Hillcrest High School - Impact Yearbook (Ottawa, Ontario Canada)

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THE FRIENDLY LETTER Since fifth grade our English teachers have advertised a section entitled The Friendly Letter . We painstakingly learned how to prepare the heading , the number of spaces to skip before the salutation , and a number of stock complimentary closings . In between all these formalities was a Wank space of roughly twelve lines called the body . Now that the days of supervised letter writing are over for us, our letters usually consist of little or no salutation or the body . It is the body of our correspondence that interests me, for it seems that every type of person has his own way of filling in these empty twelve lines. What people tell you in letters is often amusing. There is the type who relates every minute descriptive detail about re- cent activities. For this person, usually a girl, the body can run as long as twelve pages. She centres her descriptions on clothes, marks, and boyfriends. Then there is the fellow who is a fanatic about cars or motorbikes, and can write for an hour about his broken clutch or the cable that runs to some mysterious tank. The type who draws pictures is common. In moments inability of expressing himself, the diagram maker will sketch numerous lit- tle pictures which are intended to express his ideas. The really artistic type will do beautiful drawings all over the envelope - I once received a letter covered with little pictures of Elvis Presley, Paul Anka and Sal Mineo. There is only one letter writer who is invariably dull. This is the one who answers every little commonplace question he has been asked in a letter. Rather than continue with drawing up a questionnaire every time I write him I prefer to forget I owed him a letter. And there are many other types who are on one ' s correspondence list, but I think that these ones are the ones worth noticing. Thank God for the people who know how to write a truly interesting letter. Nancy Drew 13 C THANK YOU BLACK BLACKMEN I stop and sigh with deep relief when I discover that there are still left in our restless world a few kind and considerate souls who make life bearable. I refer to the black blackmen who have allowed human kindness and faith to dominate their lives. I say thank you to those men, women and children who sit at the back of our busses in order to prevent unnecessary crowding at the front. I say thank you to those who do not eat in our lunch counters and in our restaurants, so that no white blackmen will have to go without lunch, I say thank you to those children who do not attend the white blackmen ' s schools in order to keep our fail- ure rate down. And I say special thanks to those blackmen who congregate in small towns and communities with the purpose of instilling love and faith into the black black- men and into us the white blackmen. I only hope that you, black blackmen, will not cease the pursuit of your goal, until our busses are no longer too crowded, our restaurants no longer full, our students no longer failing and our communities no longer segregated. There was darkness and then there was light, and there were blackmen and then there were white. When you black blackmen achieve your mission, let us hope that your situation will not be reversed on us, the white blackmen, as it rightly may be. Jim K4oore 13 D

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The Quiet World Quietness reigns: there is no sound - and no voice calls out. Snow, white snow, is everywhere, Never - ending, and fresh crisp air. No one from this fairy - like place is barred - yet the snow is fresh. Not a trace of Man ' s destructive hand Can be seen in this cool, angelic land. This far away world is one of expectance - a world of waiting. It ' s future citizens are like the Son Even in this world there may be one. Quietness reigns: there is no sound - and no voice calls out. Snow, white snow, is everywhere, Never - ending, and fresh crisp air Sue Cuncliffe 11 K TRIBUTE TO A LION And so it was that Sunday in the hours of dawn The lion ceased to roar, and took his place, Above the heads of men. The light is gone, From all our hearts and from his face, That like a beacon, through War and Peace it shone, As hope for liberty, good will among all men. They heard his words, touched his hand, A gentle hand, but one of steel that formed a fist To shake at defeat, to drive us forth, to same our land. And in those hours of war and bloody mist He stood alone, He made us understand. Why we must fight and die for freedom ' s kiss. These were his finest hours, his greatest days That invulnerable Titan of a man v ith the cigar Stood like a sentinel, to keep the ways Of freedom clear, to smash that evil bar That clicked the path of victory ' s rays. But now the lion is gone, we stand alone, Much stronger, defiant, courageous and as one, As one strong nation. And when the years have fown That name, that face, will shine as bright as any sun, The Greatest, most human man our world has ever known. Angela Smiley 12 D

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A STUDENT IS SLAVE TO THE CLOCK LINDA MINOQUE 13C A modern student of Hillcrest, or any high school, is indeed a slave to the clock. The day begins at 8:55 sharp. The blare of the public address system is the signal that everyone is to be seated and listening. If they are not, the teachers are out in the halls scaring the stragglers into classrooms. Once the class begins everyone starts watching the seconds inch by inch. The time drags. Even the teacher begins to watch the clock. The things done in a class Period are nethodically timed by the teacher. For ex- ample the student may be allotted the sum total of five minutes to write out a theorem in Geometry, or thirty minutes to write an essay in English Composition. The time for the bell to ring at the end of the period is calculated by clock watchers down to the last second. There is the famil- iar rustle and scramble to gather up belong- ings three minutes before the period is scheduled to end. Students have to catch buses, go home or go to appointments at certain times. They have to juggle their plea- sure hours and homework hours and some- how come out even. Excluding school hours, students like other people are conscious clock watchers, but must co-ordinate their activities with a specific time. In school they are subjected to a strict time element; therefore, they are aware of time and are clockwatchers. RAINY DAY It ' s a gloomy, rainy afternoon, and it ' s even gloomier and darker in my masochistic soul. A crueler mind would flick on his lights and finish his essay in the crass efficiency of an artificial glare, but I ' ll leave the muddy light to leak through my grubby window panes, so that my room will match my jaundicol mood. I would escape to sleep, but I ' ve just returned from fourteen hours of blissful unconsciousness, and, there is a limit. If dying is falling asleep, I ' ll go now. But I ' m neither dying, nor falling asfeep; therefore, I ' ll try to think. Why is this world so ugly? Even as I walk down the street the houses all seem sordid. Some show evidence of larger fam- ilies, but no images of cheerful conviviality warm my mind; rather the emotional over- ciowding, the responsibilities and petty drudgery that turn women into unkempt, gravel-voiced harpies. The overaggressive children conceived, reared and educated without grace. I am passing the public school- yard with brisk steps, hating giggles and screams of uninhibited mirth. Little do they know. I can ' t look at that cutely dressed child in front of me without hearing a rasping voice rasp Get out of the sand box with your good jumper on! My Gawd, what next . Is there nothing but sham? What is more pathetic than these girls of their middle teens, these virtuous lovelies whose lives centre about clothing and adorning those ig- norant chaste bodies; yet who would be re- volted by frank sensuality. My disgust for these sophisticated innocence is only matched by my distaste for their worldly male ounter- parts, with buttocks cleft by their leotard denims; and masculinity asserted by Old Spice and profanity. It is still raining. The gloom only shows me wrinkles and cracks, stains and scratches, knots and faults. There must have been happier days. Why won ' t my perverse memory cherish a recol- lection of old friends without reminding me of how far apart we ' ve grown; of childish ex- uberance without awkward ignorance; of faith and respect before cracking disillusionment; of love; but also fear pain and worry, worry, worry .... What insomniac hobgoblin of my psycho is it that sees only pain and never fully releases me to pleasure? The sun has set on the endless rain. The morning will bring drowned worms rot- ting on the road, and puddles. Bruce McCormick 12 G