I was just finishing my grade thirteen, so I would have been eighteen. And then ah, eighteen, turned nineteen, and then I went to Ryerson.

Speaker: Yeah, well I skipped a couple of grades. They used to skip kids in those days, huh, so I actually finished grade you-know, I guess it was grade-thirteen in those days, right. I- I think I was only just almost sixteen years old. Interviewer: Did you go right to university after that? Speaker: Yeah, went right to university. I was graduated before I was twenty, yeah. Interviewer: In biochemisty. Speaker: Yeah.

... my friends were all- tended to be achievers, and at that point in time, that's when (inc) one still had to write departmental final exams and there was standardized tests for grade-thirteen. Um our high-school tended to have amongst the highest levels of achievement on those tests in terms of number of- percentage of Ontario scholars and things-like-that ...

Well well that- that's what I thought when I finished June sixty-nine my grade-thirteen and I had been saving my money and I decided I'd go to Europe with the money I'd saved for University at that point ...

And um- but anyway the result of that was that it took me four years to do my grade-twelve and thirteen, in those days you had to do nine grade-twelves and uh nine grade-thirteen subjects, so it took me- I maybe could have- I maybe could have squeezed it into three years but I had to raise some money as well so um- 'cause my mother was quite poor and as I've mentioned before my father had died ...

When I started teaching uh, students had to take history, all the way through, up to- not in grade-thirteen but they had to history in grades nine, ten, eleven and twelve, every year and then grade- thirteen was optional but now I think they only have to take one- one history and even along the way so- but taking all those histories, that was part of this sort-of more conservative approach that was in effect at that time you-know ...

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.

... 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.

... 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-