by Milton Orris
I have always loved September and always for the same reason: it’s back to school time.
When I was a student in Grand Forks from Grade 5 to high school graduation, or at my two universities where I earned degrees (University of Manitoba and University of Saskatchewan) I always loved going “back to school” as I still did when I became a professor. September was really the beginning of the year and the day before Labour Day was always really “New Year’s Eve” for me.
However, Grand Forks was special, mainly because of our marvelous teachers. I remember each one with great affection. My first one was Miss MacMillan in both Grade 5 and 7. She was a somewhat stern teacher, always keeping us in order; however, also very caring.
Our classrooms were on the second floor of the large, now gone brick building. She wrote on the big blackboards with white chalk and we wrote in our notebooks using our pens with nibs at the end and dipping them in the inkwells in holes in the corner of our desks or with pencils, with the pencil sharpeners screwed into the window ledge. Although she had no children of her own, many of us felt we were part of her family.
In Grade 6 we had Mr. Ken Bradley, in my memory the most wonderful teacher of them all.
My favuorite memory was of Friday afternoons when after lunch at one o’clock he would read to us for an hour from a book not part of the school curriculum. We heard him read books like The Lost World, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Mutiny on the Bounty, and many other adventure stories that fascinated us.
Then around two o’clock he would wind up the record player, put on the 12-inch disks and play classical music for us introducing us to such classics as Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, Finlandia by Sibelius, the Moldau, the New World Symphony, works by Mozart, Bach and many more. Part way through he would pause the record and ask us, “Did you hear the violins playing (or the trumpets, or the drums) and how did that make you feel?”
We learned so much about classical music that even today when I go to a symphony concert, Mr. Bradley “sits beside me” and asks the same question. He also organized the wonderful May Day celebrations we put on each year as an elementary school.
He was also the conductor for our City Band in which I played the trumpet, however badly. It was still so much fun to practice with him leading us and to march in parades in Grand Forks and Greenwood.
I was so appreciative that I could attend his 100th birthday in Victoria a few years ago when Joy Clapp phoned and told me it was happening. I was asked to give a speech on behalf of his students, several of whom were there, followed by a teacher who talked about their years together on Vancouver Island where Mr. Bradley had moved.
The teacher was 101 years old so I rose again and said I now knew the secret of a long, long life: be an elementary school teacher in a small town.
Then there was Ray Orser to help us through Grade 8. He was a strong personality and a great teacher as well. When he got annoyed with our antics he would stand at the front of the classroom, very rigidly upright, with his fists clenched and give us a powerful look before saying, in a very calm voice, “Pay attention” or “Quiet down.”
For Mr. Orser the school day did not always end of 3:30 in the afternoon. I still remember when we were learning about astronomy, he arranged for us to meet him in the yard behind the school at night around 9 o’clock and bring an apple box, a ruler, paper and pencil with us. He then pointed out to us and named the many constellations in the bright sky, and also had us calculate the angle of the North Star from where we were, using our boxes, rulers, paper and pencils.
One Saturday I remember a few of us going with him to the mountains nearby to look at the different geological formations in the rocks, which he then explained to us how they were formed.
He treated us like young adults and was very successful in getting us ready for high school.
And what else did we do as part of going to elementary school? As I have written before, no computer games, no cell phones and Facebook or Twitter, no television—we had to make up the games we almost always played outside.
Games like “Sticks.” For this game we went to the edge of the parking lot where the ground was soft, dug a slit in the ground about four inches long and one wide and put in a six- to eight-inch stick about the size of a quarter round on an angle and then with the three-foot stick we had also made we hit the end of the small stick so it spun up in the air and we knocked it forward with the big stick towards our opponent.
If he caught it we were out, if not he picked it up and threw it at our big stick that we had placed across the small slit in the ground. If the little stick he threw hit the big stick he then became the hitter. We played until one player or the other got six or 10 or 12 points whatever we decided in order to win.
The next favourite was marbles in which with our big marbles we tried to hit our opponent’s little marbles out of the circle we had drawn to put them in. The more marbles we won the bigger hero we were.
Then there was tin can cricket where we arranged big juice cans up into a pyramid and then threw a baseball at them with our opponent trying to hit the ball and run back and forth, just like real cricket. However, we didn’t have cricket bats or real cricket bars behind the batter so we made it up.
Then of course came high school in the little building on the corner of the school grounds across from the main entrance to the present high school. That’s all for next week.
One final word: thanks to all my early teachers, and to those now in the classroom. You make such a positive difference to our lives.
