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Photo Gallery - St. Lambert
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Editorial 
by Angus Cross |
Back in October of 2003 I stumbled upon a website hosted by Nick Brenner, a CCHS grad from the Class of 1964, who resides in Innsbruck, Austria. Nick was attempting to drum up interest in holding a reunion. I joined his group and together with another member, Pamela Storr, Class of 1984, we agreed to see what could be done. We realized that with absolutely no financial resources we would have to use the internet extensively to make any progress. At that point Anthony "Tony" McGarr, Class of 1977 stepped up to the plate and offered to sponsor a new website. Through his company, Planet Velocity we reserved the site name and set out to build a website to promote a reunion. chamblycounty.com was born on December 2nd. 2003. From this very humble beginning we have evolved into a growing "not for profit association" with over 500 members.
The association recently announced that it would be honouring alumni who had significant impact in the success of prior reunions and the formation of the association. In my opinion, these 3 people should be on the top of the list when it comes to naming recipients of the "Distinguished Service Award." They did not receive a dime for their efforts.To Nick, Pamela, and Tony I extend my thanks in appreciation of their unselfish efforts and support.
I had hoped that by year end the association would have grown to over 600 members. Unfortunately that appears to be overly optimistic. The latest effort "Get a Member Contest" was a major flop with no winner being declared. I am running out of ideas on how to bring in new members. Any fresh ideas would be greatly appreciated.
Special thanks this month to our Photo Editor, Warren Mackenzie, who has come up with a new method which allows us to enjoy larger, and sharper photos in our newsletters. |
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Keeping the Connection  by Warren Mackenzie |
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On September 22, 2007 nine friends of the class of 1957 gathered in Toronto to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their graduation from C.C.H.S. After lunch at an Italian restaurant, they returned to the apartment of Wendy Plumb for dessert and coffee. As you can imagine, with nine women there was a lot of reminiscing. Pizza was delivered at 10 p.m. and the party broke up at 11:00. It was a fun get-together with many laughs.
Seen in the photo are:sitting from L to R - Lilian (Soomet) Puust, Sherrill (Wilson) Cameron, Peggy (Cooke) Girolami and Jean (MacGregor) Elliott
and standing L to R - Joan (Mountford) Ingham, Catherine (Glen) Weeks, Barbara (Richards) Bergevin, Pat (Carnie) Villeneuve and Wendy (Irvine) Plumb. (W. Plumb) |
| Alumni Photo of the Month |
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| Photo Galleries |
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Members want to know what you look like today, and where you live.
Please send your photos, with a short caption, via email or contact Warren Mackenzie for snail mail instructions:
Photo Editor - Warren Mackenzie
In both photo galleries you see Preview Pics. These are a gateway to many larger sized photos. To access simply "double click" on any preview pic. |
| Obituaries |
| October 11, 2007 - David Reid - Class of 1958 (Obituary posted)
View Memorial pages , obituaries can be viewed here. |
| Alumni Association News |
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A Special General Meeting followed by a newly elected Board of Directors meeting was held Tuesday, September 25, 2007.
Establishment of a new Board of Directors required the election of new officers of the Alumni Association. The officers so elected form the Executive Committee of the Board.
 The The new Executive Committee
L to R: Jack Anderson, Barry Keeler, Gordon Richardson, Harvey Carter, Angus Cross
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The Board of Directors had a very active discussion about membership status and ways that might be used to reach additional grads, including completely opening up the Alumni Association website. A number of options will be explored in the coming months but, for the time being, only limited additional web-site access (such as one of the photo galleries and Constitution and By-Laws) will be provided to non members. A recent survey of members conducted in September indicated a 50/50 split on this matter.
- Distinguished Service Awards - The association will be sending out a plaque to alumni who were instrumental in providing the leadership, and devotion of purpose, in the hosting of the 1995 Reunion, Reunion 2005, and the formation of the alumni association. Recipients will be announced in upcoming newsletters.
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| Alumni News from Abroad |
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The sun never sets on all of our alumni at the same time. Former students are now residing all over the world. In future editions of the newsletter we will introduce some of these people with their stories.
Michael Bates, Class of 1987, resides in The Netherlands.
" I was attending an International MBA at the university of Ottawa in 94-95 and had to complete an internship abroad before graduating. Having joined the program with the intention of working abroad, I chose to pursue my internship in Istanbul, Turkey, which was the most interesting of the assignments on offer. I left for Istanbul in May 1995 with the intention of staying for 3 to 4 months before returning to Canada. I ended up living in Turkey until December 1998. I joined my current employer, The Nielsen Company, in November 1996 at which point I was responsible for managing Nielsen's commercial and client service relationship with Procter & Gamble in Turkey. Procter & Gamble asked me to take a similar assignment in Amsterdam, and Nielsen transferred me to their Dutch office in December 1998. Since then I have changed assignments a number of times and now manager our relationship with SC Johnson across 36 countries. I also got married in 2004 (in Istanbul) and have just bought a house outside of Amsterdam ... so no intentions of moving back to Montreal in the near future."
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| St. Lambert in the 30's and 40's
by Lorne Perry  |
St. Lambert High
After Grade 4 we all moved to St. Lambert High School for Grades 5 through 11.
Grade five was kind of hard for me and then grade six was a breeze. I remember Miss Dolena Smith as being a rather ordinary grade 5 teacher, while Miss Elliot (later in the year she became Mrs. Darley) excelled in grade 6. We started French in grade 5, Miss Ippersiel being the specialist. She was a Parisienne and gave us a good grounding in Français Internationale. Of course we modified the old World War I song so it came out this way "Mademoiselle Ippersiel, parlez-vous?"
Sometime along the way the school equipped one of the spare indoor recess rooms for Woodworking with all the proper power tools. Mr. Hughes, the janitor (long before there were caretakers!), became our first teacher. I use the term teacher loosely because he could only teach by demonstration. If you were smart enough you emulated his techniques and if not, you failed. However, he was good at rescuing projects by doing much of the work himself. He did have good projects to assign. I made a shoebox with a hinged half lid, which had a shoe form on top when in the open position. I used it for many years but eventually it disappeared in a move.
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St. Lambert restaurants  by Bob Wrigley (Class of '61) |
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Growing up in Saint Lambert in the 40s and 50s
Before the age of television and electronic games, Saint Lambert kids devised their own play activities -- most harmless; a few questionable. Fishing in the St. Lawrence was quite a popular pastime after school and on weekends, in the days before the Seaway, and when fish were abundant and even edible, prior to significant water pollution. Access to the river was available at several locations via stairwells through the massive concrete wall that protected the shore. For bait, we collected giant night-crawlers on our lawn at night, after a rain. This was a developed skill -- knowing just how hard to pull on the above-ground end to prevent the stretched worm (almost a foot long by now) from breaking in half. And then there was the trick of attaching the slimy, wriggling creature to a barbed hook, without stabbing a finger. My first success at fishing took place at the eastern edge of the concrete pad called the Saint Lambert Beach.
I hooked a beautiful Largemouth Bass, which gave the line such a yank that I panicked and ran back along the pad, hauling the poor fish flopping onto dry land, and my heart pounding wildly with excitement. No reeling in or giving the fish a fair fighting chance. Sometime later, I learned from friends how to make a spear from a broom pole and a nail inserted in the end, and with water goggles we entered the underwater realm of our quarry. It was magical to cruise over a ledge (while holding our breath) and to see large bass and perch going about their business. We ate what we caught -- usually cooked over a fire in our backyard lane, with potatoes wrapped in aluminium foil. We thought we were really roughin' it!
Swimming and fishing were not the only activities encouraged by the close proximity of the great river. It was a summer ritual to paddle out to Moffat's or nearby islands to capture and bring home a gull chick, in an attempt to raise it as a pet. Of course we could not provide the correct diet for the young birds, and they sadly soon succumbed. I realized later how foolhardy this excursion was, since the swift current and distance had put our very lives at risk. We never told our parents, but they must have wondered how flightless birds ended up in our rooms.
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| Our teachers ..... where are they now? |
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David C. Smith - Class of 1954 and teacher at CCHS 1958 - 1961
On retirement from McGill University in 2001, I was made Professor Emeritus and since then have continued advising graduate students in Education on a part-time basis.
At home, I thoroughly enjoy my lifelong hobby of organic gardening, look after my very productive Rhode island Red hens, read historical novels and non-fiction, and regularly go on country rambles. Each winter, my wife and I travel widely, principally in Europe and Asia.
David lives in Vaudreuil-Dorion, QC
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| Reunion 2010 |
- One of the main contributing factors that lead to the success of the last reunion was the efforts of our Class Contacts in finding missing alumni. Since July of 2005 many people have changed their email addresses without advising us. Also we still have many a soul left to find. If you would like to help in the search please consider volunteering as the class contact, or assistant contact for your grad year. For more information on this very important position please contact Angus.
- The association has an opening on the Board of Directors for a British Columbia resident to serve as the BC Regional Representative. If interested contact Angus.
- Schedule planning for Reunion 2010 activities is already underway. If you have a suggestion or comment relative to the schedule, please contact your regional representative or a member of the Board.
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| Welcome New Members who have recently joined the association: |
New Members: Ross McConnell (1945), Phil Fullerton (1952), Lillian Reid (MacMillan) (1959), Frank Powell (1960), Craig Barnes (1961), Carol Jamkowski (Pascoe) (1962), Nancy Emmett (Charon) (1973)
New Life Members; David Coll (1950), Marg Coll (Duhan) (1952), Brenda Fisk (1969), Lynn Sparling (1972), Stephen Rappard (1972), Debbie Myles (Barber) (1980), Sandy Searle (1981), |
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Saint Lambert - Photo of the Month |
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The Association's Website is doing what it started out to accomplish, in part letting us all look back to and appreciate our roots, through stories ("Flashbacks") and seeing familiar places come back to life through restored photographs.
One such photograph, perhaps never seen previously by any of us, is being shared by Marie Hensley (Venne), a 1955 CCHS graduate who lives in Carlsbad, California.
This is the north-west corner of Victoria Ave. and Desaulniers St., long before it became a boulevard. It is across from Gordon Park and is where the Soucie Building stands today.
The four-flat unit on the left was built by my grandfather Louis Alphonse Venne, a former mayor of St. Lambert (1915 - ), around the turn of the century. His home is adjacent (on the right) to these flats.
My parents moved into the downstairs flat facing Victoria Ave. (where the woman is standing) in 1937. I lived there from 1938 to 1958. My uncle Maurice Venne lived above us and next door to him lived the Reid family. A Mrs. Hankins and her daughter lived below the Reids and owned a small store across from Gordon Park which sold hamburgers and french fries. One of their employees was a Mr. O'Conner.
My grandfather was also a well known architect and among his buildings in Montreal was the St. Joseph's Oratory on top of Mount Royal. In the photo one can see a vacant lot cross the street (nearest the camera). This is the corner where my grandfather built stores with apartments above them. One store, on the corner, was owned by Mrs. Cass and next to her heading up Victoria was the Aziz family's and later Esber's Dept. Store. |
| Letters to the Editor |
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We encourage you to e-mail us with your photos, comments, suggestions or contributions, possible story topics, news items, and whatever you think would help us make further improvements to bring you the information you want most.
Contact the Editor
mailto:angus@hfx.eastlink.ca | |
