I’ve read recently that my old high school, site of an untold amount of memories, some good, some regretful, is being used as a temporary facility by two elementary schools, John Campbell and Benson.  I wonder if walking into that school for the first time was as imposing and intimidating as it was for me, fourteen years ago.

I had my new school clothes on and a too large duffel bag, the stress and anxiety emanating through my pores that September morning as I entered those heavy, oak doors.  Inside I was greeted with a sea of people, all bigger than me, all older and I thought “This must be what it’s like when someone enters prison for the first time, everyone sizing you up.” 

Most people glanced my way and returned to their own anxieties and conversations.  I had gone to elementary school across the street at Prince Edward, but this place made my old school look like a utility shed.

The halls were huge and unfamiliar as I scanned the crowd for a familiar face.  Some people I recognized were walking around with an older sibling or two and wanted nothing to do with me.  I didn’t have the luxury of an older, bigger, tougher sibling so my search continued until I saw my oldest and dearest friend leaning against a row of lockers reading his class schedule.

Little did I know but in four years I would witness things that I have merely read about and seen in movies.  I would hear speeches from people who had before never spoke a word in class, and I would see many teachers lose a valiant battle over the question of the school staying open or not.

My principal, Mr Peruzzo had just replaced a jovial Australian, Mr Mercer, who in tenth grade gave me a ride into school while I was struggling down Giles in a howling snowstorm, even though I’d never spoken to him before.  Mr Mercer had taken over from the legendary Mr Roy Battagello, boss of all bosses at Lowe, the man you never ever messed with who held court in an oak panelled office which he hardly sat in.  He preferred to roam the halls and let the troublemakers know he was watching, and let the good kids know the same thing. 

Sadly, he was before my time, my time at Lowe would be remembered as the last time, the final time that someone could say that they went to Lowe in the present tense.  It all began with an announcement one spring morning while most of us were still filing into our desks.  As the announcement was being read most people were talking and joking, as teenagers do, but soon the room fell to a startling hush.

The message stated that the Windsor Essex County Board of Education’s trustees are going to vote in a few months time.  The vote would determine whether or not Lowe would stay open another year or close and be mothballed and perhaps torn down.

Over the next few weeks, we protested.  At first it was student-planned walkouts but then the teachers joined in and they started to plan them.  This period was further agitated by the fact that bomb threats were being called into the school at least once a week following the Colombine tragedy, so at any moment I could be struggling with calculus only to be told suddenly that everyone had to go outside, either for a walkout in protest, or because some idiot called in a bomb threat.  I had an English teacher who would teach us literature, creative writing and ways of peaceful protest.  I will always remember a fascinating school-wide assembly where he taught us all about passive resistance and gave us a few methods that were both creative and diabolical in their simplicity and effectiveness.  They were

-          Everyone not going to school for one day, in protest.

-          Going to every school board trustee meeting en masse, and having a sit-in, of sorts.

-          Taking a picture of the entire student body outside of the school and sending it to the trustees.

-          Calling the trustees at home and asking them to keep our school open and telling them how much we enjoy going to our school.  He then posted the phone numbers on an overhead projection.

We had rallies.  W.D. Lowe had a massive gym where we would all go and have massive, loud, boisterous rallies that rivalled anything at Berkeley in the 1960s.  Speeches were made, some by teachers, members of the student council but most were made by anyone who wanted to say a few words.  I will never forget a small, trembling girl from Lebanon, who stepped up to the podium and simply said almost inaudibly, “This school made me believe that Canada is the greatest country on earth.  We are all different on the outside, but inside, we are all the same.”

The night of the trustees’ vote we were all down there.  It was raining and cold, but everyone was there, 900 people chanting slogans, singing, together in the rain.  That night the trustees voted and opted to keep the school open for one more year.  There were tears, yet it was bittersweet.

The following year was my last in high school.  I was a part of the last official graduating class at W.D. Lowe and I stayed on to take a couple of OAC classes, mostly to avoid getting a job before I thought about beginning college.  I had two spares where I spent a lot of that time hanging out with the AV teacher who was also a musician, where we talked about music and played with the mostly unused video equipment.

By this time, the halls were bleak, barren, and gone were the crowds of people.  Gone were the anxiety and the raw paranoia of a hundred thousand lifetimes.  Gone was the laughter and the love, the loss and the heartbreak.  It was a sad end to a once mighty and prestigious school that spawned the careers of an untold number of people.

On the last day of school there was another assembly in the gym, one last time.  We were told it wasn’t going to last long, and we could all go home at the end of it.  It was a short slideshow commemorating our efforts in keeping the school open, interspersed with images of the school’s mighty past.  Over the speakers as a musical accompaniment, the music from the opening credit sequence of “Raging Bull”,   Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana was played poignantly.

At the end of the presentation the house lights went up and everyone filed out quietly, the sound of people weeping permeating the air with total sadness. 

It was the end of my childhood, effectively, I had just turned eighteen a month earlier and now I had to go figure out what to do with my life, and so did everyone else.  What was taken from us that day in the interest of money and saving space was the soul of the youth of my community.   

It wasn’t a total loss because it proved something.  It proved that even my generation, who often have been cast aside by others as the very definition of apathy and obliviousness showed that they do care, they do want to change what is wrong and make their world a much better and fairer place.

Not bad for a bunch of lower middle class kids, eh?

Tags: Architecture, Education, school board, World Changing