Old school yearbooks wanted
Teachers putting old yearbooks from Pringle, Boucherie online, but several years are still missing
Did you attend George Pringle Secondary School in the late 1950s or early ‘60s and still have your high school yearbook?
If so, Irene Maier and Don Muir at Mount Boucherie Senior Secondary would like to hear from you.
Both Maier and Muir worked at Pringle when it was closed in 2002. Once they moved to Mount Boucherie, they came across some Pringle artifacts scattered in various places in the school. They realized information on Pringle grads had been lost with the closing of the school.
“We thought it was sad that long history of Pringle from 1948 to 2002 was lost,” said Maier. “It was like it had just evaporated.”
Maier and Muir began to look at ways to catalogue and manage that information.
They settled on scanning the high school yearbooks from both Pringle and Boucherie and making them available online on the Mount Boucherie school website. To maintain the sales of current Mount Boucherie yearbooks, there is a four-year turnaround; for example, the 2014 yearbook will not be available digitally until 2018.
Following a call-out through the school district, many of the yearbooks have been scanned and Maier is hoping getting the word out will help turn up the missing years.
They are looking for George Pringle yearbooks from 1955, 1958, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1964, 1965 and 1988.
“We’re not sure if there is a ‘58 one or not,” said Maier, who had heard the ’57-’58 grad class got in big trouble with the principal. He told the class as punishment there would be no yearbook that year, but it is unclear whether he carried through with that threat.
They are also looking for Mount Boucherie yearbooks from 1993, 1998 and 2000.
Once scanned, the yearbooks will be returned to their owners.
Before the yearbooks are posted, Muir removes any of the personal information written in the book.
Maier said yearbooks are important because they encapsulate what the year looked like for students, including activities, sports and even comments about the history or valedictorians speeches.
The older yearbooks are an interesting throwback in time.
“It’s like a little history of what teens were doing in Westbank back in the day,” said Maier.
Maier is retiring in June and Muir will retire in the near future. They are putting out a last call for the yearbooks in the hope of Ànishing the project before they leave.
Maier also plans to scan the composite grad photos from Pringle.
For Maier, the project is important because Pringle doesn’t exist anymore. There’s no building people can wander through, no teachers to go visit. There is no main ofÀce for people to call for information as they plan their 10-, 20- or even 30-year grad reunion.
“They feel a little bit like their history is lost,” said Maier.
If you have a year book from one of the missing years available to scan, you can email Irene.Maier@sd23.bc.ca, call Mount Boucherie school at 250-870-5101 or drop it by the school ofÀce with your contact information. If you are out of town, you can mail the yearbook to the school at 2751 Cameron Rd,, West Kelowna, B.C., V1Z 2T6. Be sure to include your name and address so the yearbook can be returned after it is scanned.
If you would like to take a walk down memory lane, go online to mbs.sd23.bc.ca and pull down the Students menu to Ànd Historic MBSS and GPSS Yearbooks.