Sir Adam Beck Secondary School - Lacedaemon Yearbook (London, Ontario Canada)

Page 74 text:

ME AND SHAKESPEARE Me and Shakespeare, or is it Shakespeare and me, or Shakespeare and I? Anyway, we don 1 t see quire eye to eye no matter which way it is said. I mean , take this Willy guy. He lived in jolly old England about four hundred years ago . Why should little ol 1 me, whom he didn ' t even know, have to sit and suffer through some war, or some crazy, mushy love scene? Take, for example, Julius Caesar. After his assassination Mark Anthony speaks to the masses. I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. Then he spends several hours eulogizing Caesar, and inciting the masses to murder the conspirators. Caesar was stupid anyway. 1 mean if lions were having little lions in the streets, and the skies blazed blood red, and dissected chickens had no hearts, all that just before you left for a hard day at the forum, would you go? Well , I guess not . Everyone thinks the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet is so touching. If such things happened today, Romeo would be accused of robbing the cradle. Imagine saying goodnight, goodnight, parting is such sweet sorrow that I shall say goodnight till it be morrow to a fourteen year old girl ! At that age I had to be in bed at ten o ' c lock . In Hamlet there is so much action that it almost slays me. It might as well, everyone else is slain - his mother, uncle - father, girlfriend, her father and brother, and most of Hamlet ' s other acquaintances . In Henry IV we have more bloody battle fields. Af least here we have a more human element . Prince Hal and Fa I staff are do-badders, who enjoy ordinary pleasure, I ike the I ife of the tavern . But then they like highway robbings too . Then in Henry V Prince Hal as king is a good guy. How dull . Maybe Shakespeare could be more enjoyable for me if I could rearrange the characters. I think the grave digger in Hamlet would be a great companion for Richard II ' s Queen. The grave digger is such a jolly guy, and the poor queen cries much too much . The Duchess of York in Richard II and Falstaff from Henry IV would be just fine. Shakespeare insists on murders and deaths, and these two could talk one another into the grave. Then I could call on my friend the grave-digger again . Glendower from Henry IV and the ghost of Hamlet ' s father would get along well . Glendower loved the supernatural, and King Hamlet was rather a nice ghost. But Shakespeare has departed this world so he will never know of my fine suggestions for improving his work. Then too, I could tell him that I think a few of his phrases are a little worn out, and that he shouldn ' t use them. Like there ' s something rotten in the state of Den- mark , and woe is me and so on. How unoriginal can you get? Author Anonymous

Page 73 text:

Travelling is a stimulating experience . It dispel Is boredom . It opens the mind. It is an inexhaustible provider of new experiences. I believe every young person should travel . And yet there is one problem with the tourist life which unfortunately grows so as to become a complete barrier: it is far too expensive. And yet did you know that a total of 12,000 young Canadians have been on the move about Canada for the last three summers without paying a cent? This program is part of the activities of the Centennial Commission of our Government. The object is to awake Canadians to the distinctive character of our country ; to have them experience a sense of Canada ; to move our trains of thought in an east-westerly direction instead of in a southerly one . These phrases are almost meaningless, I admit, unless you were as fortunate as 1 when asked to join the Youth Travel Program . Groups of Voyageurs du Centenaire come from all over Canada . We from the London- Dorchester-St . Thomas area went the farthest from home of all, to Trail B.C. And a more en- joyable two weeks I have never spent. Trail is the ideal place for the sports ' enthusiast. When mountain-climbing one afternoon we were told that Nancy Green, Canada ' s woman champion skier, trains during the winter on the very slope that we were struggling up. The natives boast that Red Mountain is the best slope in all Canada. And during the winter everybody skies. The lakes are clear and deep and very blue, certainly very tempting to the water-skier. And just about every teenager spent about three quarters of his summertime life out on the lakes. This sportsman-like attitude is understandable considering the fact that a simple walk up the street involves climbing at a 70 degree angle or restraining yourself from running down the same slope I learned that gravity is a very influential force! I was impressed understandibly by those experiences for which there is no parallel near London, Ontario. The Ainsworth Hot Springs, for example, were unique. Boiling mineral water pours out of a crack in the mountain-side and is collected in a swimming pool . And people just sit in it, not moving, and become cured from asthma or other bodily ailments. We novices begin by diving energetically in and racing the widths. We were warned not to continue our activity, and I am afraid those of us who were enjoying ourselves too much to sit still, exper- ienced complete physical exhaustion several hours later. One just doesn ' t cavort in boiling water! On the educational side we were not neglected. But what an effective and permanent way to learn about Froth Flotation (note Chemistry students!) first hand in Canada ' s biggest mining and smelting plant — Cominco , the reason Trail B. C. exist at all . The week went very quickly. People whom none of us will ever see again became for one week our closest friends through no other bond than the fact that we are all Canadians. And the trip home was ideal . Twenty-four friends in a railway car: some became chain cigar smokers, others kept the paperback makers in business. The bridge and euchre fanatics monopolized the upper births, and the rest watched the unbelievable vastness that is Canada fly past. In the Rockies the train (in many places) travelled only a few inches from the brink edge; far too close for my personal comfort. Several people in the party were almost always left in places like Jasper or Winnipeg because there was so much to see and the stops seldom exceeded thirty minutes. The prairies were flat and to some, monotonous. But I wouldn ' t have missed the Prairie sunder, because there is nothing like it in Eastern Canada. And we can be proud of Northern Ontario because its rugged beauty is something not common in the rest of Canada. And so a sort of nationalism was instilled which had not been there before . I have an ambition to go back, at a slower pace. Three thousand miles in two weeks tends to leave the head spinning, but it was really wonderful . Marg Gordon -Grade 12-

Page 75 text:

A THLET1CS