In the summer of 1957 I was home on vacation at Morell, PEI, and was chatting with my former teacher and school principal, Mabel O’Brien, who was always interested in what I was doing. At that time my main ambition was to be a radio announcer, but I had a hurdle to overcome: I stuttered. It was a very mild stutter, but it would keep me off the air. She suggested the Dale Carnegie Course might help overcome this handicap.
When I got back to Toronto I looked up “Dale Carnegie Course” in 1957’s version of the internet, the telephone book’s yellow pages. The course was offered by a company called Leadership Training Services at 1290 Bay St., a convenient location for me. I was told there were openings in a class starting the following Tuesday evening, so I enrolled.
Dale Carnegie, the undisputed patron saint of public speaking, began teaching his course at a YMCA in New York in 1912. Although he promoted his training as a public speaking course, he was really the first great motivational coach, using the platform of public speaking to help people gain self-confidence, develop and hone communication skills, and manage stress, thereby enhancing both their careers and personal lives. The course was based on the principles in his three famous books: How to Win Friends and Influence People; How to Stop Worrying and Start Living; and, of course, his public speaking book, which began life as Public Speaking and Influencing Men in Business.
I arrived at Leadership Training Services the following Tuesday not really knowing what to expect. Although I thought the course was starting that night, it actually didn’t begin until the following week, this night’s session was a “demonstration” of the course. By the end of the evening I knew I’d been introduced to something extraordinarily special.
There were two coffee breaks, during both of which I happened to be chatting with the same well-dressed, sophisticated, soft-spoken, middle-aged gentleman whom I instantly liked. We talked a bit about ourselves and why we were taking the training: I, of course, to try to beat my stutter, and he to overcome what he characterized as “paralyzing” shyness. (By the end of the course we had both succeeded beyond our wildest expectations.) As he lived near me, he offered me a lift home. He picked me up and dropped me off during all fourteen weeks of the course, and we became lifelong friends. Who was he? He was Ed Mirvish, owner of the iconic Toronto thrift store, Honest Ed’s, and later Canada’s most important theatre impresario, owning both the Royal Alex and The Princess of Wales. Ed always credited the course with giving him the confidence to expand his horizons by getting into the theatre business.
Once the course began in earnest every class member had to give at least two talks each night, ranging from thirty seconds to two minutes. Although nervous at first, upon realizing I had a knack for connecting with an audience I enjoyed every minute I was on my feet, telling stories or trying to convince my thirty-nine classmates of a particular point of view.
Two major life changes took place during those fourteen weeks. During session five my stutter disappeared, never to reappear; and the self-confidence I gained by winning a number of class awards seeped into every aspect of my being, convincing me I was perfectly capable of determining my own destiny.
During the last session, the class cast secret ballots to determine which two class members would be invited to become graduate assistants. In that era, graduate assistants, after some training, taught the first half of each session. I was thrilled to be one of them. I was a GA for six classes then trained GAs for two years before reaching the qualifying age to go to New York and become a certified Dale Carnegie instructor. In 1969, I got married and was about to become a partner in the accounting firm McDonald Curie (now PWC). I could no longer spare the two nights a week teaching the course required (one to prepare and one to actually teach) for twenty-eight weeks a year, so I gave up being a Carnegie instructor.
Dale Carnegie is one of my three idols, the other two are Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill.