More than 220 former KCSS students go Back to the Sixties

June 28, 2018 · 0 Comments

Written By CITIZEN STAFF

Although the King City Secondary School’s “Back to the Sixties Reunion” was born out of hesitancy, it took place as scheduled on the palatial grounds of Black Forest Garden Centre on Keele Street on Saturday June 16.

The hesitancy was born out of the fact that there had been six previous reunions spanning some 50 years; thus, having a seventh one might be viewed by potential attendees as unnecessary redundancy and many might opt not to attend.

For the first month after the Notice of the reunion was posted on Facebook, silence descended upon the land

Nevertheless, efforts to ensure its success moved forward with destiny and good fortune shining favorably on the project.

The first sign of that came in the form of a key volunteer stepping forward to take on the role and function of co-chair for the event.

It was Schomberg’s Lynn Bird whose busy schedule had slowed; thereby, providing her with available time to donate the next five months to the reunion.

We then located our sponsors to provide a needed cash flow to make necessary purchases in the lead up to the event. Although few in number, the sponsors’ support was crucial to the event’s success.

They included Trisan Construction, the Black Forest Garden Centre, Royal Le Page Realty, and ABCD: Art Building Children’s Dream.

One month later, a second crucial volunteer stepped forward, this being Dale Smith from Burke’s Falls. Dale had discovered from an earlier reunion that she enjoyed tracking down former students. Thus, for this reunion, she claimed the title of “hunter” and set about to recruit volunteers to help notify as many students of the 1960s as possible about the upcoming reunion. With her, the “three amigos” became a reality and for the next four months they expended considerable hours working together to attempt to make the reunion a successful event.

The next ingredient for success came in the form of a donated piece of art from a current member of the Alumni Association, Paul Heaslip, who created an eye-catching logo for the event logo, one that was immediately affixed to our flyers.

It all came together on the weekend of June 16th. Over 220 former students, teachers and their guests converged on the garden centre, coming by car, plane, and motorcycle, from such far away places like Denver, Edmonton, Seattle, and Vancouver.

The reunion turned out to be a “Perfect Celebration” for a whole gamut of reasons. The weather was sunny and warm, the outdoor surroundings were palatial, and everyone shared many commonalities in that we all started out at the school as “youngsters” and experienced the turbulent years of the 1960s.

Given represented the same decade, our ages were all with a ten-year range. In addition, most of us were now retirees with children and grand-children to speak about and, with rare exception, everyone of us was now a “senior citizen”. All of those factors blended together that afternoon and provided attendees with lots of stories to tell and information to share. Walking around the venue, you could see people hugging, laughing, and smiling, and simply enjoying each other’s company.

It was also a historic event given that one attendees pointed out that the opening exercises at the school in the 1960s always included the singing of “God Save The Queen”.

Thus, for the first time ever the students of the 1960s got to unite in one voice to open the event with the singing of “O Canada”, a poignant moment given the negative dialogue that had come from Washington earlier in the week.

The success of the reunion was reflected in the countless posts inserted onto Facebook about the great time that people had at the event and by the many hundreds of photographs that were added that mirrored their comments.

It was a remarkable afternoon and in spite of our age, it seems that on that warm Saturday afternoon in June, we all seemed so young again.