Recognizing Grad Class of 1980
This past weekend would be been our Open House weekend, with canoe trips heading out afterwards. The preparations for both events would have been finished after much scrambling, and long hours.
On the Saturday, parents and siblings would arrive out to see the displays and honour the awards being given out. Then the feast and the end of the day – goodbyes said and the anxious hours before the buses would be loaded and off to the wilds of Canada for the canoe trips.
What are your memories of Open House – send your stories in to us. (Click on the title and scroll to the bottom to submit your story. Or click on the photo to see a larger version)
June 11, 2012 at 1:55 pm
I remember my graduation Open House in 1976 as one of the grace-filled moments of my life. My last year at St. John’s had been a difficult one. Things had gone well for me in my earlier years at the school, as I raced ahead academically and found to my own and everyone else’s surprise that I could manage the physical challenges. However, by third year I was in classes with much older boys, increasingly ostracized, and coping badly with the changes of adolescence as problems from earlier in my life resurfaced.
On the morning of Open House things came to a head. I was only fifteen and not emotionally ready to graduate. I decided to run away from the situation and went down to the lower field, intending to miss the ceremony. Then the heavens opened. I was forced to head for shelter. On the hill I met the garbage crew whose truck was stuck in the mud. By the time I got back up to the school, filthy and soaking wet, my depression had lifted and I was able to go through with the ceremony and move on to the next stage in my life.
June 11, 2012 at 1:58 pm
Open house was a riot of last minute cleaning and display preps during the morning. Parents would start to arrive mid to late morning, and we would have the debate, the finals for the chess championship, a ton of displays of special projects kids had done. Parents didn’t particiapte much in the school life in that era, and it was about the only time they really got a good look at the school.
At the end of open house, kids changed into trip clothes, and sent most of their stuff home. But there was always stuff that had to be put in storage for the trip.
After openhouse we had to clean up (again) Then, a final round of packing, checking lists, loading the busses. Sometimes yet anouther round of cleaning.
Up to the time of Temiskaming we usually would leave for canoe trips on Saturday night, and drive straight through the the night.
Not all boys wanted to go on the trip. This always amazed me. Looking back, I would have had a hard time at SJ had I gone there as a boy, but I might have come just for the canoe trips. High Adventure!
Anyway, in those days, kids frequently ran away. Mostly their parents brought them back, they’d take their 10 swats, and resign themselves to being there, at least until the next intolerable event.
But running away on Openhouse was *the* way to do it. Once the award ceremonies started, a boy had a clear 2-3 hour head start. No one would miss him until at least the end of the meal that followed the the ceremony. If he could stay out of site for an additional 5 hours after that, the busses would be gone, and his parents couldn’t bring him back to the school.
Mostly it worked.
GL was one such boy. Grade 9, skinny like a rake, not popular with the boys particularly, not popular with the staff, lazy, not academic. He was the kind of boy that others liked to pick on. His year at the school was a round of swats for badly done homework, smoking, chores badly done, butt of practical jokes.
He had practice running away. He had done it several times that year, and his dad brought him back each time.
GL took off at the start of awards, after having changed to his ‘normal’ clothes — something a bit less conspicuous than the white turtleneck and dark blue cords.
(Note in passing: If you ever have any input on a school uniform, make darn sure that ‘white’ is NOT part of the colour scheme. Not if the school works with boys. Impossible to have 100 boys ALL clean at once. At least one will have a shirt with a ketchup (or blood…) stain on it.)
Sidetrack.
Anyway GL was a long way from the school before anyone noticed he was missing. I don’t know what he did over the next 48 hours.
Meanwhile, we left the school. It was my first trip, the Fond du Lac. We made it as far as Vegreville, and the engine to the bus died. New engine needed. There happened to be one in town, and in 24 hours we were on the way again. North. Quick stop in LaRonge. North. North to the tiny community of South End, on Raindeer Lake. North on a dirt road to the shore of the lake.
After the usual kerfuffle of unloading the bus, loading and balancing the canoes, we were off. It was mid morning.
It was a glorious day. The sky a clear blue, the water a deeper blue. Sun bright on the water. My canoe went more or less in the intended direction.
We’d been on the water for only an hour or so, when we heard the sound of a float plane. A Cessna 180 circled us, then landed into the wind a quarter mile away. We went over.
It was GL and his dad and GL’s pack. Dad had caught up with GL about the time we were leaving Vegreville. They had gone out to the school, picked up his trip gear, then had driven to LaRonge. There, they hired a plane to take them in pursuit of the brigade.
None of his problems were left behind, and he had a thoroughly miserable trip, with the usual lost gear, dislike by his peers for being lazy, for shirking weight under the canoe, nicotine withdrawal when his cigarettes got soaked, bug bites, cold, wet.
(Even for me, as a new staff member it was a tough trip. I have the approximate shape of a voyageur (fire hydrant…) and the portages were tough, Tall skinny kids had the worst of it: The canoe tries to pound us all down to the same level, and a soda straw can remain strong only if straight. Skinny kids felt the cold more, and the first two weeks of the trip were ducking in and out of ice flows.)
GL survived.
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A few months ago GL got in contact with me. He is now a recreational canoeist. Who’d have thunk it?