Elmwood School - Samara Yearbook (Ottawa, Ontario Canada)

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TIMMY WILLS: MY MEMOIRS OF OTTAWA Happiness is ... a month at Elmwood. That one simple phrase sums up my many feeHngs about my exciting month of exchange. I loved every mo- ment that I was in Ottawa and was only too sorry when it was all over so quickly. I must admit that I was extremely apprehensive about the whole exchange idea and wondered on numerous occasions how I could have gotten myself into such a mess. Truly m ' rewards have been many and I wish that others too will someday be able to enjoy and appreciate the wonderful oppor- tunity I had. I was entranced with Ottawa at one o ' clock in the morning when I saw for the first time the beau- tiful Chateau Laurier shining in the dark. After a harrowing plane flight and a long tiresome drive from Toronto, it was certainly a welcome sight. Not really knowing what to expect upon reaching Elmwood, I had an open mind and was surprised at how very much unlike a school Elmwood looked. It was a bit smaller than Crofton House with not as many students, which was an extremely lucky thing for me because I had an easier time learning every- one ' s name. The whole school routine was different but a welcome change as were the course of studies. There is, I found, quite a difference between the curriculums for each grade in Ottawa and Vancou- ver, however ultimately the same work is covered. It was fun to see what everyone else was learning and much of the material I learned helped in my schoolwork at home. One thing I found very interesting and which comes readily to mind were the speeches the girls made in order that it might be decided which or- ganization to support that year. The speeches were so interesting and well-prepared, and the girls so dramatic and confirmed in their beliefs, that it was hard to choose among them all. I thought it was wonderful that the girls themselves choose the group they would like to support and in this way would wish to donate their contributions more readily. Also a different aspect of school life was Sui Sang. His letters were most interesting and brought him closer to all the girls. I would like to mention how nice the choir was at the morning service. Particularly I enjoyed the last service when the girls played their guitars and sang so beautifully. It was a new and different approach to a morning service, for me. Everyone was so nice to the girl in the kilt and I appreciated so much all the trips I had the privaiege of taking. I enjoyed them all so very muCh that I can not even pick a favourite; they were all such fun. I truly appreciated the special arrangements Mrs. Blyth made so that we could all attend Govern- ment House. The trip to Parliament made my social studies come alive, so to speak. It was made even more real when the issues we heard discussed in the afternoon were the ev ening Iheadlines. Of course I have not forgotten the trips to the Art Gal- lery, the Mint, and the Museum. They all helped to colour my impressions of Ottawa and were lots of fun as well. My geography certainly improved as I travelled in and around Ottawa, Hull, and Montreal. The Expo City is certainly exciting and beautiful in its old and new way. I am looking forward with great anticipation to the time when I will be able to explore this city even more, when I come East for Evpo in late August. Everyone was so hospitable and nice to me, in- cluding outside school hours. I remember well the exciting evening at the Mikado and the different evening I had with the Prefects at the Horse Show. The crowning point was the dance on the last even- ing I spent in Ottawa. What a perfect ay to end a glorious month! I can not thank enough all the Elmwood staff, and especially Mrs. Blyth, who made my month ' s stay such a happy one; and a special thank you for picking such a wonderful family for me to live with. I certainly appreciate all the time and effort Mrs. Blyth spent on my behalf to make my month of ex- change a memorable time of many exciting exper- iences. P.S. — On re-reading my memoirs , I see that I forgot to mention Elmwood as the original home of the miniskirt! 29

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ELMWOOD ' S CENTENNIAL PROJECTT, or change for Frances Wilson, of Elmwood ' s Grade one of her many, was an exchange program with Ten, AHson ( Timmy ) Wills came to us for the Crofton House School in Vancouver, B.C. In ex- month of October. FRAN WILSON The plane landed in Vancouver at eight thirty on Sunday night. All that the Wills knew about me was t ' hat I wore a hairband and was tallish. I en- visioned myself sleeping in the waiting room but we found each other at last. On arriving at 1789 Matthews Ave. Lindsay (Tim- my sister ' s nickname: Jumbo) made me a coke float, took me on a tour of the house, introduced me to Gregor, Christie, Boomer, the dogs — Alaska and Frampton, the cats — nameless, the canaries and the lizard and landed me in bed where we talked for hours. I had a terrible time adjusting to V ancouver time and I was always late for breakfast. That first morn- ing was a chaos during which my belt, tie, bloomers and pencil case lost themselves to be found three minutes before we piled into the car to go to school. The first thing I noticed was the hundreds of trees and shrubs crowded over the houses and streets. There is a lot of open space, even in the centre of the city and the streets, lawns and houses have a well groomed look. Crofton House consists of three frame buildings, one of them an immense gym. This gym could absorb six of ours easily. There is a large playing field and a science lab much less modern than o urs. There are 360 girls in Crofton House and they all went out of their wa ' to be nice to me. I was never lonely or lost because there was always some- one beside me to tell me that room X was the gym, not the science lab, etc. This was ver necessarv because we had to change rooms for our classes and I was usually rather muddled. The girls in Jumbo ' s class and in mine were es- pecially wonderful. I still find it hard to believe that so many people could be so consistently friendly. They invited me to parties, explained geometry, the bus changes and the school rules. They never seem- ed to mind my endless stream of questions and answered them better than any textbook could. On the last day of my visit, a camp counsellor and three distant relatives revealed themselves. One was my French teacher and the other two were girls in my class. The Wills showed me everything that there was to be seen in Vancouver and Victoria. We went to museums, art galleries, Stanley Park, the Harbour, China Town, U.B.C. West Van, Simon Frazer Uni- versity, Butchart Gardens, the Victoria Wax Mu- seum, Oakridge, a typical farm, Capilano Suspension Bridge and a Japanese restaurant. We ambled through Stanley Park in a ghostly kind of fog. I will never forget the Siwash Rock looming through the mist. Simon Frazer is a masterpiece of architecture. It is huge and unltramodern. U.B.C. is a mixture of the old and the new. I could not decide which I liked better. ' ancouver is a fantastic city. It is everything a city should be and more. I loved every moment of my sojourn there and I hope that many more Elmwood girls have this opportunity. TIMMY I guess in the beginning she must have been as nervous as I was, but we soon got over that, and became fast friends. Timmy fitted well into our household, and it was fun showing her Ottawa. With our class, 5B, we made trips to the A ' lint, the Padiament Buildings, the War iMuseum, and finally Government House. The Prefects treated us to Chinese food and the Winter Fair, which especially appealed to horse-loving Timmy. One of the high- lights was a lovely evening spent at the ' Mikado ' , and having dinner with the Blyths beforehand. Dur- ing Timmy ' s stay we visited Montreal twice, spend- ing our time touring the city and visiting people. Timmy made lots of friends, and I don ' t think there was anyone she met who didn ' t like her. She was a charming and vibrant person, and the month passed far too quickly to carry out all our plans. I am very glad that she stayed at our house; it was a wonderful experience and as a result I gained a very interesting friend and correspondent;. Nancy Gale, 5B. 28

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THE YUKON For the past two years the Canadian government has sponsored a youth-travel program as part of the Centennial celebration of 1967. Thousands have taken part with the view to acquainting young Canadians vith the vastness of their own. land. Last summer I was fortunate enough to be one of twenty- four studtnts from the Ottawa area who visited the Yukon for a two-week period. Part of the virtue of the plan was that most tra- velling was done ' by train. We spent two and a half days on the way from Ottawa to Edmonton in the luxury of our own private car; by the time we arrived we had had quite enough of the clickety- clack of the railroad track. It was a n unexpected pleasure to discover how large is the flat-forested, lake-dotted land of Northern Ontario before it merges into the Prairies. One of the few successful photo- graphs I managed to take during the trip was my first sign of an authentic grain elevator. On arriving in Edmonton we were whisked away almost immediately on a rather painful tour of a plastic plant. Later we were driven around the city by bus. Edmonton has a lovely situation in the Alberta foothills, high on the bank of the Saskatche- wan River. That evening two of the boys managed to acquire a second-hand guitar at a local pawnshop, and we had a party at the hotel in order to celebrate. We had missed not having a guitar with us on the journey west as our singing was slightly less than musical. Next morning we slithered out of bed at the awful hour of six and drove to the airport for the flight to Whitehorse. By this time the girls who had brought t heir entire wardrobes with them were beginning to regret it — we served as our own red- caps throughout the journey. As the plane swooped down over Whitehorse, only a matter of five hours late, there was a general scramble for cameras. The panorama of colours and land below us was unforgettable. The green of the valleys and the barren grey of the treeless mountains blended in breath-taking harmony with the incredible turquoise of the ice-blue river. At the airport the reception committee was wait- ing and we were greeted by the wild dancing of little Indian children. We stood like sheepish sheep on the runway while cameras snapped and people stared. Then our billets — families who had offered to keep us during our stay — swooped down and collected their individual guests. I felt lost when the others had gone especially when my billets failed to come forward. I amused myself by sitting on my suit- cases pretending to be a lost orphan and enjoying the novelty immensely. Finally I was driven into town by a wonderful lady taxi-driver who could have passed for a tobacco-chewing Klondike Kate any day. Our visit, it seemed, was not to be all lectures and tooirs, for the evening after we arrived we attended a party thrown by a Whitehorse girl. It was a won- derful opportunity to shake out the stiff muscles we had collected on our train journey, and to mfeet the young people of the town. Walking home about midnight, we were shocked by the brightness of the night. It was no darker than an early summer dusk; I had forgotten that the Yukon is the land of the midnight sun. I have seldom attended so many day- light barbecues in my life. At first I was bothered by the constant light but by the end of the trip it seemed natural. The return to Edmonton and dark- ness was almost a shock. The days we spent in Whitehorse were filled with sport; we canoed, we swam in hot-springs, we climb- ed mountains, we shot the rapids outside the town and attended numerous barbecues and picnics. The population went out of its way to make us feel wel- come and at home. We spent two or three days in Dawson City, even farther north than Whitehorse. Arriving in a rickety little airplane scarcely big enough for the twenty-six of us, we made a beautiful landing on a classic dirt runway. From the air (between the rolls and bounds) we could see the huge piles of gravel resi- due left over from the gold-dredging. They were piled high along the creek beds in all that rolling mountain country. Dawson City once had a population of ten thou- sand during the gold-rush days; today it is almost like a ghost town. The oldest buildings, including the bank where Robert Service once worked, are being slowly destroyed by the annual flood vi hich rises higher than the ground floor and undoes the architecture. It was in Dawson City that our hostess took us for a surreptitious peek in the door of an old, authentic gold-rush saloon! We were thrilled! It was in Dawson City too that we explored an ice- choked mine shaft and an old miner ' s hut. We pan- ned for gold in Bonanza Creek and went into the largest wooden-hull gold dredge in the world. I was surprised to learn that, as of next year, the gold operations in the Klondike will be shut down. Ap- parently it doesn ' t pay any more. We spent a happy day exploring the country around Dawson in the company of a teacher historian, Mr. Burnside. We returned home that night absolutely covered in mud. Our two week trip ended in Whitehorse at a dance where we met another group of newly-arrived Centennial travellers from Winnipeg. The next afternoon we boarded a plane for Edmonton to the sound of the pipes and drums, and before too long we were back in civilization. Passing through Edmonton a second time we met another Centennial group from the Northwest Ter- ritories, returning from Ottawa. Among them was one girl who had lived her entire life in the wildner- ness with her family. The trip had opened up the world for her. It seemed to give the plan a whole new meaning for me. I ' hope Elmwood girls of the future will have the same good fortune that I had in being a part of the travel plan. Perhaps they will even visit the Yukon. Janet Uren, 6JVI. 30