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- Grant McEwan visit 1981…in the classroom.
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- Grant McEwan visit 1981…at the kennels.
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- Grant McEwan visit 1981…riding horses.
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- Glenn Hall visit 2006…great stories were told.
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- Glenn Hall Visit 2006 … group shot.
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- Glenn Hall Visit 2006…signing autographs.
Always looking for a new way to inspire young minds, the school staff would bring in special visitors. Some were politicians, some sports figures, some were authors; and some were just fun to be around.
What are your memories of the “famous” visitors that you met while in the school? Send us your story.
October 2, 2017 at 6:56 am
I think we had the Duke of Edinburgh once. Pretty vague memory. I wasn’t working for the school at the time, but doing all the outdoor stuff.
One other time, however we almost had Princess Di.
We had a boy, a newboy, grade 9, Jason. That doesn’t reveal much, as we had 13 Jasons that year. Anyway, he was fascinated by the Royal Family, and was infatuated with the princess.
The Royals were coming on tour to Canada that year. So Colin Belton and I dropped a rumour that Di was coming to open house. We then briefed select grade 12s who could keep a straight face the background story: The princess knew at one point she’d be having kids, and was looking for the right experience for them, so when the family was on tour, she was using this as an opportunity to check out unusual schools. This was the reason there was the big push to have the school looking good.
The rumour sprouted legs, and sprinted through the school. Other staff added more details: If you saw strangers about, it was the Queen’s Security Force checking the place out. Their cover while checking it out would be that they were parents looking at schools. Some would have a teen with them to make the cover tighter. (This was a time of year that we had parents visiting like crazy.)
We had him going for about 4 days.
He was crushed when he found out that the object of his fantasies was getting no closer than Ottawa.
(He was so very gullible. Less than a week later we told him that the school was going Co-ed, that the hockey rink, then just outside the bootroom, would be taken down and the girls dorm was going there; that the school was going to become more serious academically, so there would be no more outdoor program; that chores were a distraction, so we would have maid service for the dorms to clean, and make the beds, do the laundry. That each dorm would have a phone, but that it wouldn’t be able to make direct long distance calls.
We had him until the phones.)
October 2, 2017 at 10:47 am
One winter evening in the early 70s we gathered in the dining hall to meet Farley Mowat and be regaled by his raconteur gifts. The lapse of 45 years has erased all memory of what he said that dark night but the gleam in his eyes and the energy in his words remain. He was there to visit with his son who sat, in the classes I taught, at the back of the middle row and had the same spark, as I recall, as his famous father. As his form teacher I began on that first September morning to establish with the class that we would begin each day kneeling by our desks to say the Lord’s Prayer. At once Mowat raised his hand to ask if this was mandatory. Assured that it was not, he sat there each day while all the others knelt, a chip off the old block, a Mowat through and through. Nor, I presume, would he take offense that I have said so now.