Condolence: As the year passes, we are remembering with you.

Henry Walser Funeral Home Team

Condolence: I was so saddened to hear about the passing of Claire. I started working for him in 1990 when he was the Coordinator of the Enhanced Learning Program in the Special Programs Department. You couldn't ask for a better boss. He was generous and kind. He appreciated everyone and everything. He was an amazing baker and collected and enjoyed fine wine. He treated our team to many memorable lunches. It was a joy working for him and getting to know him. I will miss him and I will never forget his generosity and kindness. Sending my sincere condolences to the family.

Condolence: I met Claire when he was the Co-ordinator of Gifted education for the Peel District School Board. He was the visionary architect of the gifted education model for Peel which included his Consultants, Enhanced Learning Teachers (ELT's), Contained Gifted Class teachers and an annual summer camp for gifted students at the University of Toronto, Mississauga Campus. I had the privilege of working with Claire from 1985 to 1991 as both an ELT and contained classroom teacher and then an assistant director at the July camp in 1993.
Claire was an extraordinary and brilliant educator who created incredible opportunities for Peel's gifted students to receive the differentiated special education that encouraged so many of them to be engaged and challenged in their education and to further develop their gifts and talents and to thrive. I feel as a teacher and colleague of Claire's that I had the same opportunity, and became a much better teacher than I otherwise would have been.
Thank you, Claire, for being the special individual that you were, and for the perseverance and leadership you provided on behalf of so many students and teachers in Peel. I want your family to know that you were respected and appreciated and I extend
my sincere condolences. I am proud to have known you and to have worked with you. Rest in peace.

Dianne Burrow
Retired Principal
Peel District School Board

Condolence: I was saddened to see Claire's obituary in the Globe and Mail. I am grateful that the family had it published there so that former students like myself could see it. I was a, not so gifted, student of his at Westwood Secondary (now Lincoln Alexander SS I believe) many years ago. In fact I was absolutely dreadful in math and as any who knew him realize, he did not suffer fools lightly. However, for me, he was incredibly patient, knowing that while I was never going to be a math and science major... he nevertheless ensured I knew enough to find my way, which I did.

As a teacher and mentor he was more than a math teacher, he was an innovator and simply drew the best and brightest both teachers and students to him because they knew he could make them better. That math department was a bonafide powerhouse and many of my fellow graduates who did study math in university found it disappointing that many of their university profs did not hold a candle to him or colleagues like Ray Novak. His insistence on teaching matriculation calculus in a lecture format to help prepare folks for university was likely seen as grandstanding by some fellow faculty, but it certainly paid off for the learners. He got students interested in investing and the stock market long, long before it was done elsewhere. And yes on top of all that he was oddly cool. He always had the newest and the fastest car in the parking lot ( I recall a Camero Z28) and did not liked to be called mister. In 1975 that was pretty radical thinking in a high school.

The one thing to me that is outstanding about all his accomplishments (with the support of a great principal, Ken Teeter) is that he did it with a bunch of working class, largely immigrant kids, for whom virtually none of their parents had gone to university and at a time when there were still lots of factory jobs, many right down the street from the school. And yet, the number of kids in that small 1975 graduating class who went on to become successful professionals is pretty astounding. There were only about 70 of us and while I certainly never kept track of everyone, I can think of 4 university professors, an IBM vice president, four engineers, two medical doctors, several bank executives, about 6 teachers and heck, I became a university registrar, quite astounding given my math skills:)

This is not to say Claire Zeller did all the heavy lifting, but he sure made sure everyone had a chance to succeed. He is the third former department head from Westwood that I know we lost in 2016, (Mike Teague, Business and Peter Peart, English) but he is the only one I have felt compelled to write something about, something I really have never done before. But as somebody who spend over 30 years in the education business I felt an obligation to recognize such a real game changer in his field. May he rest in peace with many thanks.

Paul Thomson
Class of 75
Bath, Ontario