Central Etobicoke High School - Etobian Yearbook (Etobicoke, Ontario Canada)

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by BARBARA MARTIN, Oratorical Contest Winner, 1954. Cancer is the disease dreaded by so many. Marie Curie is the scientist who discovered the only hope of cancer control. lt is of this woman, her life, her work, her character I wish to speak. Marie Curie, burning with an unappeasable ambition, worked a lifetime among notebooks, test-tubes and bare laboratory walls to produce radium, the cure for cancer. With her frail, slender hands Madame Curie changed the course of the world's thinking just as another great woman, Joan of Arcfchanged its history. Marie was a Polish girl, she was poor, she was beautiful, she was the daughter of an impoverished school teacher in a Poland still under the iron clutch of Russia. In school Marie proved her brilliance. She was always the teacher's choice to answer questions when the Russian inspector arrived . Name the Tzars who have ruled over our Holy Russia since Catherine the Great, he would ask. Five year old Marie, in fluent Russian would list ten or twelve names in order. Fine, the inspector would say. This child has a remarkable memory. Who is our most gracious overlord? he would continue . To hide the fire in their eyes the superintendant and teacher of the school would stare hard at the register. When the answer did not come quickly enough the inspector, angered, would boom, Who rules over us? His Majesty Alexander ll, Tzar of all the Russias. Marie would say, pale and trembling. The session over the inspector gone, she would burst into a flood of tears at her own cowardice and the oppression of her people. When her schooling was completed Marie supported herself by tutoring children in wealthy homes. Life in these sophisticated surroundings was unbearable for her. So with only a dream in her heart she escaped to Paris. On the verge of collapse and starvation, yet with access to text books and scientific study, she was happy there . Then a bright star appeared on her horizon . In Paris she met and married Pierre Curie, whose scientific genius was akin to her own . Together they carried out scientific experiments. Lured on by the discovery of polonium and well on the way to discovering radium Pierre and Marie scorned fatigue and other diffuculties. Four years they laboured in a shed, the best laboratory they could afford. In the winter when it froze, they froze. During the rainy season they had to mark places on the work-table where rain fell from the leaky roof to avoid putting apparatus there. To obtain quantities of radium, polonium and radium must be separated from pitch-blende. ln her notebook Marie wrote, lt was killing to stir the boiling matter for hours at a stretch i' When the time came for the purifi- cation stage spotlessly clean apparatus and workrooms were needed . This shed was open to every wind, enabling iron and coal dust to mix with the products purified with such great care . Long after her husband had abandoned the experiments Marie worked on in the shed . One significant night she entered the old shed, feeling that her experiments were nearing completion . She stoppedl There on the work-table lay the luminous product of her discovery . Suddenly the four long years of labour, privation and isolation from the world became fruitful and worth-while. She had produced radium from an experimental ton of pitch-blende given to her and her husband by the Academy of Science in Vienna and labelled to the two French lunatics who think they need this. Unfortunately Marie had not escaped tragedy. One evening, returning home from a day's work she was confronted at the door by two French police officers. They hadn't the courage to tell her their news. After studying their faces for a moment Marie quietly yet forcibly said, My husband is dead . ln a tragic accident, Pierre Curie who almost lost his identity also lost his life. Marie was without her companion and the world was without this great man, - a world which was beginning to appreciate the genius of these two. ln spite of sorrow and physical illness, Marie continued alone in the work, brilliantly developing the science they had created together. Devotion, health, wisdom, everything was given to its furtherance and the betterment of mankind . The glory and power came at last, she was twice winner of the Nobel prize but these honours she did not seek. lt was science and mankind she cared for, not fame. When her mission in life was accomplished, she died exhausted having refused wealth and having accepted her honours with indifference. What is even more rare than her work is her quality of soul in which neither fame, power nor wealth could change its exceptional purity. Her daughter said, lt is the celebrated scientist who is the stranger to me. Of her Einstein said, Marie Curie is of all celebrated beings the only one whom fame has not corrupted . In a country graveyard among summer flowers, she had the quietest and simplest of burials as if the life just ended had been like that ofa thousand others. Madame Curie was very nearly unaware of her astonoshing destiny. 66

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ETOBIAN LITERARY CONTEST PROSE Grade I3 lst Barbara Meisner l3A Headed Home 2nd Margaret Johnston l3A Reverie Grade I2 lst Nancy Smith l2B The Tree Sandra Gorclen l2B Salad Girl of Bigwin Inn 2nd Don Thompson l2B Driving Lessons Grade ll Honourable Mention A Day in the Life of a Boy Patricia Meekins IID Grade I0 lst Mary Ecclestone IOA Johnnie Gopher and the Dance 2nd Jim McPherson IOH Feeble Fiction GPC'-ie 9 lst Jackie Logan 9C Autumn in the Northland 2nd Peggy Patterson 9J Ripley's Believe lt Or Not Museum POETRY Grade I2 and I3 lst Nancy Richardson IZB Reflections 2nd Merla Lehman l2A TQ g MOU,-,fain Grade IO and ll lst Sally Potter llH The Nightingale John Krasovskis IOD The Lion Grade 9 lst Peter Andersen 9K 2nd Sheelah Kidd 9B The Big Storm HUMOROUS POETRY Grade 9 and ll Paulette Lenard IOC With Thoughts of Love Grade I2 and I3 Vincent Winder l2F The Golfer RIPLEY'S BELIEVE IT OR NOT MUSEUM Robert L. Ripley lived in a world of strangeness most of his life . He was surrounded by shrunken heads, religious treasures and mummy cases, priceless objects he collected himself. Before Ripley's death several year ago, he purchased a castle in the state of Florida at St. Augustine. The castle was two stories high and had approximately forty rooms. This, thought Ripley, would be a perfect place to exhibit his oddities. Ripley drew giant-size enlargements of his cartoons on every wall of the building then, he placed in his collection, the un- orthodox, the unusual, the exotic, the queer, the ugly, and the beautiful things of this earth. His relics ranged from a necklace of seaweed and polar bear fur to a handkerchief Mrs. Abraham Lincoln carried to her husband's inauguration as President of the United States. In the lobby of the museum Ripley has placed a huge totem pole from the Haidak tribe of the Alaskan Indians. It stands ten feet high and is over three feet wide . It is the only one ever seen in the U .S .A. A tour of the museum produces mixed emotions. One minute you laugh, next you shudder and then you lust wonder. Each room creates a different atmosphere. One is religious and has in it a scale model of the famous Italian Cathedral Midano, which took a man nearly seven years to build . This room also has shrunken heads, one of which was presented to him by the Jivaro Indians in Equador. Mr. Ripley witnessed the ceremony and was given the head as a memento of the occasion . The museum has a beautiful Chinese room showing a Nori-Mari in which royal women and children were carried by servants . He has a room for war relics of senturies ago, and another for displaying devices used For torturing people in Colonial days. Two Chinese immortals titled Halt All Evil and Chase All Evil which once stood at the gates of a Buddhist Temple in China, now stand at the gates of Ripley's and supply you with the first thoughtof the wonder which is filling the four walls of Ripley's AUTUMN IN THE NORTHLAND Autumn, swiftly mantling the northem lands, brings its share of despair and beauty to the wildemess. Believe it or Not Museum. The loon, softly gliding across the cool lakes cries out to wish the summer and plentiful things an echoing farewell. Wolves, looking upon autumn's glow with their yellow, glinting eyes, know that behind the splendour of the wild country's cloak lies the spirit of the frost, the evil god who brings the driving snow, the frozen waters and the hungry animal forms. But now, with autumn's young and dancing body, the onlooker perceives only the ioy of life. He does not see the lean times ahead, he sees only the gleaming dress of the maples, and the dark green balsarns with their fun'y tips. The eye sees the yellow loveliness of the birch and the rippling of the waters. The senses feel only the brisk laughing winds brushing past on their way to oareen through the trees. Noses smell only the tingling scent of fresh pine, the soft aroma of warm earth in the forest. Man's ears hear the cry of the loon, and the warble of gossiping birds and the soft lapping of the waves on the rocks . But what the eyes do not see are the worried looks on the lupine faces. They do not see the frantic struggle for winter resources which goes on about them. The senses may feel, but do not comprehend the meaning of the winds which every day become colder and more brutal. Unlike animals, man cannot smell cn oncoming rain, or perhaps a future storm . One hears but does not interpret the loon's hysterical wailing. Autumn in the northland is beautiful, but perhaps it is a cruel beauty. lt is nature's last fling until winter approaches - a mocking but gorgeous work of unsurpassed art. 65

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RE I ERIE it is f so f V J f He returned from work along the narrow cement walk, the castanet l X , notes ofthe typewriters still ringing in his ears. The smells of the boarding f house-of fish, and cats, of rusty water-pipes and old carpet did not make any impression on him. His bed twanged like guitar as he fell exhausted upon it, not even seeing the wicker chair that sounded like A ' mice in the straw, or the brown paper with water stains running in vague i f I, patterns about it. Sleep overcame him, he began to dream . Suddenly he found himself in a distant springtime valley. Meadow opened into meadow, and the hills made tall horizons. lt was morning, hills were crimson where the sunlight touched them, but the lower valley X was still steeped in shadow, and the river smoked with a white vapour. 5 He saw and loved every change of light and temper in that changeful X, valley, and every wind that blew along its furrow. ln the distance the ' full shapes of the oak trees echoed those of the vast cumulus clouds above I whose shadows drifted across the meadows, blue, blue-grey, purple and green, like the shadows of whales on the sea floor. He could see the house he would call his own. It sat well back on a lawn seamed with mole tunnels, and was shaded by many torn shattered oaks whose trunks were splashed with foam-like circles of pale green lichen . The house was warped and sagging, constructed by no plan . Surrounding it was a garden of tall dahlias, great fleshy stars, and sea anemones of rose colour, blood red, sulphur and veiled pink. Suddenly he awoke. His heart and mind filled with a suffocating sense of menace and madness . His deep brown eyes misted with tears as he gazed down upon his great dark hands-darker still in the gloom of night, wondering now, as he had wondered so many times before why their darkness meant his being segregated even when in the army, offering his life for a peace and a liberty he did not really know. So often he had thought of what it would be like to live where he could forget his colour, and perhaps play a big part in his nation's life. ln the back of his mind was a wild and intense longing to belong, to be identified, to feel alive, to have equal opportunities, to forget the coloured shadow that was always with him, oppressing him, to forget he was a Negro. Day and night he dreamt of what his life would be if he were free of the chains of blackness. He wondered, and in the depths of his soul stirred the slow, sad music of his race. Perhaps some day it would become a triumphant hymn, a sturdy song of all his peaceful and hopeful people. His people, the race with a tragic past, a tragic present, and a future. . ............. Qoikn Gophers This is the tale of the Gophers of Gold, They were stout, stalwart, and noticeably bold . Cully and Turner and Cromwell were backs, While linemen like Rollo were sharp as brass tacks. Crozier and May were sneaks of renown, As their miraculous handoffs never failed a first down. The centre of the line always closed like a trap, 'Cause Colman and Knight were there to help Tapp. Now as for the quarters, there were Chapman and Conn, When one was off, the other was on. And then for the passes, stood Seeback and Young, To receive all the flings, that their way were flung. Best yetl ..... Coach MacMartin, the cause of it all, Just mention the gridiron - and you're on the ball. That is the story of the Gophers of Gold, Many times over l'm sure t'will be told! 67