Ran Ide

Fonds number:
84
Title: Ran Ide
Dates of Material:
18062015
Extent:
2.10 m of textual material
134 photographs
1 box of oversized material
1 VHS tape
Biographical sketch

Thomas Ranald (Ran) Ide was born in Ottawa on February 20, 1919 to Lola Scharfe and Richard Mold Ide. He moved with his family to Saint John, N.B., where he went to high school.  After graduating from Mount Allison University, he taught at Pickering College, Newmarket, Ontario, where he met his first wife Eleanor Aylesworth. During WWII, Ran Ide served as a navigator in the RCAF and afterwards, returned to teaching at the Port Arthur Collegiate Institute. 

Eleanor and Ran had three children Richard, John and Douglas. In 1953, Eleanor was struck by polio and lived the next twelve years as a quadriplegic until her death in 1964. During this period, television played an important role in the household. TV, as Ran saw it, could bring the classroom into a hospital room, the home, or isolated community and he immediately starting promoting its potential as a powerful educational tool.

After spending twenty years in Port Arthur, Thunder Bay, and Fort William as a teacher, principal, inspector and superintendent of secondary schools, Ran Ide was asked in 1966 by the Honourable William G. Davis to establish a branch responsible for educational television within the Ontario Department of Education. When the Ontario Educational Communications Authority, better known as TVOntario, was created in 1970, Mr. Ide was appointed its first Chairman and CEO.

Following his retirement in 1979, he established T. R. Ide Consultants Inc. with his second wife Arlene Miles and, among other activities, chaired the federal Department of Communication’s Research Advisory Board (CRAB), the Science Council of Canada’s Committee on Computers and Communications and served as acting Vice-President of Planning at the CBC.

Ran Ide held honorary doctorates from Queen’s and Waterloo universities.  He was a Fellow of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, the Ontario Teachers’ Federation, the World Academy of Art and Science and was an active member of the international Club of Rome. In 1996, he was made an Officer of The Order of Canada.  Ran Ide died of leukemia in October of 1996. 

Scope and content

Fonds consists of 6 series that follow the chronological dates of the records and illustrate the progression of Ran Ide's professional career.  Other than the first series, which covers Ran Ide's family and early years, the majority of the records focus on the professional aspects of his life. The final series consists of a finding aid compiled by the donor, John Ide, Ran Ide's son and contains anecdotes and detailed explanations of all of the records at the item level. There is also a series of writings from Ran Ide's Before and After: Recollections which he wrote for his family in 1996 and several writings of memories written by John Ide. 

NOTE(S)
Source of supplied title

Title based on contents of fonds.

Immediate source of acquisition

Acquired from John Ide in 2015.   

Finding aids

Box/File lists are available.   

Accruals

No further accruals are expected.   

Access points

Provenance access point:

  • Ide, Thomas Ranald (Ran), 1919-1996.  
Arrangement

Records were arranged chronologically by John Ide, the donor, and described at the item level (see Box 18 for a copy of the donor's item level descriptions). The archivist has grouped similar record types (items) together which originally came from the same file folders.