TIME CAPSULE CONNECTION
St. Rose pupils find parents’ photos
Parker Langley thought his friends were joking around with him when they said his dad had something in a 25-year-old time capsule that was opened recently at St. Rose elementary school.
Sure enough, Parker’s buddy pointed out a picture of Michael Langley in a handmade booklet from 1992.
“I look so cute,” Michael wrote as a Grade 6 student. “I want to be an architect.”
“I knew my dad went to this school,” 10-year-old Parker said. “But I thought some of the kids in my class were just joking around about seeing him in the booklet.” Parker got a kick out of seeing his dad’s page as did his younger siblings Griffin, eight and six-year-old twins Aubrey and Emerson. “I remember the whole school doing something for it,” said Michael, who couldn’t quite recall the booklet until his kids told him about it. “It’s pretty funny.” Now 37, he didn’t follow architecture as a career path but works in the moulding department for Quality Safety Systems. Encapsulated family ties didn’t stop with the Langleys either. Evan and Aidan Samrah saw their dad, Randy, in a Grade 6 class photo from 1992.
“They brought out the time capsule at first recess and starting reading the names on the back of the class photos,” Evan said of the discovery. “I knew he went to school here and he remembers when they did the capsule.” It was Randy Samrah’s first year at St. Rose after a family move into the school district.
“I remember it was a big deal doing the time capsule,” Randy said. “And I remember thinking are we ever going to open it up or is it buried somewhere?”
The sealed tin labelled simply “Time Capsule, to be opened 201718,” was stuffed in the back of the school vault.
Heidi Sersen remembered seeing it there six years ago when she joined the staff as the school’s secretary.
“We all kind of forgot about it,” Sersen said.
When she was doing a little spring cleaning, she saw the inscription with the current school year and gave it to principal Tina Tuer. “We’ve been talking about doing another one,” Tuer said. “We’ll take everything from this one and put it back in along with some current items and leave it for 50 years.” For now, the contents are displayed on a bulletin board in the school’s main hallway. The board is bursting with photos, art projects and short essays, including one by Tracy Topolie.
Topolie was 11 years old and in Grade 6 when she wrote, “I’m not in sports. I was in drama for one show. I like art and gym. I’m going to be a news reporter.”
Tuer said a future time capsule would be assembled by students next fall.