I guess maybe Alison Colby in- in grade-eleven, who was my English teacher. I thought, "If I could be like her, I- that's what I want to do. I want to inspire people and make them think and ah, do different things." I remember in- in grade-thirteen, we had Waiting-for-Godeau as our- one of the plays. And ah, we all thought it was absolutely ridiculous. And she sent us off and we had to come up with scenes, we had to actually do scenes for it.

Interviewer: So why did you move to Toronto? Speaker: Well um he got a job in Toronto out of teacher's college. I didn't get one because ah- wh-- in those days you could go to teacher's college out of grade-twelve for two years. You had to have your grade-thirteen to get on the Toronto board. Now you have to have your university degree but ah anyway it doesn't necessary make a better teacher but who knows.

There was a shortage of vocational teachers in sixty-three, might've been sixty-two but we heard about it in sixty-three and they would let you in- ah, this is high-school or ah, public-school, without your qualifications if you had your grade-thirteen and twelve years office experience. Ten years office experience, which I had both.

Speaker: ... he didn't kick me out, kick me out, he just, "Here's money, get a haircut, and you're going to work." So, it was either school or work. Interviewer: Rather unexpected wasn't? Speaker: It was. Yeah. He had a lot of nerve. I started grade-thirteen, and ah I went for a couple weeks, and then ah- ah decided, "you-know what, I wasn't gonna- I wasn't gonna go to school anymore." And ah pr-- it was probably about a month or so, finally like I said, mom and dad had enough ...

There was only- there was only B-C-I and Saint-Michael's and Albert-College. And ah so ah ah it was kind-of funny even Saint-Michael's ah only went to a certain grade at that time and to get your grade-thirteen you had to go o'er to- over- they had to go over to B-C-I to get their grade-thirteen.

Interviewer: So you were in thirteen when the school closed. Speaker: Yup they announced um they were considering the school closure and ah that was a big challenge for all of us in grade-thirteen. Um because you were the big man on campus or ah you-know the ah ah the seniors in the school, and the prospect of your- your home being taken away- because you were basically there from six-thirty in the morning until nine at night, just never dawned ...

I- I- I- I notice it in- I always noticed it in myself when I was teaching, just how my language would change going from a grade-nine class to a grade-twelve class, or you-know grade-thirteen in those years like, just th-- the differences in- in... speech and speech patterns and s-- and being more conscious of things like sentence structure and speaking properly and using more elevated language with the seniors ...

Speaker: We- And at the t-- interestingly enough, at-the-time, the- the people who were building the French school, the students, when I say people I- I'm only you-know I was a grade-thirteen kid I thought I spoke for everybody I didn't, um, the s-- but the students from the French school agreed. They wanted to h-- come up with a- you-know to start new.

When I first started at the girl's college, the um school-board the- the- the provincial funding system only extended itself to grade-ten, to the end of the intermediate section. Grade-eleven, twelve, and thirteen in those days, it was still grade-thirteen, they were not funded it was entirely private school, and so the students had to pay to attend the school, and Saint-Joseph's college the grade eleven, twelve, and thirteen section of Saint-Joseph's college was funded...

... they were both religious communities trying to run schools for stu-- Catholic students in North-Bay. And there were some grade-thirteen classes that ah were run at Scollard-Hall I-mean you could imagine the financial drain trying to run um especially grade-thirteen classes with very limited numbers ...

Speaker: ... people were still trying to just you-know people were still trying to use some of those old O-A-C components in the grade-twelve university level course. Interviewer: Yeah, we had ah (inc) Titus-Andronicus and About-Schmidt. Speaker: Oh yes. Interviewer: (inc) Speaker: I- My oldest daughter, um her grade-thirteen er O-A-C independent study was on the character of Merlin, and she read oh more than three, I think f-- maybe half a dozen pieces from various King-Arthur legends ah and examined the character of Merlin, you-know things like that ...

He taught too- he taught m-- one of my sisters and my brother. I think he taught my sister who's four years older than I twice actually. I think he taught her in grade-ten and in grade-thirteen.

So, um, and I said that the group that- the group that I tended to hang out with just didn't seem to- we just didn't really lean that way. More partying in probably grade-thirteen, yeah.

Interviewer: Mm-hm. So was there some reason why you couldn't hang out with your sister or was it just like, some sort of unwritten rule that- Speaker: Oh i-- tha-- oh yeah (laughs) at that time, 'cause she was in grade-thirteen and I was in grade-nine, that was- yeah, even acknowledging her at school wasn't- (laughs)

... pre-kindergarten and kindergarten. So it was, like, the- the half day in the morning or half day in the afternoon for the first two years and then grade one and then went up to grade six in elementary-school for Catholic. And then, pretty much right up to ah grade thirteen, I did the Catholic school system.

Speaker: Anyhow, now I've digressed in many ways but ah really- I'm talking, I- I ended up ah, when I gradua-- I graduated from high-school, I repeated grade thirteen. And ah, my own fault, nobody else's, when you come down to it, I didn't do the work, so I had to repeat. So I took extra subjects, bettered my marks, and then I ended up going to Queen's-University for two years.

... as we called it in those days, normal-school, not teacher's-college. It was called normal-school. So I applied and I got in. Now, when I went to normal-school I was twenty-four years old. Anyhow it was a one-year course then, because you graduate from grade thirteen, it was a one-year course. And then they switched it a couple years later. Switched it, you could go from grade twelve but you had to take two years at normal-school. Anyhow so- and now it's become a teacher's-college.

Speaker: Oh yeah, when I went on to grade thirteen. You know how I got into grade thirteen? I didn't have Latin. The principal of the high-school here wrote to the department of education and said, "Look this guy's graduate from techno- technical-school. Can we apply all those technical-school subjects in place of the Latin requirement for grade thirteen?" And they said, "Yes." Interviewer: Okay. Speaker: That's how I went on to grade thirteen.

The biggest thing that's wrong with this province, we went to- we followed the other provinces that we-- went to grade twelve and we followed the American system. That was under Mike- Mister-Mike-Harris. You know what they say, when you're a teacher, you don't um if ah you can't do anything, you become a teacher. If you don't understand anything, you become a teacher, okay? We switched. Grade thirteen in Canada was the equivalent of first-year university in the States. Christ, I heard that for so many years, it was unreal. Ah on top of that, on top of that, grade twelve. How old are you? You're not in grade twelve.

... so they asked me to be in this play and I was Spike. So it was pretty cool. And a friend of mine, he was in grade-thirteen and he was cool guy, he was Fonzie 'cause Fonzie was cool. So from then everyone called me Spyke. And i-- i-- it's funny how it- it just stuck.