Crosby Again

While we were in Ontario for our son’s graduation last month, I took the opportunity to drop by Crosby Heights public school to pick up one of their 50th anniversary t-shirt’s and also to take a quick look around. I wrote about rediscovering some of my grade one classmates and Crosby’s 50th anniversary planning here and so wanted to hear a bit about how the event had gone. Sounds like they had a great time, and walking around the place brought back many memories – once I found the entrance ! The old entrance where the principle’s office used to be (I seem to recall spending quite a bit of time in there ….) was locked as a new office facility had been built, together with a new parking lot and a completely new entrance off of the east side – the school has grown quite a bit and is considerably larger than when I attended !

Once I managed to find my way in, the staff were very accommodating, and I was asked to speak to one of the grade 6 classes in what is now the library, but which used to be part of the north playground when I was there. It was an interesting experience, and there were some good questions from the kids, but as it was pretty much the last day of classes for them I tried to keep it short and let them get on with their summer.

As a part of the preparation for the 50th anniversary event, I had been interviewed by a couple of the grade 6 students (Phyllis and Jansen), and that material had been included in a multi-media presentation the class had put together for visitors to watch during the 50th anniversary event. The class had done quite a number of interviews, and I was impressed with just how well it turned out – they did a really nice job.

As I left, I walked by my 1st grade classroom – yes its still there, and if you took away the TV and the other modern additions perhaps not surprisingly it really doesn’t look much different to how it looked when I was in that same room in 1959. Just like 50 years ago it was filled with the bustle and noise of small children – and I wondered what they will recall of their experience 50 years from now, and whether they will have the honour of being interviewed for a 100th anniversary ………….