Remembering Sensei Mark Bell
The Canadian martial arts community has lost another link to the formative years of karate in this country with the passing of Sensei Mark Bell, founder of Peterborough’s Jiyu-Shin Karate School.
Sensei Bell’s roots reach back into one of the foundational lineages of Canadian karate. He began his training under O-Sensei Masami Tsuruoka, widely remembered as the Father of Canadian Karate, and later trained under Sensei Monty Guest, founder of the Kai-Shin Karate Association. It was a generation in which karate in Canada was still young, when today’s associations, clubs and traditions were being built dojo by dojo and student by student.
In 1972, Sensei Bell established Jiyu-Shin Karate School in Peterborough, Ontario. More than fifty years later, Jiyu-Shin remains active and is recognised as the oldest surviving karate club in the city. Several of Bell’s earliest black belts went on to continue teaching and training — perhaps one of the clearest measures of the influence a martial-arts instructor can leave behind.
Those who trained under Sensei Bell remember an instructor deeply concerned with the quality of technique. His student and eventual successor, Sensei John MacCallum, remembers one lesson in particular:
“Practice makes Permanent.”
It is a deceptively simple statement, but a profoundly martial one. Practice alone does not guarantee perfection. Whatever we repeat — good or bad — becomes part of us. Therefore we must practise deliberately, correctly and with attention.
That lesson seems an appropriate reflection of Sensei Bell’s own legacy.
In October 2004, after more than three decades at the heart of Jiyu-Shin, Bell stepped away from regular teaching and moved to Victoria, British Columbia. He entrusted the school to Sensei John MacCallum with the hope that what he had built would continue. Bell would still return for some gradings, while his name and place as founder remained part of the traditions of the dojo.
His hope was fulfilled.
Jiyu-Shin celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 2022 and continues teaching karate in Peterborough today. Students who learned from Sensei Bell became black belts. Some became instructors. They trained another generation, who in turn trained another. Techniques corrected decades ago are still being corrected today; standards established on an old dojo floor continue to be passed from teacher to student.
That is one of the peculiar gifts of the martial arts. A Sensei does not simply leave memories behind. He leaves movement.
A stance.
A correction.
A kata performed a particular way.
A lesson repeated to another student decades later.
In that sense, the teacher never entirely leaves the dojo.
The members and instructors of the Snow Tiger Martial Arts Association extend our sincere condolences to Sensei Bell’s family, friends, students, and to everyone at Jiyu-Shin Karate School.
We remember with respect a man who helped build karate in Peterborough and whose work has endured for more than half a century.
Rest in peace, Sensei Mark Bell.
Practice makes permanent.
