was formerly Ryerson University (now Toronto Metropolitan University), to president of Brandon University – a job which also made him the first black president for a Canadian university – Fearon has done it all.

Right before coming to GBC, Fearon was the president of Brock University. He says there were a few reasons why he chose to take the job here at GBC.

These include knowing how important the college is to Toronto and the students who come here to study, wanting to have the opportunity to build programs that allow students to do a full “laddering” to get where they want career wise, and finally because it allowed him to come home.

When Fearon started August 2021, he became the first black president of GBC. While he holds that title – in addition to first black president of a Canadian University – he says that it’s not what he considers impressive.

“That’s not what’s impressive to me. What’s impressive to me is that recently there was a second black president named, so that’s impressive to me. And what will be impressive to me is when in Ontario, that of the 24 colleges that six per cent are black, then I will be impressed. Up to that point, I’m not impressed,” he said. “I take really seriously the fact that when people see me, they don’t see me solely as the president of George Brown College, but they also see me as a black male, a kid that lived in three countries by age nine. So, people see me in all the points of intersection or all the points of the rainbow, which I think is fine because that’s who I am. That second part then what I take seriously is I know in some senses, I’m forging a path of possibilities for others, that may have actually not have thought of in their own space, their own field, something possible.”