Calgary – My Name is Sydney Jo

High School: 1969-1972

I only now realize how fortunate I was to attend Calgary’s Lord Beaverbrook High School. I don’t recall an awareness of its comparatively large size nor the breadth of what it had to offer; it was brand new the year before I started.

LBHS was enormous – my graduating class was nearly 500! In addition to the academics wings, there were studios for hairdressing, fashion and design, and shops for autobody, welding and construction (students even built a house in the shop!!). When I review the school’s site today I am astounded by even further expansion of this list.

1980: The Volkswagen Beetle

I don’t exactly remember when I bought my red bug and I don’t remember when we sold it but I know I loved it to pieces. It was one of the Super-Beetle models of the late 1970s. It looked just like this one but with a cool black racing stripe that ran over the top on the driver’s side. (It amazes me that I have no photos of mine… I guess it just didn’t seem important.)

Everyone knows that beetles were unusual with their trunks in the front (which meant there wasn’t much protection if you got smoonched), and their distinctive sounding engines in the back. And everyone knows about their notoriously unreliable heating systems in the Canadian winter. Mine was no different.

1970: The Pontiac Station Wagon

https://picturecarsltd.com/car/1420-pontiac-catalina/ (Ours was blue.)

Mom and Dad bought the station wagon, with its amazing automatic transmission, at about the time I was learning to drive. It was a beast of a car with three bench seats that finally accommodated our family in comfort. The only problem for me was the backwards-facing third seat since I could only manage a few minutes there before extreme nausea (or worse) took over.

Teasing or Taunting: the Junior High Experience

For me it was more than mere “teasing”; it was both atmosphere and actions that set me apart… like these:

Junior High School

I attended Fairview Junior High for Grades 7, 8, and 9 – three years with a lot of social grief but also a lot of fun.

I remember nothing of the Honours program itself, but I do know that I developed my lifelong habits of writing and rewriting notes as a studying tool (I still go through reams of note paper) and making a list for everything (although now I call it a “bullet journal” and spend extra time making it look cool).

I can flash back to so many images: exchanging notes with my best friend during class, eyeing the boy I had a crush on, wearing cool elephant pants as I walked through the hallways, sitting in the art room, enjoying lemons during time-outs with my basketball team, enduring fingernail inspection in Home Ec class, walking with the girls to Health Class as the boys went separately to theirs.