Orangeville High School - Red and Blue Yearbook (Orangeville, Ontario Canada)

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be as much as five rninutes late for a class., lt was dangerous but the risks were worth it., Alas, all this was soon brought to an end when niore and more often we heard Mr, Clinels softest, most coaxing tones requesting that we walk in double file, Apparently, trekking down the halls in double file is standard procedure nowt, We have had our sports, including the sprains and gashes, our class trips and excursions lusually just as memorable for the bus trips there and backlg our literary meetings -Q both censored and uncensoredl and hundreds of the anecdote type of incidents which make this backward glimpse far more than inadequate, but, hours of reminiscing could be inadequate too., I think l will, instead of bringing back to the staff memor- ies of their sordid and frightening experiences while we had them pinned to their blackboards - take this opportunity to congratulate therri, for this reason: ln spite of the strong united front we students presented, in all our memories there is no such thing as one which depicts a devoted teacher with sudden frenzy in his eye, throwing up chalk and text and screaming. or of tearing out his hair or even of beating his head against the walll For this faculty members, accept our deepest respect and our heartiest congratula - tions, But, remember how much welve done to help you develop those strong characterso ln the past five years we have all had interested teachers, parents, and family friends trying to help us bring our forward look into focus. For some of us it .is now very clear and well defined but for others the ultimate goal is still hazyt This is a little frightening for there is very little or Virtually nothing more that any teacher, parent, or family friend can really do., We are being forced Q gently. but nevertheless being forced- to stand on our own little flat feet. This creates our misgivings, A lack of real decision at this point is disturbing to us because it is indeciszve and a final decision is disturbing to us because it seems final, How do we know we want to do sornething we will not really know about until we are actually doing it? This leads to our nc-xt question 11 more horrible still - what if we don't like it '? But, anticipation wins onto Not knowing what to expect from our next field of education or career only makes it more init possible to keep from looking forward to ite lt will be a change. an experu ience, possibly an adventure, and, yet another means to an end, And what about those new extracurricular activities? Fellow graduates, remeni ber your slogan -Q Who goes to college for knowledge ll' Right now, l could give a heart-trending account of our feel- ings the last time we walked out of this school as students, The feelings

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On behalf of - how c.an one person say anything on behalf of a few dozen other people who have each spent a few years in these part-7 icular surroundings reacting in their own .individual ways and forming thelr own individual opinions N? Goodbye - what is .implied in one goodbye ? ln. the case of any graduate lt triggers a whole conflicting mental cyclelza backward look and a forward look, misgivings and relief, regret and antilclpation, affecc. tion, disappointment, and gratitude., While we take our backward look, you the parents and teach: ers are at an advantage for you can view us in our high school years in better perspective., But .it isnlt too early for us to laugh at ourselves. Mothers, remember shoving an overwrought son or daughter out the door on THE occasion of Grade Nine, Day One 2- Zere I-lourl That was the year you had to overhaul and revise that same son or daughterls wardrobe 2- right down to the lunch box - the sophisticated casual look, you know. By Grade Ten we were experienced, worldly, poised, blas'e,, But--from Grade Ten on we have been cruelly and frequently accused of behaving as bad as and worse than Grade Nine. .l canlt remember what the accusation was in Grade Nine., Possibly we were, in reality, at our best that year and grade ninels notoriety is just traditional, There were, of course, the first dances and parties and the inevitable next morning excuses, Each year there were the formals and the seminformals -D you Nlothers remember how hectic those were but herels something more hectic: The majority of students attending this high school have daily come and gone by means of a large orange and black vehicle comm rnonly known as a school bus., The pursuit of this elusive vehicle has crem ated pantomimes worthy of Charlie Chaplin., l know from experience' l usually flapped out to greet it with my coat flying out from my shoulders B like superwoman, l have even stopped halfway across my lawn. to catch my lunch:-my mother had deltvered it with a beautiful underhand right? For most of us here, our first and last years thrs school were spent to the background sounds of growth and expansion - such sounds of growth as hammering, drilling, caterpillar tractors chewing up the yard, walls being pushed over and walls being put back up. This was really Just to test our powers of concentration, but, oddly enough, after each of these sessions our corridors were longer and fuller. lf everyone cooperated enough by dashing for the centre of the hall and pushing, it was possible to

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of regret at leaving the place where in the last five years we have spent more time than in our homes, the place which symbolized the fact that we were still living a comfortable, sheltered life free of major responsibility. However, true as this ts, speaking on behalf of each graduate on this stage, I must mention that l know without exception we all felt relief, too, lf ever we felt relief at the end of a semester we felt it at the end of grade thirteen, We found that during the year when our keenest interest and conscientiousness were called for, they were often difficult to locate, for, after five years of sorting out in our own minds which subjects interested us and which did not, we were still faced with those which did not! And how frustrating that could bel Merely knowing that l was neither mathemm atically nor scientifically rninded did little to console me each time l bracm ed myself for a bout with theorems and formulae., Also, this was the only year in which we wrote three of our four full sets of examinations in three successive months, f am working for a year to help pay for my Motherfs tranquillizers. All this considered, is it any wonder that the question And how are you liking high school '? has invited so many varied replies M? Each student would answer it differently after each day, after each class, and after each examinationt The typical student does not like hlgh school, He hates it one minute W- for one reason or another fnot necessarily the best reason, but a reason? and he loves it the next minute W- for one reason or another. The group in this auditorium now, a family group, understand this well because the family is that small institution to which this larger one is so often compared, You know, one big happy family W-l but all of us, as members of a family, know that any family life is seldom actually blissful but here, as at home, as often as there is disagreement, there is still affection, The other sentlnuent we still owe our Alma Mater is grat- itude. We owe it, l think for reasons other than the most obvious. Most people think we owe the debt for the education we obtain from our books but this knowledge is insignificant when compared to what we learn about our- selves by watching ourselves and others react to the situations we meet here, We have often surprised ourselves by our reactions to work itself, to working with other people, our reactions to authority, to conformity and to noncomformity, Here, although we see only a tiny model or replica. of society, it is where we begin, in grade nine to sort out those aspects of society which we do like and those we do not, Of those we do not like we learn to separate those which, as individuals, we do not have to accept from those which it does us no good not to accept. Furthermore, it is from our curriculum here that we start to learn enough about our own in-