Page 13 - 1960

I must express my gratitude to my classmates for having chosen me to voice their feelings this evening, I hope that what I say, my fellows, will reflect at least some of the thoughts which are passing through your minds, I hope that none of my reflections wi II not be common to at least some of you. I hope I will be worthy of the honour you have accorded me.
A little less than a decade ago it became apparent that the small continuation schools of this district could not provide adequate facilities for the high school education of the growing student populace. According! y 1 the tax-payers built the most modern, best equipped school in the province. No more would the student's choice of subjects be -curtailed; no more would in- adequate facilities hinder the student from attaining a rounded education. This school was representative of a new concept in education in the district (and,· indeed, in the province): The distri~t collegiate institute.
And then, in 1954, when the doors of this building opened one Tuesday morning in September, in trooped over 200 freshmen, the school's first freshmen. From Creemore and Collingwood and Stayner and Wasaga Beach we came; from Nottawasaga and Sunnidole and Osprey and Mulmur and Collingwood Townships we came; we came, over two hundred strong. For without students, and teachers, a school, no matter how well built and expensive, cannot operate successfully. Many of us were taking that morning the first of ma~y bus rides to this building, this great, big, frightening, en- chanting palace.
Do you remember how we marched into this same auditorium, and sat through that first assembly? We sat
in these same seals, and, just as we are doing tonight, we thought our own thoughts. Some of us thought, as some of us must at this very moment be thinking, about the events of the future; some of us thought, as some of us must at this very moment be thinking, about the immed- iate proximity of adulthood; some thought, as some of us must at this very moment be thinking, about the pretty young thing sitting just in front of us.
The next few weeks a~e a jumble of confused memories in my mind; I remember being issued something called a timetable; I remember getting lost in the labyrinth of halls; I remember the class jokers: Someone named Elliot, another called Morrow. There were others. And the football games.
Do you rEmEmber how we used to go to the exhibition park to watch those games? That was before our own field was ready, long before the harsher rules of English Composition and the subtleties of Latin Grammar plagued us, long before now. Can one forget the football players; the cheerleader; the apples some enterprising group sold; the humblingly sophisticated third, fourth, and fifth year people; the strange newness of this high school world?
And everything that we saw, that we read, that we heard, that we experienced, has influenced us. Let us consider for the moment these chapters and paragraphs in our stories:
That absorbing month in the Spring when the school goes military, and the Grey and Simcoe Foresters Cadet Corps performs its manoeuvers under the watchful eyes of inspecting officers;
Valedictory
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