Reunion brings back 60 years of Beaconsfield High School
Beaconsfield High School held its 60th Diamond Jubilee Reunion over the weekend and organizer Bill Stockwell figures the threeday nostalgia bash attracted more than 1,000 former students, teachers and staff.
“It went very well,” said Stockwell.
Among the attendees were recently retired politician Geoff Kelley (Class of 1972), his wife Judy Harper, who also attended BHS (1968-1971), and Canadian astronaut Dave Williams (Class of 1971) who spoke to current students.
Stockwell, 73, was part of the first wave of students who entered the new high school in September of 1958. He was a member of the graduating class of 1961. His memories of BHS remain fresh 57 years later.
“The building wasn’t finished when we moved in, back in the fall of ’58. Some parts of the building weren’t open yet, including the cafeteria. So we all had to bring our lunches. Of course, there were juvenile delinquents like myself who thought that eating at the chip wagon in the parking lot was far more attractive,” he said laughing. “We’d go in our running shoes, with no coat, of course.”
Stockwell, who became a journalist and worked at The Chronicle weekly newspaper in the 1970s, later served as the secretary-general with the local school board.
He recalls the baby boomer era when schools were opening all across the West Island, and almost every teacher at BHS volunteered at extracurricular activities.
“Almost every teacher did something,” he said. “There was some sort of volunteer aspect to it. You either coached a team or ran a club. You did something. And the kids picked that up and families pick that up.
“Because they saw the education was not necessarily between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. and in classrooms. A lot of it occurred on those peripheral areas where (students) were still under the mentorship of an adult, but they were learning perhaps things that were a little more practical for their real life, rather than trigonometry or algebra. I shouldn’t point those (subjects) out. That’s really terrible of me,” he said with a chuckle.
Stockwell also pointed out that the Parisian French he was taught in high school was of little use on the streets of Montreal.
“When I went down to the pool hall in the Pointe-Claire Village and tried that French, oh boy, I was laughed out of town. Very strongly.”
He said much has changed in the West Island since those days, including the name of his elementary school, Cedar Park, which was later changed to Clearpoint in 2006 when it merged with closing Seigniory school.
“The elementary school, of course, will never be Clearpoint,” said Stockwell, who grew up at 50 Brunet Ave. in Pointe-Claire. “The school will always be Cedar Park to me.”