Grade One Revisited

Crosby Heights Public School in Richmond Hill opened in 1958, and I was in one of its Grade One class rooms under the tutelage of (I think) a Miss. Spence. Many of us went on to high school together at Bayview Secondary High School, and then went our many separate ways in life, but my formal schooling started at Crosby Heights and after 50 years there are a few folks from those days I’m actually still in contact with after all this time. I’m fourth from the right in the back row in the photo to the left.

A few weeks ago, my wife and I attended our older son’s graduation from Trent University, and as may be imagined there were several hundred parents, all in open seating watching the event. The guy sitting in front of me seemed familiar and just to prove yet again how small our world is, incredibly it turned out he was one of those folks from 50 years ago – in the class photo of Miss Nighswander’s class to the right, he is the young lad on the right in the second row !

Terry and I have been doing a ‘roll call’ of sorts, and think we can name: Bob King, Rick Haas, Ed Kay, Diane Jamison, Paula Triance, Ann Whitworth, Gail Hitchenson, Steve Marshall, John Smith, Paul Fountain, Bob Bradley, Bob Imeson and perhaps a few others. As it turns out, Crosby Heights is planning a 50th anniversary this year, so It would be interesting to see how many folks can be located.

I had lost touch with Terry after high school, but when we were 17 or 18 we actually both had the same model of first motorbike (Yamaha YA6’s) and we used to compare notes and information on how to fix them when they weren’t working – which seemed to happen frequently ! He and his wife were vacationing in Western Canada this past week, so last night we met up to swap old motorcycle stories here in Calgary before he and his wife returned to Toronto.

Lots of only slightly embellished stories (!), and quite a pleasant evening.