Putting in 110% ‘gives 200% satisfaction’: Sheridan

Retired visual arts teacher Dave Sheridan speaks to the audience at the Brockville & District Chamber of Commerce AGM Thursday, March 31, 2016 at the Brockville Country Club. Sheridan is the fifth receipient of the award. (Newswatch Group/Bill Kingston)

BROCKVILLE – This year’s recipient of the Brockville Lifetime Business Achievement Award says making various sculptures and artwork is secondary to inspiring community spirit in this students.

Retired Thousand Islands Secondary School (TISS) teacher David Sheridan received the award this morning (Thursday) during the Brockville & District Chamber of Commerce AGM at the Brockville Country Club.

Travelling around Brockville, you may have run into Sheridan’s work, which includes the herons next to the signs greeting you to the city to the mural at the Via Rail station.

The award was presented by local MP Gord Brown with a number of Sheridan’s family members joining in the celebration.

“Some of the wonderful projects my students have done with me. My gift, really, not just a gift to be acknowledged but to gift to have the opportunities to work for your community, to serve the community,” Sheridan told the AGM audience.

Sheridan explained that bringing art projects into the classroom helped his students understand, not only what they were doing at a artistic level, but at a community level as well.

“These opportunities that came up for me being a teacher, it was my way of serving the community. Not politics, I’m too thin-skinned for that. This was my way of sharing and giving something back as my father did,” he said.

Sheridan spoke at length about his students being able to have their hand in the Don Darling Memorial statue on Blockhouse Island – a $35,000 project through a grant from the City of Brockville and the local Lions Club.

“They were excited, they understood what they were doing. There was a transference of Con’s values into my kids. And it was at that time that I realized, the product is not the most essential thing. As a teacher, to create Con, whether it was good or bad, was secondary. The primary is to inspire the community spirit into my kids,” Sheridan said.

Sheridan retired from TISS in 2014 after a 26 year career and is now working with the Brockville Aquatarium.

Sheridan told Brockville Newswatch he’s “exploring large (art) projects” in the future.

He is the fifth recipient of Lifetime Business Achievement Award. He joins Don Green, Sheri Simzer, John and Steve Mazurek and Dave Jones in receiving the award.