Ryan Land, Vale Manitoba Operations manager of corporate affairs, organizational design and human resources, as well as a School District of Mystery Lake (SDML) trustee and a former R.D. Parker Collegiate principal, is moving to a new role within the company in Sudbury.
Land announced his departure on Facebook page Aug. 25 and it was officially announced in an Aug. 27 Vale human resources bulletin that he will be the manager of corporate and Indigenous affairs for Ontario and Manitoba effective Sept. 4. Land said he would be splitting his time between Sudbury and Thompson for the next few months and continue having responsibilities related to Manitoba Operations over the longer term.
He will not be resigning as a trustee prior to the Oct. 24 municipal election as his permanent address will continue to be in Thompson until January.
Land was elected to the school board in 2014, winning the most votes among the candidates for trustee.
Originally from Winnipeg, Land came to Thompson to become RDPC’s principal for the 2009-10 school year and was in the job for less than two years when he was suddenly removed by the school board in February 2011, a decision that was rescinded in June 2012, when Land and the school district reached a settlement on the eve of a scheduled arbitration hearing and he tendered his official retroactive resignation.
Conflict between Land and the school board began in April 2010 when trustees publicly rebuked him during a board meeting and announced that his probationary status, normally one year in duration, was being extended another year after a unanimous vote by the trustees, who had considered the option of terminating Land's employment, but ultimately decided not to. About five months later, in September 2010, the board apologized to Land for discussing a personnel matter in public.
Trustees then voted twice in identical 5-2 splits on Feb. 22 and April 5, 2011 to remove him as probationary principal.
In mid-June 2011, about a month after Land had already been hired by Vale, trustees fired Land for cause. At the last board meeting of the 2010-11 school year, then-SDML superintendent Bev Hammond provided details of an investigation she said she had conducted, which she said found that students had had marks changed without doing remedial work, responsibility for which she laid at the feet of Land in an interview with the Thompson Citizen. Hammond's marks-changing investigation focused only on the years that Land was principal and she resigned her job after just 16 months in January 2012.
Prior to arriving in Thompson, Land worked at schools in Leicester, United Kingdom, Ste. Anne, Manitoba, Humboldt and Blake Lake First Nation in Saskatchewan, and, immediately preceding his time as RDPC principal, in Ghana as founding principal of the first Canadian international school in West Africa.
