... they still have these Ontario scholars but they used to have- they had a system whereby the province rewarded students with an Ontario scholarship if they got- I think it was seventy-five-percent in their f-- in their grade- thirteen year. And so schools would compete with one another as to how many Ontar-- how many Ontario scholars they would produce in a year.

It was- Toronto was quite- you-know you were in tech or you were in commercial or you were in the collegiates and if you were in the collegiates- if you weren't going into university you were expected to either be going into some other thing that required grade-thirteen, it would be expected that you would do grade-thirteen and then, you wouldn't necessarily go to university but you would do something of a higher ah level- training. We um- we didn't- community colleges only came in around nineteen-seventy.

... I quit- I was finished with school, Runnymede-Collegiate. I had my junior matriculation and that's all that you went to- the only time you went and took grade-thirteen or senior matric is if you were going to university. And out of the class that I was in, at Runnymede, there would be about twenty of us and only two went to univesity. Very few people went to university.

Speaker: Yeah, it could have been purple for all I knew, yeah. So high-school was interesting. It didn't gel for me until grade-thirteen, when all of a sudden I started taking all the subjects I enjoyed. And so grade-thirteen was the best. Before that, it was just drudgery, especially some of the subjects.

When I was in university, I got a job with I-B-M. Actually, I remember. I did roofing up in Sudbury of all places. So that was the end of grade-thirteen. I went up to Sudbury and did some proper construction doing roofing and so I'd had a couple of different jobs for this one company.

Interviewer: Sometimes my teachers would give us- give us these spelling tests that would determine where you were, like if you were a Grade-One speller up to a Grade-Thirteen speller, and I was always one of the Grade-Thirteen spellers in, like, Grade-Six. So I could spell the hardest words. Speaker: I can't. Before I spell Grade-Eight words. Well, I don't know. Well, they gave us hard words like Physician. Interviewer: Can you spell Physician? Speaker: Well, yeah. Uh... wait... P-H-Y-C-I-A-N?

Interviewer: Now were people travelling a lot around-? Speaker: Yeah. Interviewer: They were, eh? Speaker: Yeah y-- after grade-thirteen you took the big trip to Europe for the first time, and then after university, you did it as well, but again- right?

... and then I went to City-School for grade thirteen which is an alternative school, and that's even further west, like um Westin- and-Saint-Clair.

Speaker: ... in a public-school it was mayhem. Like kids weren't listening, people were getting kicked out all the time, people didn't show up, I hardly showed up actually my last year too but- Interviewer: In grade thirteen? Speaker: Grade thirteen yeah, and twelve. Alternative is kind-of like, they don't care if you show up or not, or th-- not that they don't care but, it's for- it's like an alternative learning kind of thing ...

Speaker: I wondered if you would have stayed with your French if you had 've been the grade twelve kid versus ah grade thirteen. Interviewer: Well when I was in grade nine I didn 't- I took extended French and I practically failed that. I didn't fail but I did really badly in it. And then I went into core French and I really liked it.

Which was great education, and it was probably about the time I got to grade thirteen, there was only- there was still only five- hundred, about five-hundred uh students in the school.

And I belonged to um, I played a- I played all the different sports, I was on the track team, the volleyball team, also got to coach when I was in grade thirteen so ...

... after I graduated as well, then it was all- a-lot of it was really awful. Um, but um, so there was religion every day, by the time I got to grade thirteen it was uh- it actually wasn 't mandatory, you could- you could go or- or not.

Speaker: ... I guess the kids that were not dedicated to school wouldn 't be where I was, so it was a different- Interviewer: Different system. Speaker: Different- we were there to go to school, to learn, to go to grade thirteen, go on to University, College, whereas general level you didn't- you wouldn 't- you're goals weren't set as high I guess is the word I mean, not that they didn 't want to go on, but just different you- know, so-

Um, there were the odd- you-know, the odd problems that kids had but um it- it didn't get weird until my high- um, grade-twelve, grade-thirteen when the kids started bringing in marijuana and leaving it in their lockers and then- then police were- were coming, you-know.

... oh then they were closing the seminary that was it and they were moving it downtown so that job ended and then I just needed a job so- I guess now I was in to grade-thirteen and I just went everywhere I could and happened to go into Bayview-Village-Shopping-Centre which was a lot different then it is now and- it was an open shopping-centre then but a big one- and I went into this store, Calderone's, that sold books and art-

Speaker: Mister-N my French teacher (laughing). Interviewer: Why did you like him? Speaker: Because he was so good. He went- he studied at the Sorbonne. And he was ve-- had a very good sense of humour. So he would- he would challenge us. And he had, the course- grade-thirteen- what happened with grade-thirteen? It was supposed to be the matriculation, kids who were in the um, technical part, because Northern, they had aircraft engineering, print shop and (inc) and they went only to grade-twelve. So if they had taken some subjects they would uh take the grade-thirteen, they would just sort- of hop in so, grade-thirteen chemistry, there were forty-five students. Grade uh- French there were about- there were over forty, and while they're bitching and complaining now. Uh forty- we had- we had over forty and every one of us got a first class honours, which meant over seventy-five percent.

... I originally I lived in North-Toronto, but then we moved up there. Um lived there for ten years, and then we moved out of Toronto. Um, moved to United-States for five years and then Montreal and then I came back here and finished grade thirteen and I 've lived here ever since.

... when we would come to Toronto quite often we'd stay at- in the Yonge and Bloor area. And uh, so I got to know that area a bit, and saw it change. Um, and then when I came back for- I went to- to grade thirteen I was in boarding school, but for university, I eventually went to York but lived on the U-of-T campus, so um uh, for six illustrious years.

Well, uh, I went right through the same school, it's now called James-S-Bell-School, in those days it was called Longbranch-Continuation-School, so I started in kindergarten, and I went through to grade thirteen.