I am writing an autobiography, mainly for my family, but it does cover some key moments in the development of open and online learning. I thought I would share these as there seems to be a growing interest in the history of educational technology.
Note that these posts are NOT meant to be deeply researched historical accounts, but how I saw and encountered developments in my personal life. If you were around at the time of these developments and would like to offer comments or a different view, please use the comment box at the end of each post. (There is already a conversation track on my LinkedIn site).
Vera Cruz
Besides the collaboration with Tec de Monterrey, which was spread out over many years, I spent a lot of time working in Mexico.
In 1998, while still at UBC, my boss, Walter Uegama, the Associate Vice President, Continuing Studies, arranged for my colleague Jane Hutton and myself to visit the Universidad de Veracruzana to establish a collaboration with UBC. Universidad de Veracruzana is a state university in Mexico, with campuses across the state of Vera Cruz and with its headquarters in Xalapa.
My role was to arrange for training for faculty on the design of on-line and multimedia distance education courses. Jane’s role was to discuss Continuing Education’s business and information technology programs and in particular to look at possible collaboration between UBC’s Museum of Anthropology and the Museo de Antropología de Xalapa.
As I was visiting Tec de Monterrey first on the same trip, it meant flying on to the city of Vera Cruz, where I met up with Jane. The university then provided a car and driver from Vera Cruz to Xalapa. Jane was terrified by the two hour drive between Vera Cruz and Xalapa. Driving in Mexico is often characterised as more ‘chaotic’ compared to Canada or the USA, with a need for defensive driving due to potential unpredictable lane changes, usually no speed limits, poorly marked roads, and a higher likelihood of encountering animals on the road, especially outside of major cities. However, we arrived safely without any major incident, apart from bruises on my arm where Jane had been gripping me. The Xalapa museum is outstanding. It has a wonderful pre-Columbian collection, especially the amazing Olmec sculptures of giant stone heads.
Guadalajara
I have had a long-running association with the University of Guadalajara. My first visit to the University of Guadalajara was in 1996 to give a keynote at their annual book fair. The Universidad de Guadalajara is the second largest public Mexican university, with over 200,000 students spread across the state of Jalisco. It has six faculty-based campuses, mainly in the city of Guadalajara, and ten regional campuses across the state.
However, this keynote was a spectacular way to start my relationship with U de G. The keynote was held in the university’s Museo des Artes. Behind me was a magnificent mural by Orozco, El pueblo y sus falsos líderes (The People and Their False Leaders). This was painted in the 1930s but still resonates today. I was able to reference the painting as I spoke, because it was about planning and strategies for learning technologies.
I was aware that U de G had a long-established and distinguished distance education program, directed by Manuel Moreno, whom I met at the ICDE conference in Caracas in 1990. I was invited to run a workshop for faculty in 1997 on developing and delivering distance education, but more sustained and focused work for U de G started in 2002, when I was invited to help with the establishment of a new Maestría en Tecnologías para el Aprendizaje (Master in Educational Technology). This had been initiated by two extraordinarily dynamic and charming women, Patricia Rosas and Bibiana Urrea. This visit was the start of a long-running collaboration with the MTA program.
On this visit, I also met two other consultants for the first time, Paco Rubio, a Vice-Rector at the Open University of Catalonia in Spain, and Atsusi Hirumi (called ‘2C’), a professor from the University of Central Florida. These were both to become very good friends. The visit in 2002 came shortly after I had been informed that my services would no longer be needed by UBC after the end of the year. Paco Rubio was particularly interested to learn that I would be leaving UBC, and asked me to consider becoming a consultant to the Open University of Catalonia.
I really enjoyed working in Mexico. When I became a private consultant in 2003, the MTA program at UBC became my first client. I was usually accommodated in a comfortable four star hotel, such as a Fiesta Americana or more usually the Hotel Country Plaza, which is near to the CUCEA campus, where the MTA was headquartered. As well as Paty and Bibiana, I worked closely with Gladstone Oliva, who was their main technology expert.
My Guadalajaran colleagues worked hard, but also enjoyed life tremendously. At U de G, a favourite work activity was a working breakfast in a hotel. There would be a large buffet, with omelettes cooked to your choice in front of you, as well as traditional Mexican food such as tortillas. After breakfast, you would then sit down for the meeting. Normally, I do not eat a large breakfast – coffee is essential, the rest is optional – and I did not like paying for a large buffet breakfast at the hotel (even though I could claim it as expenses), so unless I had a breakfast as part of a formal business meeting, I would often walk across the road to a small, local café and order coffee and huevos rancheros (eggs, tortillas and salsa) with the local workers for a few pesos. However, the biggest challenge was a work-based comida, a heavy lunch served between 2.00 – 4.00 pm, usually ending with tequila all round, then back to work until 6.00 pm.
Fortunately, I came to love genuine Mexican food. Indeed, much to my surprise, I found that one of the best Mexican restaurants is on the second floor of the Mexico City international airport opposite the entrance to the Hilton Hotel. Who would have guessed? Also being a large country, the cuisine varies somewhat across the country. Monterrey for instance is famous for its carne asada, wonderful beef or cabrito (goat) barbecues where you can watch your meat being cooked over an open pit while you wait drinking beer and tequila.
Once the MTA was established, and I had left UBC, I regularly taught in the MTA program. My wife Patricia sometimes came with me on my trips to Mexico. One day, while I was working, Patricia took a guided tour of a tequila farm; Guadalajara is the centre of Mexico’s tequila industry. A guide arrived with a donkey and the donkey followed the tour party as they started the visit. After ten minutes or so, Patricia asked: ‘What’s the donkey for?’ The guide said, ‘It’s carrying two small barrels of tequila and some glasses. If you’d like a glass of tequila, just help yourself.’ Patricia kicked herself for not asking sooner, and became good friends with the donkey (which was actually a mule).
One year, I was finishing my last session on a three week course in the MTA, when a young woman who had sat quietly in the front for all the sessions shyly approached me with a gift wrapped in brown paper. ‘Muchas gracias, señor,’ she said, handing over the parcel. ‘This is a little gift from my great-grandfather.’
Paty Rosas was waiting for me to finish, and after the young woman had left, Paty said: ‘Do you know who her great grandfather was? Dom Julio, the maker of the best tequila!’ The young lady had given me an unmarked bottle of the family reserve tequila, in brown paper, so I would not have to declare the actual value of the bottle at Canadian customs. It was without doubt the best tequila I have ever drunk. Indeed, I came to prefer a good tequila to even a good malt whisky, although rough tequila is probably the worst drink for getting a hangover (and I did get some example of that when stopping one hot afternoon at a rough cantina in the outskirts of the city). On a hot evening I often drank a small tequila with a cold Mexican beer chaser (my preferred beer was Modelo).
Learning about international finances – the hard way
The U de G MTA program has been as successful as UBC’s Master in Educational Technology. The MTA is still running today (2025). However, the U de G administration was not as well run as their teaching programs. Getting paid for expenses and even more so my fees for teaching and consultancy was often a hassle, not helped by the difference in currencies and the tax systems. In 2006, I had made three separate visits to U de G, and on the third, my wife Patricia had accompanied me and we were planning a two week holiday afterwards in Oaxaca, in the south of Mexico, so I needed to get paid.
On my last day at U de G, Bibiana introduced me to someone from U de G’s administration. ‘Go with Maria,’ she said. ‘We have provided her with all the details. She will take you to the admin headquarters down town to arrange your payment.’ I duly followed Maria to a large office building and went up to the third floor. Maria led me to a very large, open plan room, where a little man took us to a large table on which was a huge paper computer print-out, over a metre high.
My contract was for a fee of about C$40,000 plus expenses and I was expecting a cheque in the equivalent Mexican pesos, or an international money order, or for the university to arrange an international money transfer. The little man asked me to write down my name. He then went to the huge computer print-out and started rifling through it.
‘What’s he doing?’ I asked Maria.
She had a brief conversation with the little man.
‘He said that CUCEA has no way of paying a single contract for teaching to a foreigner, so they have put you on the payroll from the day you started. You have been paid twice monthly for the equivalent of your total contract, and he’s looking through the payroll for your cheques.’
I eventually was given the twelve cheques, all drawn on the university’s Mexican bank in pesos.
‘Now’, Maria said, ‘we have to go the the university’s bank to cash the cheques. You will need your passport.’
We traipsed around the corner to the bank. Maria took the cheques to the counter. There was a short conversation in Spanish between Maria and the clerk that suddenly got heated.
Maria turned to me. ‘The cashier says you must have an account at the bank before you can cash the cheques, but she can’t open an account for you immediately as you’re not a Mexican citizen. However, they are open cheques, and I have an account with this bank, so if you give me the cheques, I will pay them in to my account, cash them, then give you the money in cash.’
‘That’s incredibly kind of you,’ I said to Maria, ‘but there are about 10 pesos to the Canadian dollar – that will come to over 500,000 pesos.’
‘Yes, but they will put them in an envelope for you.’
So I left the bank with a very large envelope full of Mexican pesos, and picked up my wife and our luggage, and headed to the airport.
‘Two tickets to Oaxaca, please.’
‘That’s 10,000 pesos. Credit card?’
‘No, cash,’ I said, pulling out my envelope and counting out 100 x 100 peso bills, feeling just like a Mexican drug cartel dealer.
We had a very nice stay in Oaxaca de Juárez (Oaxaca City) which included the celebration of Mexican Independence Day, where everyone dressed up in local costumes and let off fireworks in the main square. We also discovered a local orphanage. We were given a short tour of the orphanage, and were able to drop off a suitable donation (in cash, of course.)
Nevertheless, on our return to Canada, we still had a large amount of cash in Mexican pesos, some of which I needed in order to cover expenses for my consultancy business. I would declare all the C$40,000 earnings as part of Tony Bates Associates Ltd annual tax return, but I was worried about bringing such a large amount of Mexican pesos through Canadian Customs and Immigration at Vancouver Airport. It was by this time slightly over the C$10,000 each we were allowed legally to bring in to Canada without declaring it, but if we did declare it, we would be pulled aside and asked difficult questions about why we had so much Mexican money in cash. We always travelled light, and had only carry-on luggage, so I thought we would just wing it. Was this going to be one of life’s decisions that you will forever regret?
It was May, and when we got on the plane in Mexico City, we discovered it was full of Mexican temporary workers coming to Canada to work on the farms in summer. When we landed at Vancouver airport, we stood up, ready to leave the plane, when we were told:
‘Please sit down. Canada Immigration is coming on board to do a spot check.’
Sure enough, once the door opened, two Canadian Border officers and a cute little beagle dog boarded the plane. We had to leave by rows. By the time we had got to the exit, several Mexicans had been pulled to the side. The Border Officers looked at our passports, the little dog sniffed our carry-on bags (with the currency), wagged its tail – and we were through. We were lucky no-one had used the notes to sniff cocaine.
I still had the problem of changing the Mexican pesos into Canadian dollars. I went to Vancouver Bullion and Currency Exchange on Granville Street in Vancouver and queued up with the South Asian ladies selling their gold jewellery. When my turn came, I said:
‘Can you change 275,000 Mexican pesos into Canadian dollars?’
‘Fill in this form with your personal details, your passport number, and the origin of the money,’ which I did, and without further question I was paid roughly $23,000 in Canadian currency. From then on, however, on all future foreign contracts I paid a lot of attention to contract details, especially regarding the method of payment.
Viva Mexico!
I have been to Mexico at least once every two years since coming to Canada in 1989, either for work or holidays. For holidays, we have gone to Puerto Vallarta, Pozuelo, Ixtapa. Oaxaca, San Miguel de Allende, and Cancun. I have worked in Mexico City, Guadalajara, Toluca, Monterrey, Vera Cruz, and San Luis Potosi.
Everywhere I have been in Mexico, I have received wonderful hospitality and friendship. We take care wherever we travel but Patricia has wandered alone on foot (and got lost) in both Guadalajara and Mexico City (despite my concern). We have never encountered any violence, mainly because we were so well looked after by our Mexican hosts, but also because most Mexicans are friendly and helpful. One Mexican friend once said to me: ‘What binds Canada and Mexico together is what separates us.’ In the era of Trump, that is so true. Mexico is Canada’s friend and an important ally. It has been an honour and a privilege to work and play in Mexico – and great fun. I hope there’s more to come.
Up next
Starting my consultancy work at Southern Alberta Institute of Technology, and moving to Spain to work at the Open University of Catalonia
Dr. Tony Bates is the author of eleven books in the field of online learning and distance education. He has provided consulting services specializing in training in the planning and management of online learning and distance education, working with over 40 organizations in 25 countries. Tony is a Research Associate with Contact North | Contact Nord, Ontario’s Distance Education & Training Network.
