Appleby College - Argus Yearbook (Oakville, Ontario Canada)

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MIGRATION A presence felt but twice the year, Shifting gently o ' er the land; Nudging, pushing, driving near And sweeping past; her sweet command. Strong will not hers, she was conceived By playful gods that season sing With breaths that toss the autumn leaves. Yet warm the sleeping hearts of spring. Thundr ' ing prairiers, pulsing and free; Dust clouds trail the bestial stream. She leads the charge, sweet Liberty: The voiceless call of wilder dream. Dark nights winging overhead. She honks and squawks with restless soul Crisp autumn days, her angles spread In timeless skies of crackling gold. Delphic priestess, goddess of birth; In duty she breathes the mists of change, And lifts to flee the dying earth In search of warmth. No place retains Her transitory touch, for she • Is doomed to chase eternity. S. Roloff WHEN LIFE REJECTS ME When life rejects me and my faith decays. When I lose grasp of what I most desire And hope of health submerges in the haze, One thought sustains my spirit ' s fading fire. Within my life there is one love alone Whose peaceful warmth can fill my darkest hour. Who raises hope where seeds were sown And lifts me high to drift within her power. She gives me rest when time has run its course And living laughter when the rest is done; She fills me with a windmill-slaying force And sweet relaxing when the war is won. I cannot find the limits of her heart Nor of her love, and though I all the while Know greater griefs each time we are apart I find new heavens in the sunlight of her smile. Edward Dickens

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THE GREAT ATTEMPT Two tickets for Cinema One, please. said the boy and the cashier paused. I couldn ' t help overhearing this, as I was next in the cinema line up. The cashier gave the two boys a cool, long glance. Cinema One is a restricted movie , she said. Restricted to what? questioned the boy. Impatiently she replied, You have to be accompanied by an adult. Why? said the boy. She indicated the sign on the wall, pointing her long bright red finger nail. The sign mentioned the fact that persons under 18 had to be accompanied by an adult. How does that apply to us? questioned the taller of the two boys. You have to be 18, said the cashier. How do you know we ' re not 18? asked the boy. You have not even asked us how old we are? All right, how old are you? she questioned. Eighteen, and my friend is 18 and four months the boy replied. O.K., look at these, our social insurance cards, they show that we work. The cashier responded, Yes, but you do not have to be 18 to have one. doggedness. Finally the cashier said, I ' ll just call the manager over to settle this little matter. The boys looked at one another and one turned to look at me. and said, She doesn ' t believe us. Would you accompany us? As he was standing on tiptoes, how could I resist? S. Gatrell JAMES HALL BROOKS IS AN UNUSUAL PERSON James Anthony Hall Brooks is unusual. In Canada, one of the criteria of abnormality is to have been born in the province of Newfoundland. This fact that our subject was born in Goose Bay, Labrador, therefore, has obvious phychological implications about his mental capacities. There is even a peculiar aspect to his name; inherent in its hyphen, for there is none. To aggravate matters, his name is continually being misspelt. Perhaps this is the root of the problem? Does James Hall Brooks have an identity crisis? Is this lack of cohesion so evident in his surname contributive to a fractured mind? I would tend to dismiss this as mere speculation. Were we to look more closely at the facts, however, we would indeed find something unusual with Mr. Brooks. His room is decorated in the early Doggerel style. On his walls, hang posters on behalf of the Progressive Conservative Party, and pictures of Napoleon Bonaparte, and a boy in the death throes of starvation. Surely THIS is the mark of an aberration of the mental processes. His library merely adds support to such a surmise, for in it are contained such dubious works as The Theory and Practice of Guerilla Warfare , an Introduction to Or- nithology , Watership Down , and the Holy Bible. James Hall Brooks is also rather unusual to look at. He has that emaciated appearance characteristic of the intellectual. In accordance with this he has been bestowed with the sobriquets of Pretzel , String Bean or Stickman. Otherwise, his countenance is nondescript, ex- cepting a ludicrous pair of glasses which are alway perched lopsidedly on the bridge of his nose. HB ' s psychological make-up is extremely complex, however, and I doubt whether even he suspects half the truth about it. Whatever the diagnosis be, there are some decidedly unusual aspects to it. For in- stance, he likes Latin. He is a latent heterosexual besides, although he is apt to assign this to diffidence. His political views are somewhat suspect, as are his motives in wanting to go to England when everyone else is trying to leave that country. He abhors decadence, especially Western style. And finally, he is one of that curious breed of man or semi-man, a harrier. The cumultive result of such nonsensical traits point, almost conclusively, to the fact that there is definitely something the matter with him. I know, but I just thought .... ' I listened to the conversation with some amusement, since I had then reached the great age of 21, but folk behind me were getting impatient. However, the boys were quite persistent and I couldn ' t help admiring their Despite all of Mr. Brooks ' idiosyncracies, eccentricities, and weird and wonderful ways , he may be consoled by the fact that he is a mere ONE one out of THOUSANDS of unusual people. It should be remembered, too, that it is these weird people as a whole who collectively com- prise the most dubious of all classes - the average, or THE NORMAL. Abnormality is the essence of normality. Such being the case, James Anthony Hall Brooks simply reeks of it. James Hall Brooks

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FOOL UNNUMBERED The bell tinkled as the door opened. A man walked into the book shop and wiped his feet on the mat. His eyes quickly glanced about the aisles and summarized the oicture before him - an elderly grandmother browsing among the section of children ' s books, two small boys looking at picture books depicting the last glorious war, and in the cor- ner, a security policeman in black uniform leafing one of the new sen- sationalist paperbacks. The man checked himself subconsciously and then walked over to the counter. In front of him, stood an old whizzened man whose hair was streaked with white and whose hands were tinted by the criss-crossing of prominent grey veins. Good morning. Good morning , replied the sales clerk with a slight, nervous smile. I ordered a book quite some time ago. You must have it in by now. The name is Mr. Hill. Ah, yes. The bell tinkled again. The policeman had retired to the streets. This is perhaps what you were looking for. Metternick ' s Studies. Sorry about the delay. I believe the publishers have just finished .... moving. Here, let me wrap that for you. Nice day outside, at least the sun is still shining . . . okay. That will be twelve ninety-five, please. Enjoy your reading. Bye. Good bye. Mr. Hill was in his late twenties, rather tall with dirty blond hair, and sharply cut features. He was dressed in dull-coloured clothes, and his shirt-sleeves were rolled halfway up his arms. He paused at the door, to wipe clean his glasses, then walked out into the street, the book under his arm. At the corner, he stopped to buy a newspaper, and glanced at the headlines: PRODUCTION UP 12% IN THE PAST YEAR; BRIGHTER ECONOMIC FUTURE PREDICTED. The papers were always optimistic, yet he couldn ' t help but notice the downcast eyes of the flower vendor and the street cleaner as they shuffled past. Where was the sparkle that had once been in their eyes? It HAD been there ... in the early days. In the early years people had looked up to the President as the Saviour. Indeed, most people still did. This was strange. There was no longer any rejoicing and celebrating in the streets as there has been at the Liberation. Life was hard now. Ture, it had been hard before, but Peter Hill was sure that it had never been as bad as this. There was so much injustice today. The promises of the early years had been broken, or at least, they had remained unfulfilled. Thery were like pieces of eggshell, fragments to be broken. Vocal protests had been made . . and silenced. The loyal opposition had asked for explanations . . . they were arrested, for treason. Crimes BY the state prompted crimes AGAINST the state. So had the un- derground factions been born - extreme right-wing militarism, extreme left-wing terrorism. These forces of destruction were of the same mould, it seemed, as the government in power - As Peter Hill described them, they were all one and the same book, yet each had a different cover. Mr. Hill was an interventionist. Anathema to him were the false ideologies of evil; he would have nothing to do with them. He believed in freedom, and in justice, and in the rights of man. He knew WHAT was right, and he knew HE was right. No, Peter Hill you are a dreamer, a mere pawn on the chessboard of reality. Peter Hill would not be stop-