Ernest James Costain
Hagbergi Geraldus ad huius scriptorem retae scripsit et magister noster dicet:, Ernestus, filius Costainensis, linguae Romanorum scholasticus, mortus est (VIII Junii MMI). XC anni vivuerat. Hic faber senex retae novae respondet: " `Ave atque vale, magister noster', et `te morituri salutans'. Iter vitae ad termino est, Ernesti. Iter discipilorum, nautae flumenis vitae, hodie continuet sed cras erimus quid es."
Apologies, ladies, for the abysmal technical quality. As indicated in the technical section in the introduction, as experience increases, an improvement may be possible here.
This negative was beyond recovering to a reasonable level as imaged originally. Some hours of work produced this. Kindly apply that nostalgia mist!
Here Pat Daniel (l) and Sandra Schutz stand in front of a library display they were found working on one day after school in 1963. They are in the corridor between the old and new buildings. They have just this moment completed the display behind them on the east wall.
On the 22nd of September, 1999, the scene had changed. Lockers block off the windows on the west side and photographs of the distinguished, including Chas and Wallace, grace the east wall.
With fewer hours work on the files produced by the new, sophisticated scanner, all the images from the sequence have been made, if not perfect, at least useable on the web site.
The project begins.
Up go the mountains with a supply of pins from Sandra.
Sandra takes a turn on the stool and the sailboats are launched.
"Let's put the text here."
The sign beside Pat's hip says that the school library will be closing but that the public library will be open over the Summer.
Time to stand back and to take in the overall impression.
Ta-da!
French 91
Now which classroom is this? The windows show it to be in the old building.
The light level in the windows suggests that they might be facing west. The photograph has been made from the right front which is where John sat in French 91. If that's the case, this could be Mrs. Gage's French class. Does anybody in French 91 remember that "Québec" poster on the back wall? The girl in the sweater standing centre right rear looks like Val Lawrie. Down at the right front we seem to be looking at Don McCormick's back, Don did have a sweater in that pattern. Maybe that's Tiiu Kava sitting down at the left rear desk.
Gerry Hagberg makes these identifications and tentative identifications.
Four girls seated left foreground: left, Jill Wolton; centre back, Sue Stoddart; right, Kate Brimblecombe; centre (back to camera), Hilary Ford
Four girls standing at back: left, Cheryl Borris confirms (030128) Shirley Naylor; next right, Cheryl says Darlene Wilson; next right - very familiar looking but no name comes to mind; right, Cheryl Boris confirms Stephanie Sam
Girl seated in front of above four: Linda Poyntz
Wow, look at Mrs. Gage's room today, it looks like a fern bar! The room has been partitioned into rooms and a lounge. Apparently, student councillors have offices in these rooms. Here we see two ladies who emerged from their offices in Mrs. Gage's room. They are looking at the monochrome printouts of this web site that the author was carrying for guidance in the making of these "after" photographs. Thank you for your permission to photograph your office, ladies.
Bernd and Jane at Dance
This photograph, the reader will notice, was not done on Tri-X Panchromatic film. It must have been at about this time that an electronically crude but cheap strobe was in use. It ran on AA cells and ate those cells up at a prodigious rate; it was still cheaper than flash bulbs.
Here is one of the rewards of that long ago expenditure.
Stream of Consciousness, Digression
Bernd's name is connected to Hasso's name.
Bernd's family was to experience tragedy after Bernd's high school. Hasso, Bernd's cousin whom many of us met over one Christmas, was at U.C. Berkley. Hasso was a man of courage and commitment. He wanted not only to continue his studies at Berkley but to continue his contribution on the campus. The times, they were achanging and the Free Speech movement was under way there.
Cast your mind back. The universities were yielding ungraciously to the pressures exerted by a generation raised clear of the War and whose members understood nothing but the rebound prosperity that had followed it. The universities were run, however, by "graduates" schooled in the Great Depression many of whom had had post graduate military studies in "World War II". Nowhere was the pressure more obvious than on the beautiful Berkley campus. (If ever you have that opportunity, stroll that campus with someone who knows it. One of the webmaster's fondest memories of California is spending a glorious, sunny afternoon doing just that.) The campus had been a tinderbox, an "outside agitator" dropped a match into it and Dean Towle fanned the annoyance of a few students into a conflagration that Rightists, even Regan, could not put out. Cinders landed on the UVic campus and found fuel. UVic changed, too.
Oh, remember these days, gentles, remember these days?
Oh, do remember these days, gentles, do remember these days!
Like his cousin, Hasso rode a motorcycle. After Christmas, Hasso returned early to school to resume his non academic activities. On his way back to California, Hasso was riding normally in his own lane. A line of cars travelling in the opposite direction approaching Hasso included one driven by a U.S. Air Force officer returning to his base after his own holidays. Maybe he was in a hurry. In a bid to pass the line of cars ahead of him, he snapped his car out of his own lane and straight into Hasso on his motorcycle. Hasso was killed outright.
Here's Sproul Hall at Berkely but it did not end there. We did this at Uvic, too. We, however, were not rousted by the Oak Bay Police or the Mounties. American policemen and their masters did not understand that they could not win in such a situation. Canadians seem to have understood that.
"We have an autocracy which runs this university. It's managed. We asked the following: if President Kerr actually tried to get something more liberal out of the Regents in his telephone conversation, why didn't he make some public statement to that effect? And the answer we received -- from a well-meaning liberal -- was the following: He said, "Would you ever imagine the manager of a firm making a statement publicly in opposition to his board of directors?" That's the answer! Now, I ask you to consider: if this is a firm, and if the Board of Regents are the board of directors, and if President Kerr in fact is the manager, then I'll tell you something: the faculty are [sic] a bunch of employees, and we're the raw material! But we're a bunch of raw material[s] that don't mean to have any process upon us, don't mean to be made into any product, don't mean to end up being bought by some clients of the University, be they the government, be they industry, be they organized labor, be they anyone! We're human beings!
[Wild applause.]
"There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!" Savio, 03 December, 1964.
Today's students are the inheritors of our efforts. Do they know about this? Would they laugh at what Savio had to say on the steps in Berkley that day? They are disengaged where we cared, we were passionate.
Savio, by the way, has passed on. He died in 1996.
The state governor elected in 1966 on a pledge to clean up the universities had, among his qualifications, having been a star in wartime propaganda movies, one Ronald Regan.
Barb
Barb Heisterman, on nearly the last day, tidies up. Here she is making a waste paper run out side Mr. Child's biology lab. at the south east corner of the upper floor of the new building.
Naturally, the guys stand around and watch. Those, remember, were the good old days when things were done properly; women's work was women's work and men stood around and watched it being done.
Gerry Hagberg takes a run at identifying the fellows behind Barb. Nearest Barb might be Ken Lane, we only see his back. The fellow with the light shirt is Les Litwin and the fellow in the striped shirt is Jim Pomeroy.
Apologies to Barb are in order. She did not think that she looked her best at that moment and was reluctant to be photographed. She managed a Mona Lisa smile anyway. Barb, it is possible to speak for all the guys: you looked great then and you look even better now, 40 years later!
The once blank wall that ended the upstairs corridor in our time, visible behind Barb, has been removed and replaced with a set of doors. These doors provide access to a hall which corresponds to "our" ground floor inter building corridor. The same arrangement has been installed on the second floor, too. The inter building corridor is, then, three stories high. A structure has been built east of the corridors and is accessed by doorways in the east wall of each floor.
Karen Bradford and Sue Buxton
Speech
Now here's a mystery picture. What is going on here, everybody? There are well over a hundred of these O.B.H.S. frames, many never printed and so unseen since the day they were developed.
Gerry Hagberg suggests the following identifications. "NA", Norman Abbott; "LM", Len McNeely; "SS", Sue Stoddart; "NM", Nick Marsden; "BH", Beverly Hynds; "BL", Brian Larkey; "HF", Hilary Ford; "JP", Jim Pomeroy; "GH", Gerry Hagberg; "KB", Kate Brimbelcombe; "KC", Kathy Curran; "BD", Barb Doell; "DM", Derek Melville. Those with even sharper eyes or better memories are invited to comment!
After 45 years, your photographer is unable to recall what was going on in this one. Somebody, as occasionally happened, might have borrowed the camera but that in itself should have rung a bell and no bell rings on looking at this. Somebody, tell the webmaster what is going on here and then a proper caption can be put together to let everybody else know. Is it going on in the Dutchman's room, the chem. lab?
The girls and Norman are paying attention to what is being said but the rest of guys are not. Maybe Norman Abbott is sitting there ready write minutes on the board. Is that Ron Mayse sitting on the right in the white shirt? What is seen here is the full frame; nothing has been cropped. Somebody, please, solve the mystery.
Maybe it's election time.
Jane Lowman
Now this looks like biology lab. See the trays on the bench? Maybe we are about to undertake the ladies' favourite, dissecting frogs. Those trays don't look any too clean; that's not shadows in the corners, it's dirt. They probably smelled, too, redolent in the summer heat with formaldehyde and the detritus of generations of long dead frogs.
Remember mice on girl's sweaters? Look at Jane Lowman's little mouse. You had forgotten all about mice as clothing decorations?
A vibrant Jane appeared at the 2003 reunion and took everybody's eye by wearing a mouse of great distinction, a very dressy mouse indeed!
Nine Guys
Now here are familiar faces. These guys were on the way home and were button holed. You can tell by the smiles that the school year is just about over.
These guys had been walking north along the path west of the new building and were marshalled up into a group for a photograph.
030606. Cheryl Borris writes to correct an identification in this photograph and to provide another. The original had been made very small to keep down the size of the web site. Now that is not a constraint, only consideration for dial up users is required. Accordingly, the original scan of the negative was exhumed and the changes made on an image derived from that. That has meant getting all the old spots back and some other technical issues. They will be dealt with down the road. For right now, we have much better resolution on this fine old picture.
Andy Cleland writes (990902) to identify the fellows called out here. With the exception of Russ and Keith, the fellows identified by Andy are basketball players.
They were intercepted outside the main entrance of the new building. In the left background is the old building and behind the fellows, across the fields, is Oak Bay Junior High.
The fuzzy print and fuzzy faces are artefacts of the compression required because of the small site in use for this test version of the page. With a reasonable site, we will have decent quality. Since a constituency for this site is already coalescing, this very night (990902) your webmaster began to float the word around his contacts that he was in the market for space. See a detailed plea for space on the notice board.
Russell Maddock is in this picture. Second hand information, and that's all it is, said that Russell had died at sea. He had gone out on deck in a storm with a party under the boatswain to secure a landing barge on the well deck. The barge had come loose and was pounding up and down as each sea washed over the deck. The story was that Russell was knocked off his feet by one of these seas as it surged across the deck. He was swept under the barge. As the water drained off the deck, the barge descended onto him.
We need the names of everybody here, please send them in and they will be put on the site. Biographical information would be appreciated, too.
Two Guys and A Girl
