It’s a small world. Two men were sitting together at a recent school reunion. One was from Ottawa, one from Thunder Bay. They got to talking about Saskatchewan. A third man joined in, mentioning his relatives in Elrose, Sask.
Gentleman A, from Ottawa, said that the editor of the Elrose paper was in the room. Gentleman B, from Thunder Bay, said he had known the editor since she was a child.
Gentleman A fetched said editor and introduced her to the gentleman with relatives in Elrose.
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Walking down the hall in the old high school the night before, I had been surprised to see my friend Henry Heald (Gentleman A above). I met Henry when I was in Ottawa and have known him for 30-odd years as a fellow farm writer.
Only recently did I find out that he is from Thunder Bay, and only at the reunion did I find out that we went to the same high school, a few years apart.
The high school is the Fort William Collegiate Institute, which marked its 100th birthday in mid-May. There were 834 students in the school the year I graduated, almost the same number as in the rural school division where I live. There were 113 in my class.
While we’ve gone our separate ways, for the weekend, we were back in high school. We came from across Ontario, from Manitoba and Saskatchewan, from Scotland and California and Chicago to wander the halls and reminisce about our shared past.
The first night was a time for nostalgia, tempered by the changes in us and in the school. We are all a little greyer and, should we say it, found the stairs to the third floor just a little more daunting than they were some years ago.
Like us, the classrooms have changed, updated for the ’90s, but with the original slate blackboards still in place.
The second night was a night to party, and we showed that, though there may be grey in the hair, we still have stamina.
The real end to my weekend was a nostalgic walk past the school and a session of picture-taking of the building where I spent five of the best years of my life (Ontario then as now has five years of high school, grades 9 to 13).
In looking over the reunion photos, my family was amused to see one of a fire hydrant. When I went to school, it was bright red. For reunion weekend, it sported a bright, shiny coat of blue and gold, the school colors.
In nostalgia there can still be whimsy.
