Get Back To Where You Once Belonged

I am of a certain age where reunions start to gain some sort of significance. I am young enough to know that a lot of my classmates are probably still alive, but old enough to not know that fact for sure. I have marked a date on my calendar to find out. I will be attending the 35th reunion of my graduating class from the school I attended as a youngster. I am not sure which is more surprising; the fact that I am attending a reunion after 35 years or that it has been 35 years since my class graduated. I say my class, because I left after what was called 5th Form (grade 12 to you colonists) so that I could see what life was like with girls in a classroom. I must say that was rather a welcome change. Not that there weren’t benefits to being in an all male school... Okay, so after a few minutes of reflection, I didn’t come up with that many benefits.

One of my old roommates made me aware of the reunion. He now lives in Toronto, or one of those outlying areas that people who don’t live in Toronto, call Toronto. He is a friend of a woman who is the wife of a guy who attended the school and with who works with my older brother - who also went to the school. Try saying that again. My roommate, Eric, got my email address and we started to exchange notes and catch up with each other. Other than the occasional hello and small talk with former students at the school who live in Kingston, I haven’t really seen or even heard of anyone from my class since I left the school in 1972.

Throughout the years I have always kept an eye on the Report on Business from the Globe and Mail to see if any of the guys I went to school with turned up in the pages. You know the articles: “Wunderkind Stock Market Analyst Nailed For Fraudulent Stock Promotion - You Know, The Guy Who Used To Room With Scottie in 4th Form At Brent House”. But the pages of the Globe have constantly been bereft of this sort of salacious news.

Not that I think of these things in a competitive way, but at the School we were raised with a certain amount of competitiveness within what was known as the Little Big Four of the private school circuit. Ridley College in St. Catharines, St. Andrews College in Aurora, Upper Canada College in Toronto and my school, Trinity College School in Port Hope, made up the group. To say that the other schools have best us in this regard is rather shaming in a way. I always did my utmost to pound the other schools as best as I could on the football field, the cricket pitch (yes, it is possible to pound someone on a cricket pitch) or in the gymnasium.

In all honesty, to see their names pop up in news circles when our school was conspicuous in its absence, is a little humiliating. I guess it must be that they taught us ethics or something. I mean we never had the scandals like UCC old boys always seem to have. All we have had were a couple titans of business and few MP’s. What is there to brag about there?

Now, I am not saying that my classmates are not capable of some heinous crime of state or finance; it could be that there have just not been caught. Or to paraphrase Henry David Thoreau -now that would impress my English Master who for the most part was thoroughly unimpressed by me- it may be that my fellow classmates are slaves to their jobs and lead lives in quiet desperation. Either way, it will be interesting to see where their lives have taken them.

I was asked to come up with a specific memory or moment at the school that has endured with me. Try as I may to remember, there really wasn’t a particular moment that crystallized my time there. Perhaps it was because I spent such a long period there that instead of it being a focus of my life, it was more of a constant. I was fortunate that for about half my time there I had two of my older brothers running point for me, paving the way, so to speak. So, in a way it was like family. These were guys I slept, ate, played sports with and learned with (okay, so some learned more than I). I went through times of discovery, disappointment and even at that young age, disillusionment. So to really capsulize a particular moment is difficult. Maybe it in 1970 when I returned from Michaelmas term break (Christmas holidays in the real world) after a trip to The Bahamas with a pair of shockingly white bell bottom jeans. I thought they contrasted particularly well with my tan, but mere moments after stepping out of my dorm, the Headmaster loudly pointed out that indeed, “Mr. Scott, this is not a discotheque!” And for all those years I labored under that misguided belief. Perhaps it is my ability to still be able to conjugate the verb, “to love” in Latin or in an uninterrupted flow of words that seem to come out like one word, still be able to recite the entire dinner grace, again in Latin and in one breath.

However, one constant that I learned from my time there that has served me well and still serves me today. It was a lesson I have carried from day one of my attendance at the school. It was there on my graduation from university, on my first job interview and as well on my wedding day. I know it will be with me on the day my children get married and every other important marker in my life until the final moment the lid on my casket is shut. The lesson learned that is so important? I know how to tie a full Windsor.