by Kyle Wells reporter@prpeak.com To commemorate over 40 years of education at Max Cameron Secondary School, now that the main section of the building has been demolished, School District 47 has been presenting a memento of the school to those who knew it best.
Squares cut from chalkboards that hung in classrooms have been mounted with a pen and notepad to give out as a keepsake of the legacy of the school. The first to receive mementoes were graduates from the first class at Max Cameron and any teacher or administrator who worked at the school over its years of operation.
Alice Carson graduated from Max Cameron in 1957. She spent her grade 11 year at Brooks Secondary School before that class was split into two parts and half, mainly those who lived in Westview, were sent to the brand new school.
Carson remembers the move as being exciting and that as the first class the students got to help pick the school’s colours, red and white, and the school’s mascot, a Scottie dog. She said all the students who went were delighted to be in a brand new building.
“Everybody enjoyed going to Max, I think. I know our class sure did,” said Carson. “The classes were small enough that we really knew each other. We weren’t just going to school, we were also friends outside of school and our parents were friends, so it was a whole community. It was a good school.”
The chalkboards were removed before demolition of the building. When district superintendent of schools Jay Yule and others were trying to determine a way to memorialize the school, using the boards came to mind.
Ed Oldfield, a local artist and teacher at Grief Point Elementary School, designed the mementoes and put them together with the help of his grade seven class. He said the idea came to mind while answering a phone call and searching for a pen and paper to write a note down. Oldfield taught at Max Cameron for 12 years until the school closed down.
“This was a great place to work, a great place for kids to come to school,” said Oldfield. “It doesn’t matter where you go, there’s Max Cameron grads all over the world, and they’re doing everything. It’s unbelievable what these grads have done. It was good to be part of it.”
Oldfield said he finds it funny that every school he works at ends up getting closed down, a trend that will continue now that Grief Point is slated for closure once construction of Westview Elementary School is complete. He said he has been eyeing up materials in Grief Point to think what can be used as a memento from there.
Carson had three children who graduated from Max Cameron and Oldfield’s two children also graduated from the school. Both agreed that the closing of the school, and now the building’s demolition, marked the end of an era in the town that went beyond the building itself.
“At the end of the day I think it’s everybody working together to want to make sure that there was some kind of lasting memento and legacy,” said Oldfield. “The place meant something to the people who went here, it really did.”
The district has many of the mementoes but not enough to be able to offer them to everyone who attended the school. It is currently contemplating how to distribute the remaining mementoes.
