Hey bloggers and buddys!
What a treat to see the ole high school faces showing up here.
I find myself nodding my head in agreement with so many of the excerpts here: Lynda Young’s memories of Mrs. Strike, who started me journal-writing for many years.
I so agree with one entry here, that ‘community makes a high school’ and ours was a truly special place to me.
I’ve kept in touch with so many life-long buddies: Laura Wilkinson, Sonja Ball, Brian McInnis, Gary Jones, Carol Mates, Roger Sarrazin, Boyd Pellow, Roddy, Mitzi Dumaresque, Romi Royko, Linda Phillips, not to mention my new hubby/old flame, Graham Worth.
Can’t wait to join up with many more of you next year!
I wish I knew the date that this newspaper article was published. It was written by Peter Royle (a personal fave teacher of mine and others) of his life at the time in Malaysia. I’ve kept it in a scrapbook for many years. I thought it should have a home now on the Billings Alumnae site, where we can all enjoy it for years to come. Cheers, Peter, wherever you are!! (Sue Davis class of ’71)
Former Chateauguay School Teacher, Peter Royle, Writes Students and FriendsDear Kids et Al,
I’ve just finished washing the dishes, and while I was doing so, I was thinking about how neat it would be to have somebody visit here so that I could show-off everything to them. You know: all the (as my Uncle Russel says) “commonry – garden stuff” – my little everything’s-within-arm’s-length kitchen, and some of the food I can cook now and my living-room with the fan on the ceiling like you always see in old Rudyard Kipling-type movies; and the things on my wall like the Chinese lion’s head (all red with white fluff, and pink and green and yellow and black, and snorts coming out of his nostrils on little springs) and an Indonesian Batik cloth and some Taiwan carved heads, and a Japanese silk-painting, and a little Chinese chime and a Chinese lantern and a Bajan cloth and a Bajan parang and a Kadazin hat and two Malay pictures made with padi-plants and a Canadian flag and little kerosene lanterns and two of Mr. Howes little paintings and a little stone Bhudda and a picture of Gary and Ronnie, and my guitar leaning against the fridge and gobs more!
I’d like to take somebody down to the beach, and take them to a great little kedai (sort of a restaurant, but in this one most people sit around and drink beer and pick their teeth and it’s a corner kedai so it has two sides open and one side faces a fish market and all the Bajan and Suluk fisherman come in in their little boats, filled with eels and coloured coral fish and cuttlefish and prawns and sometimes shark and God knows what else.
And they have dark, dark brown skin and eyes and white, white teeth and they laugh a lot and the kids come and stare at you with big round eyes and open mouths and they grin back shyly when you smile at them, and my God they’re brown!
And their hair is dark, dark almost – black – brown, tinged with red and setting sun catches the red colour in their hair and the sea goes all dark and the houses on stilts are black against the sky which is all burning up.
We’d go on a motorbike ride out of K.K. towards Penampang up and down the twisty road over the kills to all the Kadazan padi-fields that are brown now because it’s dry but they’re green later when the padi is growing in them.
We’d pass by some little Kadazan women working on the road, carrying gravel in little baskets, or shovelling rock around, or most likely they’d be cutting the grass by the roadside swinging a long sabit which is like a hockey stick except that the blade is iron instead of wood and it’s flat instead of sideways so that the grass is sythed off.
And they’re dressed from neck to ankle in a long black robe, and they wear a big, round hat, and have their faces and necks all covered with old coloured cloth and they wear gloves, all to keep the sun off their skin so it won’t turn brown.
And they stand there, twenty or thirty of them, swinging the sabits back and forth, swish, swish, swish, swish, all day long, but we look funny to them, too, bouncing along on the motorbike with our crash helmets and sunglasses and shirts and shorts and thongs, and they’re very shy, but one day when it was really hot and they were cutting the grass around my place, one came and asked for water for herself and all her friends and I wished that I could talk Kadazan and I was the one that felt out-of-place because I was the one who was different.
I suppose that this is all sort of confusing to you, amidst all the slush and cold wind and cars and T.V., and I wish that I could describe it better – the place, not just what we would see together.
It would really take a book to try to do that, and all I’m doing is writing down these things as they pop into my mind, and if I make this too long, either the SUN won’t have space to print it, or you won’t read it all!
If you want me to write any more, we could go skin-diving among the corals or we could go to Kota Belud where Tom Mc Kee’s cousin is teaching or we could go to a wedding (not mine – at least not yet!) or we could go on a ride on a neat train through the jungle, or we could climb Mt. Kinabalu or we could go shopping or we could talk to some of the kids I teach or hundreds of things.
To quote an expression popular at Gaya College right now – ‘Take it easy, mate!’ (pronounced with an Australian accent – ‘Tyke it easy, Might!’)
Your old teacher – friend, Peter Royle.
