Editor:
Last Tuesday the School District 27 Board announced the new name for the one school, two campus model.
There’s nothing wrong with Lake City Secondary. But instead of using the streets to name the different campuses why not keep the four-plus decades of history of Williams Lake and Columneetza and simply call the campuses Lake City Secondary-Columneetza Campus and Lake City Secondary-WL campus.
I am 99.9 per cent sure that Mr. Thiessen and many of the other board members all graduated from Columneetza. Columneetza opened in 1967.
If you take a rough average of 200 graduates per year times 46 years that’s 9,200 graduates.
Now the board wants to erase the history of all those graduates.
Perhaps in a small way I am overreacting, but every graduate of every school should carry a sense of pride in their school of graduation along with the memories of their friends and education.
What do each of us do now? Say I graduated from a school that no longer exists? Why reinvent the wheel and call it the black rubber donut?
I understand the philosophy of change but their choice shows me an incredible short sightedness of the impact this decision has on the history of education in our community and, therefore, the history of the community.
Is it truly progress or just another example of a body taking a community through a process of regress.
I proudly walked the halls of the school with my son on Tuesday telling him stories of my time there, showing him my grad 1984 class photo.
I am insulted and dismayed at the board’s decision. In my opinion it’s not the best way to honour the students, past or present, or the community at large.
Trent Martens, class of 1984
Williams Lake
