Mr. Gigante

I was born in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada and my first memories are of North Vancouver in the Capilano area. I did my first years of Elementary School in Berkeley, California. I was there because my mother had gone to UC Berkeley to get a PhD in Resource Economics after my parents had separated. This was 1969-1972 so an interesting time to be in Berkeley. My mother was tear-gassed going between classes on one occasion. BART was just holes under construction. We lived in the UC Berkeley university village housing in Albany. I went to Cornell school. I had heard that it had been closed down because it was on the San Andreas fault but a younger colleague of mine said he went there (small world). Perhaps after seismic upgrading it was re-opened or maybe I have my stories wrong.

When I was in grade 2 (70-71), a small group of us were taken out of the classroom once a week for math enrichment. The group was me, Utz McKnight (who is now a political science professor at the University of Alabama and I keep meaning to try and get in contact with), and Alan whose last name I don't remember so can't look up. It should be said I only remember Utz' last name because our mothers were friends and they kept in touch for a while. Alan was a very cool kid I remember. Anyway, Mr. Gigante (and I am guessing at the spelling) came in and did cool math games with us once a week. I don't remember any specific details but this may be why I ended up as a mathematician in the end. I would look him up except that I don't know if this is the actual spelling of his name or what his first name is (unless it is Mister).

In the Spring of 2005 I gave a series of workshops to a small group of grade 5 students at Queen Victoria Annex School in Vancouver, where my children were students. They were targeted at motivated, bright but not necessarily "gifted" students. I guess this was motivated by Mr. Gigante and my own love of mathematics that he helped to inspire. I attach a link to the problems I got the students to look at:

http://www.math.ubc.ca/~wetton/workshops.html