Aha! I know some of those faces too! from 1968

1966 Student Counsil

Home-Room Grade 8-6 and 8-7 from 1966

Some Grads from 66/67 Year of Expo!

Grade 10-1 and 10-2 1966 and Mr. Howes

H. Gordon Green 1965/66 Year Book

Some Classic shots from 1966 -Enjoy !

OK Now for 1963 - a few anyway!

Some special people from '71 'Luv.'

A few more from 1973 - Hey Fred & Karen!

And some from 1973

A few 1971 grads

A sampling of grade 10's 1968

Make sure to click on pictures to increase size.

How about some grade 11's from 1968?

Grade 12 1968

What is it about Reunions?

So as I wash the dishes, my synapses spark as I the rythyms of the Beatles belt out from the iphone , ipod future.

.....For I have got....another girl ...another girl who will love me to the end, through thick and thin she will always be my friend...

Flashes of high school romance, November nights, cold and no money and no car, but oh such passion.

.....HELP! I Need somebody, not just anybody. Help You know I need someone...HEEELP!....

Ah the movie - a year or so after "Hard day's Night". 

Back at that time I was in grade six or seven. 

Hard Days Night was in black and white.

And I luv her,,,,

A love like ours...

Could never die, as long as I ,

Have you near me....

Oh my God, I still get goose bumps even humming this song to myself.

It is not just the Beatles, or their ballad love songs.

It was my emerging young male self.

The young romantic.

The willingness to fall in love at what ever the cost.

That was the time of girls and guys roaming in the hallways of high-school.

The girls in the upper grades looking so untouchable and so goddess-like.

The guys up there, my heroes on the Chateauguay High-School basketball team.

Or the bad guys with duck tailed hair style just as the Beatle cuts began to take off. They had taps on their shoes and cigarette packs in their rolled up sleeves.

High-School Reunion while a nostalgic touch-stone is much more to me than going back to the good old days before being a grown up.

High-school Reunion is a step back in time...one last ...time.

Magic.

A "Head" of his time or Not?

Some of you may remember one of the finest people from the 1972 Graduating Class at Billings - Mr.Len Van Marck. Len has quite a life these days - I would say extraordinary. Like others who send their stories to me, he has allowed me to enter this one to this blog. (Non Fiction). Len has been out west for years now but only in the last ten years or so has he changed careers -into the RCMP.

...............................

On Friday night I was responding to a 911 call of a complaint of an unknown male causing a disturbance. When I got there, I arrested this guy who had three outstanding warrants. He was messed up on alcohol and drugs (probably crack). Back in the police car I was reading him his rights. Whenever I asked him a question he would respond with “You’re a ‘head’, you’re nothing but a ‘head.’” He was frothing at the mouth as he yelled at me, and all he would say was that I was a “head.”

I thought of saying something clever like “Well, it’s better to be ahead than behind,” but I thought better of it since it would probably just aggravate him. Instead, I thought back on the last time someone asked me if I was a “head.”

It was the late 1960s in grade eight or nine. I was in class at Billings High School. John Saunders was sitting behind me. He was sporting an afro and was wearing a head band.

John and I did not have much in common back then except for football. He was an offensive running back and I was a defensive back with the high school team and with the Chateauguay Browns. John’s father was the coach. I had a lot of respect for his dad. He was probably the best coach I ever had.

Anyway, we were talking football when John asked, “Are you cool?” 

Well, what I’m I going to say to that?

“Sure.” I said.

I guess he wasn’t convinced because he then asked: “Are you a ‘head’ or a ‘greaser’?

Well, back then, I had a pretty good idea what a “head” was… that is, someone who smoked dope. But a “greaser?” That sounded like something out of the 50s. Not wanting to show my ignorance, I responded: “What do you think?”

John took a quick look around the room and then asked: “You smoke weed?”

“I’ve tried it.” I said.

“Have you ever bought any?”

“No.”

“Then you’re a “greaser.”

Just then, the teacher walked in and that was the end of the conversation.

Okay...so, back in the police car this guy was still yelling a t me, calling me a “head,” periodically hitting his own head against the Plexiglas whenever he wanted to emphasize a point. Every time he called me a “head,” he would strike his head against the Plexiglas.

I looked at him through the rear view and waited until we had eye contact. Then I said, “Actually, I have it on good authority that I’m not a “head”…I’m a “greaser.”

He suddenly stopped banging his head and stared at me through to rear-view mirror, his mouth slightly open, still frothing. For the rest of the trip to jail he did not utter a word. Whenever I glanced back into the rear view, he was still staring at me.

The Haunted (Place)

The winds were up sending their chorus through the back hedges and surrounding trees on the back park where the Terrace Pool had once been. The florescent orange yellow Day Lillies nodded two and fro in agreement upon a wind change in Chateauguay. 

Out front of the modest Bay bungalow, sideways to the road, the pulse thumping blaster in a car passed on down Ashmore from Saint Francis to the Chateauguay River and Salaberry Street. Ashmore,-where once names like Black, Brown or Michielsson had been, now a throughway to the river.  If one stopped deadstill, one could feel the history of the place, alive and between the time shadows. Upon the breeze one might capture the echoes of girl's squeals -laughter, young men grunting touch football, or one might sense activities to be had if heading toward the canoe club, the dam or to the tennis courts in the Heights. 

If one closed the eyes, the ghosts would appear, images and the songs- you know the ones. And above all, the secret yearning of youth to fly, far far away from this nowhere place, of slow pace endless hot summer. One would feel the yearning for more than the Alamo, the rail bridge, the high-school. One could feel the want to be free from under parental guardianship, gone already to one's life and adventure.

This place is a space of 'the haunted' with names 'neath the memory's surface- Mumford, Oliver, Heatherington, Peters, Bossart, Hart, Behrens, Davis, Saunders, Jackson, Poirier, McManus, Houston, Kavenagh, Glen, Hillock, and Reid. So many names, so many children passing on to the generations. Yet Chateauguay remaines in the stillness of time. The High School - would always be 'Chateauguay High', despite the re-naming, to HS Billings. 

The sun painted varying hues of green upon the overgrown vines smothering the hedge between the Meanies and McConnells. A huge recycling truck could be heard roaring it's way along Newton from Maple, past Treavor Crawford's to Ashmore. The rumble of Jurgen Kalashnik's Triumph coughed to sudden life across the street, as Joanne (O'Hanley)gazed on; this evoking more memories - Bob St.Onge, Lilly, the Sundowners, 'The Beach', West-End Bowlarama and past heroic legends and tragedy.  

Ashmore and Parc-Ricard had been ideal for bringing up children. But in his heart he knew that a 'time' here was once again slowly setting.

Like all the rest from High School he too  had struggled in the hot summer quagmire of lethergic Chateauguay, - perhaps hanging out at the shopping center, the pines, the orchard, the Raja  Mood, Seigneury Park, desperately seeking girlfriends, for a whiff of summer wind in their hair and maybe venturing with her down the path in the woods to the old farm house where the water still ran through an upright pipe where the pump had once been. 

A patchwork of old memories surged. 
The night times, ah yes- the night times... 'doing things we used to do- thinking of you, I sit and watch as tears go by'... The Beatles, the Stones, CFOX radio, Dean Hagoppian, 'The girls walk by dressed up for each other, And the boys do the boogie-woogie on the corner of the  street, And the people passin by just stare in wonder and the inside juke-box roars out like thunder. And everything looks so complete... The Wild Night is Calling! 
(Van Morrison)

Twitter Posting of latest on Reunion & Friends 2013 You can now follow latest on Reunion Activity by following my Twitter Feeds at @lesmcconnell on Twitter. Hey... it was only a matter of "time" ...literally and of course time passing. Follow Me on discussion trends. Short notes to the point and latest news. FAST. Avoid Facebook confused messages. (no one's fault... Communication circles have always begun with one message, but as the the message is passed around the circle of friends, and circulated by others, the essence sometimes is changed and becomes something else and loses the impact of what the message started out as.) The Twitter short note system will ensure you get the accurate latest. Become a follower of the reunion by following me at on Twitter. @lesmcconnell.

Any of these look familiar?

So, what is Reunion to us now?

Gone are the times I would have tried to impress with success, cars, or house.

I am just happy if I can lose a roll from my hips and still fit into my favorite jeans.

But what has that got to do with re-uniting with others from the shadows of my past?
I suppose EGO.

Do I want to be seen as I am now when I envisage the girls and guys from grade 10 and 11 as they or we were?

How silly.
I see the students emerging from HSB every day as I drive past.
They are just kids.
But then I deal with people in the work force who are 28 ...my kids are that age!

And so were we ...kids at 16, 17 , 18 and even 19. I know it didn't feel like it, but we were... even when experimenting with some pretty serious things.

We are not kids any more - and have not been for years. But then, in my mind I don't seem to feel any change from back then. But when I look in the mirror...hmmm...is that really me?

Reunion... I would love to just get together just to see who we have become.
Last time I had a little time to just look around at people - gaze at them -see them smile, laugh and even cry.
To hear them - old best friends stand up and tell stories of the past - there was a magic in this I never expected.

I think, now that I am 58 and so many have already gone to the "other side" - (and I don't mean Toronto), it is all about (perhaps) one last blast and congratulating those who still know how to smile and live... perhaps people like Jack Kennedy below. Talk about a sense of humor. He is one person I would love to see again, or Kevin Carlin, Ricky Rice, Steve and David Poirier. These people made me laugh. And through the laughter I realized that moments go by as if through a sifter. The pearls that stay in memory with a luster rather than a tarnish are those given freely through smiling and community. Some people carried more than their weight- maybe- without even realizing it. But then again, maybe they did.

Back in The Day before HSB

Inside, within the empty glare of her class room, her private domain, her pudgy digits weighed the elegance of the polished pointer. It was a balanced weapon, about two and a half feet long, slender, smooth, like a long straight slimmed-down pool cue with a yellow plastic bullet screwed into the tip.

Her preference though, was for the long thick yardstick, it's 'whoosh' cut through the chalk dust air landing a wonderful slam, as it's flat side smacked down onto the hollow of a desk. The effect was exquisite, highlighting the glint of her eye. It almost took her own breath away.

She had a small lumpy compact physique, even in her pumps and curly short permed hair, tinted to match her gold rimmed glasses; face, puffed with swollen cheeks, rouged with veins beneath the powder, which caused her eyes to be squeezed behind the glass held in place within the frames. Her strut, deliberate, tight and restricted was kept in tidy check, her tweed skirt matching the restricting top jacket. Her attire chosen by design to keep her awake and upright through her long and dreary day.

Time was so slow. It seemed her life and girlish hey-day had long since passed her by. "It just was not fair!"

There was only one thing that kept things interesting, -the realm of her power amongst the heathen, these little brats sent to be kept in line by parents who chose not to do it themselves.

Outside, the bell sounded in the grey school yard of slush, in February dawn. The minions of little ski jacketed monsters with their overstuffed bags of baloney or egg sandwiches all formed into their lines in front of the flag pole and the furrowed brow of Mr.-, his wisps of remaining hair on the sides of his shiny top catching the breeze, his adams apple squeezed above the tartan tie of his clan, his lips in perma-pout accentuated by his morning five o'clock shadow, his bulging eagle eye zeroed in on his arch nemesis, at the end of line 3, sporting the black biker boots with taps, shiny leather jacket with studs, and slick greased back hair.

Broiling rage welled within Mr.-, as his neck angled outward over his collar, his polished shoes splashed their way down one line and up that of the other almost daring a giggle to affront his authority -anything would do, he was ready.







- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

From my ipad

Well I can now gain access via my iPad but the entry software google
Provides for this purpose is geared really to iPod or one's iPhone and not the iPad itself.

Of course google is a competitor in this case and
Would prefer if I was using their technology- android?

Hmmmm since this is not very pleasant, I still
Might have to shift to a new blog space that is "friendlier" on the entry.

Let us test importing a picture to see what happens.

So I tried to import a photo of the I glass hallway at Billings and then I opened my front door on Ashmore to take a
Shot of what I am seeing this morning.

So let us try to publish now and check for result.

Alright...
Not bad, but I cannot size the photographs like I could before and the pictures slide in at the bottom of the page. I cannot seem to position the photos upward and have the text wrap around. Entry of text is difficult since the programming is geared
Not for iPad but iPod or iPhone. You can see where there are capitalized letters in inappropriate places too.

I shall explore other spaces and then get back .

Perhaps it is time, since we are gearing down to the next reunion and I could start anew... We shall see.

Ok , time to start getting my thoughts back to the market and financial
planning for my clients.

Thank goodness theTSX dropped yesterday, as I was entering so many deposits for client RRSPs... Best to buy low...or lower.

It is really cool since I started Skyping, my client base is expanding. I now
Help Clients in their investment management, decision-making and
Financial planning outside Quebec, in Ontario and Alberta too!

With the use of DropBox I am able to have clients sign Documents and pass back to me in seconds and the account is opened. My how technology has evolved.

Oh For those of you who recall the teacher Mr. Mullahoo, who taught us in grade 7 just as the Chateauguay High was becoming HSB, I must regretfully report to you that this very kind
community oriented gentleman passed away two weeks ago.

I will record some recollections of this man in the future and post a picture as well.

Apple or Bust

Test Entry
I am trying out writing here from a new entry point, my iPad 2, which of course will probably become extinct this month when the iPad 3 is born.

I have become a big fan of apple.
About a year before Steve Jobs passed away, I purchase some stock at $315 per share . It now sits at $535 per share. not bad.

HMMM I cannot use elements of this site when using Apple. Not only that, I Connot import pictures either.

Wonderful.
I may have to relocate to another address and blog site or at least explore the Apple on line store for an entry method.

back soon !