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Alumni coming to party St. Patrick High School to host second annual reunion dance
Candace Thomson
Northern News Services
Published Wednesday, June 19, 2013
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
St. Patrick High School is hosting its second annual alumni dance on Saturday, an event which principal Don Reid hopes will draw upwards of 300 past St. Pat's students.
The school has sold 40 tickets, but Reid says he expects most attendees will buy their tickets at the door the night of the event.
In anticipation of the upcoming dance, Yellowknifer spoke to a few alumni to get the stories on their high school glory years.
Most of them had to do with pranks, either pulled on teachers or pulled by the teachers themselves.
Jenny Reid, who teaches at Weledeh Catholic School, gathered a group of her classmates from the class of 1993 to look at old yearbooks and reminisce.
The best ones involved water.
Gerard Landry taught Jenny and her friends all through school and one day, in Grade 10 English class, Sandra Bevington took a nap and was rewarded with a splash of water as Landry upended a cup over her head.
"You snooze you lose," he told her at the time.
The boys of Sandra's class decided to use those words against Landry later in Grade 12 when a handful of them spray-painted the same phrase onto a large rock on Landry's front lawn, One of them, however, had a habit of spelling "lose" as "loose," which was a dead giveaway to Landry as to who the culprit was.
Landry said he still sees the boys around town and never misses a chance to tease them about how easily they were caught.
Another story that the female graduates of 1993, as well as 1989 alumnus and current teacher Rob Harte like to share is when the teachers pranked the graduating class of 1993.
Tina Schauerte, who now works as morale and welfare manager at Joint Task Force North, remembers how the teachers lined the class up in front of the old high school building and got them ready for a picture Yellowknifer was going to take of them to put on the front page.
"They told us we were the pride of the town and had to have our picture taken," said Schauerte.
Unbeknownst to the graduates, the teachers were actually hiding on the roof with what Raegan Mager, another classmate reminiscing on that day, described as five-gallon buckets of water.
Just when the graduates had their best smiles on for the picture, the teachers dumped the water over their heads from above and then hid as the Yellowknifer photographer caught the pandemonium that followed. Yellowknifer, unfortunately, was unable to retrieve the photograph for this article.
Harte said pranks these days are smaller.
"We tease the students and they tease us back day-to-day," he said. "It's always nice to think back on the big pranks though, but you can only pull one off every few years."
While Harte said the students are soon due for another big prank, he wouldn't offer any details on just when that would be happening.
As for the upcoming dance, everyone seems to be looking forward to Landry's slide show, which will surely have evidence of the great water prank of '93.
Doors open at 7 p.m., allowing the alumni an hour before the music starts so they can lurk the halls of St. Pat's once again and breathe in the nostalgia. It is a licensed event, said Don Reid, so all the party-goers must be 19 or older, which shouldn't be a problem.
Reid said the Students Against Drunk Driving from St. Pat's will offer designated driver services starting at 11 p.m. and running until the dance ends at 1 a.m.
Yearbooks from five, 10, 15, and 20 years ago will be on display as well as memorabilia from the old St. Pat's high school.
"It's a chance to come out, mingle, and see old teachers and friends we haven't seen in awhile," said Reid.
The funds gained through ticket purchases will go towards St. Pat's athletic department, which Reid hopes will help keep the St. Pat's Hall of Fame running.
"We're looking to keep people connected and continue building memories," said Reid.
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