Fifty years later, Valemount’s first graduates look back
By Rachel Fraser
This June marks the 50th anniversary of the first Valemount Secondary graduating class. Prior to 1975, Valemount’s grade 11 and 12 students were required to complete high school elsewhere, primarily boarding in McBride, which was the larger community at the time.
Neysa (Carr) Weatherbee and Susie (Gunderson) Forsyth remember catching the bus to McBride Monday morning and returning Friday evening. While there, students stayed in a dormitory next to the high school, which stood across the street from the current McBride Secondary School.
There was a games room and a big dining room, Neysa remembers, and the sleeping arrangements in the dorm rooms had the girls at one end of the hall, and the boys at the other. The students were well-supervised and well-fed; the grads remember having to sign out to go out in the evening, and a 9 pm curfew.
“I believe it was Mrs. Bromley sitting there when you came in, to make sure there was no funny stuff,” Susie said, though Neysa remembers their class being well-behaved.
Another member of the graduating class, who preferred not to be named, looks back fondly at the year spent in McBride. “It’s definitely an experience that everybody should have,” they told The Goat. “It was just so much fun.”
Though their year in McBride was positive for all the grads who shared their memories, the students were very happy to be able to return to school Valemount.
“It was nice to be back home,” Susie said.
“It was super exciting,” Nesya said. “A whole new wing on the school.”
The change came about when due to the lobbying efforts of local parents, a shop, kitchen facilities for Home Economics, and a science classroom were added.
“They built a wing on the old high school,” Neysa remembers “They lobbied really hard. I remember mom saying it was just continuous meetings with the group of parents to get the district to build… these three dedicated classrooms with the equipment needed for those three programs.”
She said the lobbying started in grade 10, and they were hoping to do grade 11 in Valemount, but it wasn’t until grade 12 that the facilities were ready.
Even then, one graduate remembers that the renovations on the high school building weren’t quite ready on schedule, and they shared the elementary school for several months, trading shifts with the younger students. The elementary school students went to school in the morning, and the secondary students in the afternoon.
“It was Easter break when we went back into the other school, which was a little bit long,” they said.
In a full circle moment, Neysa’s daughter was in the last graduating class in that school building, the year before the current secondary school building was occupied in 2006.
