Class of '51 Reunion committee contacts

Nov. 9, 2001

6 August 2002

Brief history after '51:  Graduated from Acadia University in '55, moved to Montreal, married in '61; moved to Halifax in '62, then Toronto in '63.  Son born in '63.  Moved to Montreal in '68, worked for Bell Canada, then Tele-Direct (now Bell Acti-Media) until retirement in 1995. Most of my working career was in computer programming, from IBM mainframes to PC networks.

Memories from MHS:  participation in several bands and orchestras (clarinet, sax), wrote column in Moncton Transcript, our class was the first to use the 'new' wing. (We spent a few months at Aberdeen school at the start of Grade 9).

Retired after career in computers and publishing fields.  Graduated from UNB and York U.

Nov. 9, 2001

5 June 2002

A short chronological history:

57    Roberta Selig  UNB BscED/Psychology
59    Roberta Selig McGill Univ Msc. Psych.
59    Bill BscEE UNB
61    Married Roberta Selig MHS Class of 53
59-62 Irving Refining St. John
62-68 Foxboro Co. Foxboro, MA
63-67 Roberta MA AssocMentalHealth
65    Daughter Sheri Born, Boston
68    Daughter Lisa Born, Boston
68    MSEE Northeastern Univ, Boston
69-72 Systems Eng. Labs Ft. Lauderdale Fl.
72-73 Landys $ Gyr Sunnyvale, CA
74-78 Versatec/Xerox
79    Moore System
80    Dataquest/Dunn Bradstreet San Jose,CA
81    MBA Santa Clara Univ. San Jose, CA
81    Founded Zytronix Inc. Consultant/
      Electronic Distribution
81-90 Roberta Datquest
92-97 Roberta Gerst Associates
96    Masters of Law  Peninsula Univ
99    Juris Doctorate Law Peninsula Univ.
Current Status:
Roberta Retired
Bill developing software called LifeManager

Have lived in Sunnyvale, CA for 30 years. Active with our 2 incredibly talented granddaughters and expecting 3rd grandchild June 26/02. Roberta and I maintain Dual Citizenships, Canada/USA. I am an active masters swimmer and Roberta regularly attends Yoga classes.

I have had some wonderful communications with several classmates and looking forward to our reunion.

Have motorhome, will travel

Based on what I know about myself I have been immensely fortunate.

14 August 2002

Please check out the entry made by John Neilson; we combined to make one entry.

Jean (Budd) Neilson

25 July 2002

Well it is 51 years later and I look back and try to remember classmates from HS.  The yearbook helps a lot as I forgot many faces and names. I haven't been back to Moncton for 35 + years.  I know I was married then but did not have any kids at the time and my daughter is now 35 Years old. I remember having a reasonable time in HS.  Did not do the social scene much.  I remember graduation and a number of people crying because they were sad to leave the hallowed halls.  I could not wait to get on with my life.

I went to Mt.A for 2 years.  Did very well the first year and poorly the second year(didn't study).  I then spent one year in the Yukon working in a silver mine.  Came out of the Yukon in Aug/54 and joined the Navy for 5 years.

In Sept/54 I went to Indiana Institute of Technology and got a degree in Electronic Engineering. I got a job at Bendix Radio In Towson, MD.  After 6 months I took a leave of absence and went to Vancouver, B.C., got married to Lorna Drinkwater and we immigrated to the States.  I worked at Bendix for 3 yrs then got a job with Ford in Lansdale, Pa. At Bendix I started working in design of car radios and sound systems.  I worked in this field my whole Engineering career.  I worked at Ford for 6 years.

In 1967 we adopted a 7 week baby girl and named her Pamela.  Three years later we adopted an 8 week old baby boy and named him Neil. In 1971 we moved to Huntsville, Al and I started working for Chrysler.  In 1997 I lost my wife to cancer after a 4.5 yr battle.  In April/2000 I married Margaret.  She is a Canadian from Ottawa and has been in Huntsville a long time.  I guess I go for the Canadian girls.

I retired in Jan/00 after 28 years with Chrysler.

I am looking forward to seeing all the "kids" that are as young as I am. See you soon.

P.S.  Don still looks like me.

21 June 2001

13 August 2002

Married Mac Harmer and had 5 children. Mac died in 1986. There are now 13 grandchildren and 2 great-grandchildren with the third to arrive in Sept.

I worked for a Canadian Reinsurance Company and recieved my insurance designation, studying while watching hockey practices etc. My position was Accountant then Treasurer and finally Vice President-Reinsurance Technical Services.  I retired from the company in 1995 and moved to Lindsay Ont where I currently reside.  I have  two of the girls living here with the other three kids scattered around Ontario.

Because I only attended school in Moncton for two and a half years I am sure that I am going to have a hard time remembering names.  I also promise not to make any "asides" as I was noted for doing in class.  See you at the reunion.

Class of '51; Senior Matric  '52

30 August 2002

I am so sorry that I will not be in Moncton for the reunion but we had made plans to go to Scotland with friends in September and the dates conflict.  I have so many memories of my times at MHS and the friends that I made.  I hope that I can go when you have our next reunion.

Have a great time.

Barbara

27 Jun 2002

Received Civil Engineering Degree from NSTC 1957. Worked for Montreal Engineering 1957 to 1999 around the world. Retired 1999.  Married Marjorie Anne Laidlaw 1958. Two sons Robert Ian B. 1960 & Steven William B. 1961 Marjorie died (cancer) 1987. Married Gale Mary Cummings 1990

29 July 2002

Here I am 51 years later, still living in Moncton, an unclaimed treasure, happy as a clam and enjoying life, golfing, traveling, spending time with my friends and my brother and his family whose 3 children are the joys of my life.

I have mixed memories of my high school days, very happy times with my close circle of friends but was rather shy then and not very active in the larger picture.

The High School dances I recall with horror, my mother always encouraged me to go "it'll be fun", she said. Yeah, right! I didn't dance well and no one ever asked me anyway (when I look at my picture in the yearbook I can understand why!) I shouldn't say no one asked me, some of the boys in my homeroom class took pity on me occasionally (thanks fellows) and I could always count on Bill Smith, a friend since grade school, for a dance. He was the sweetest guy!

The funny thing is I went on to Business College after I graduated and my first (and only) job was at Lounsbury Company Limited, as secretary to his dad, Dave Smith, General Manager of the Company at the time and later President. I don't think he ever got over Bill's death and he himself died suddenly of a heart attack in his late fifties. I worked for 3 more Presidents after Mr. Smith. They were all good to me and I stayed for 44 years, retiring in 1996.

Claims to fame - I was editor of a book we published in 1978 to celebrate the 100th Anniversary of the Company, was appointed Secretary of the Company in 1983 and the first woman to sit on their Board of Directors.

Am looking forward to seeing everyone at the reunion, it's an incentive to try to lose a little weight. Yes I am going to the dinner and dance, but don't ask me to dance, it's too late now! I never improved and gave up worrying about it years ago - who needs it! See you in September!

P.S. - for those of you I haven't seen since High School, forget the yearbook picture, I've changed a bit thank goodness, and as you can tell from this bio - I'm no longer shy!

16 Sept 2002

20 Jul 2001

Retired after a career in the telecommunications common carrier business.
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26 Jul 2001

Hello,

Congratulations on the web page.  I especially enjoyed the pictures of the building.  I knew that building better than many because I used to go there with my father during WW2 while he worked on his classroom equipment.

Above left: Hazen Marr and his sister with a friend of his mother's on the front steps of MHS about 1945. Above right: The man on the bicycle is Hazen Marr's father going home from work.  The picture was taken on the Sunny Brae side of the building where students now exit to the bus loading area behind the Wallace's property. The photo was taken in 1943 and the end of the wing on that side was the end of the building then as the "new" wing, which currently houses the cafeteria eating area, rooms 212-214, 221-225, 314-318 and 327-333, had not yet been built.

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He taught aero engine mechanics for the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan and spent many Saturdays building angle iron frames on which to mount the engines - Pratt & Whitney radials, Rolls-Royce Merlins and other types I cannot remember.  He went on to teach motor mechanics as a High School course. At that time the entire bottom floor of the building was unfinished: exposed conduit and piping overhead and no partitions anywhere except for the 2x4 and beaverboard put up for the military.  His wartime classrooms were later to become the Home Economics Department. (Webmaster's note: The Home Economics area now houses a broad based technology lab, a special needs student's area and several classrooms.)
 

One othe aircraft engines used for training air force personnel at Moncton High as part of the British Commonwelath Air Training Plan during World War II.

I had a summer job on the construction of what we called the "new" wing which resulted in the enclosure of the quadrangle.  This would have been about 1947or '48.  The new wing, as I remember, increased the length of the original wing, the one perpendicular to Church St., and then turned right toward the auditorium.  There were days when the only thing between the classrooms at the end of the original wing and the outdoors were the blackboards which became so frosty that it was impossible to write on them. I remember this particularly in "Starchy" Bennett's home room. I remember Mr. Bennett partly because he lived a couple of doors from us on Henry St., partly because he was an excellent physics teacher, and partly because I now live in the province where his brother was once Premier.

It has always mystified me how such a beautiful building could have been conceived even, let alone built, in the very pit of the Depression. I think to this day I have never seen a school building that could even approach it.  I certainly am glad to know that it is still functional. I imagine its function is quite different, being, I believe, now more of an arts and letters type of school.  However I could probably still show you the place on the back side of the "new" wing where there is a long unused hydraulic automobile hoist.  Everything else from those days in the "shop" department is likely gone. (Webmaster's note: The shop area is now home to the cafeteria and several visual arts classrooms.)

My final and best year at MHS was as a member of Bernice (Dr. Bernice) McNaughton's home room just inside the front doors of the building.  It was her and Verna Hagerman and Muriel Steeves  who sorted me out. Not an easy task.  But they were not alone.  The quality of faculty at that school in the 1940s must have been just as remarkable as the building. They made for me a school experience I have never forgotten and am grateful for.  I saw in the UNB Alumni News a few months ago that Elsie Crickard had died; a 1935 graduate of UNB.  She must have been nearly the last of the old guard.

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27 Jul 2001

Further on the automobile hoist.  In the days when the motor mechanics shop was contained within the original wing on the Sunny Brae side of the school, the only way of raising a car was by means of a differential chain fall bolted to a frame in the ceiling.  One day, (about 1946) my father was working on a pre war Oldsmobile belonging to a member of the School Board works department.  (He was much in demand for fixing problems in faculty and School Board cars.) The car was supported by a stout  rope wrapped around the front bumper brackets and through the hook on the chain fall.  I was under the car with him watching what was going on when (naturally) the rope broke.  The car fell back on its front wheels and my father caught the flywheel in his ribs amid noise and dust.  Nothing but fear touched me. I scrambled out from under and pulled my father out by his feet.  To shorten a long story, a few days in hospital (the original Moncton Hospital at the bottom of Mountain Road) and a couple of broken ribs were the extent of the damage.  However, when the "new wing" was being budgeted, he argued forcefully and convincingly for the hydraulic hoist and he got it!  I think it cost $9,000.

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2 Aug 2001

It is amazing how thinking about old days will stir up memories.

Some loose ends:  The incomplete bottom floor remained quite incomplete until the construction of the "new wing".  There had been a woodworking shop on the quad side of the main wing,  roughly between the angle joining the original wings and the Church Street door.  The plans for the Home Economics Department were executed at the same time as the "new wing" construction. I can't remember what became of the woodworking shop.  Bill Quartermain was the instructor.  The "new wing" basement included the electrical shop (actually part of the old wing), instructor Gordon Cassidy, whose brother owned an electrical contracting business in Fredericton; the motor mechanics shop in the root of the new wing, Hazen F. Marr, instructor; and the machine shop in the end of the new wing "Archie" Bosence, instructor.

The machine shop was a wonder to behold, with an amazing array of expensive equipment. The motor mechanics shop mainly consisted of a collection of old automotive engines which were regularly torn down by the students, rebuilt and actually run, a red letter day.  My father had cronies in the police department and the fire and ambulance department who would tip him off whenever a new specimen of engine became available as a result of vehicle old age or accident.  Then a "new" teaching aid would appear in the shop to be cleaned up and painted black and taken apart and put together so often that the nuts and bolts became pretty well finger tight.  Some of the students in the Technical course never got engines out of their blood and stayed with the school as teachers.  I remember Ray Maybe as one of them. The Electrical shop was work benches for motor winding, a house frame for wiring teaching and a small electronics lab where a certain amount of radio repair was taught.

Gordon Cassidy was later vice principal, I believe.  He was a Christian gentleman. An elder in St. John's United Church.  He once told me that if a pile of books included a Bible, the Bible was never covered by another book. I can't quite imagine a teacher saying that today.

The area of my father's shop could be recognized by the fact that a garage door was included in it.  That would be a difficult thing to erase from the building because it was a gap in the sandstone wall.  The last time I saw the shop it was empty of engines and filled with theatre scenery flats and dead as a tomb. The famous hoist was just inside the first window in the quad side of the new wing basement, opposite the garage door. I was fascinated to look at the pictures again after you told me that the whole area is now food services. (Webmaster's note: Although the garage areas was used to store props for the musicals in the 1970s and 1980s, the hoist and garage door have now, in fact, disappeared from view. The door is now just a blank space between two windows about 1/3 of the way down the cafeteria wall along the railway tracks sideof the building. The hoist disappeared when the floor was laid for the current cafeteria.)
 

 
Above left: The white box by the windows in some of the pictures was my father's "office".  I notice that there is a bay window showing in his office and wondered if that placed it under the library.  I can't remember any bay windows in the building except in the library.  The spiral curves on the walls are the valve timing diagrams for the engines.  Four stroke engines take two revolutions to show the whole performance. Above right: The man in the white peaked cap in one of the pictures (standing slightly right of center) is my father.  You can also see him in the class pictures between about 1946 and 1957.

It is interesting to think of the old gym now being storage and offices. That, of course, was where we had all the Friday night dances and the grad formals and the like.  It might be hard to sit at a desk in such a place after high temperature hormones had steamed the windows for so many years. I used to play records for the music and in later years Ernie Freeborn, the music director would open up the rolling doors forming the back of the auditorium stage and set up the dance band on stage facing the gym.  It was a big band and pretty good.

I think the risk of telling you more than you want to know is increasing quickly so I will let this be it for now.

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6 Sep 2001

...Bill (Quartermain) was a pretty able kind of a guy and certainly knew his stuff.  Bill's wife is the sister of "Starchy" Bennett's wife.  All four of them taught at MHS as I remember.  (And all four taught me.)  I have discovered some old pictures taken  in what became the Home Economics area (Webmaster's note: The area is now the Broad Based Technology lab in room 104,) during the war years, showing the temporary aircraft engine classroom and my father's home-made engine stands.  This classroom looked out into the quadrangle, roughly opposite the Church Street entrance.  I notice that they show ceiling tiles, so my recollection of  pipes and conduit overhead must have been from the time of the new wing construction and not from the war years.  There was, for sure, a massive increase in the amount of conduit in the ceiling of that basement corridor during the construction. ...Gordon Cassidy ...and Bill Quartermain sort of mentored me when it was needed and when I was at the age where father's advice was not well received.
 

Above right: Temporary aircraft engine stands in the shop. The sun can be seen streaming through the bay window in the background. The window is directly under the library in the current technology lab. Above left shows a wider view of the temporary aircraft engine classroom which served the air force trainess of the British Commonwelath Air Training Plan during WWII. Mr. Marr's "office" can be seen in the background of both pictures.

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6 Sep 2001

Further tidbits.  The British Commonwealth Air Training Plan was referred to by Churchill as "Canada's greatest contribution to allied victory"; and by Roosevelt as "the aerodrome of democracy".

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14 Sep 2001

Trolling the Web for facts about the BCATP, I have uncovered the fact that 130,000 or so aircrew were trained by the Plan and that 80,000 or so ground crew were trained.  So, unless further revelations appear, I had better return to my first figure of 200,000 more or less people trained by the BCATP.  I believe aero engine mechanics were trained at Moosejaw SK, St. Thomas, ON and Moncton, NB and perhaps other places as well.

(Webmaster's note: A brief history of the BCATP can be found on the Veteran's Affairs Canada web site.)
 

Another view of the of the aircraft engine shop at MHS, part of Moncton High's contribution to the war effort  during WWII..

16 Sep 2001

If you are likely to do anything to recognize the connection of the BCATP ....I do not know how those pictures came to be taken.  The most likely surmise is that they were done by one of the student engine mechanics.  My family arrived in Moncton  December of 1941, so the engine training program started at about that time.

Cheers,
Hazen
 
 

27 August 2002

After leaving Moncton, I went to the University of Toronto, obtaining my Bachelor's degree in 1956.  For two years after that, I worked as a land surveyor under contract from Ontario Dept. of Highways and Trans Canada Pipe Lines Ltd.  Then I returned to the University of Toronto for a Master's degree in 1960 and a Ph.D. in 1963. After teaching at the University of British Columbia for a year, I joined the faculty at Dalhousie University where, except for a couple of years in the US (as a Visiting Scientist at the University of Michigan) and in Australia (as a Visiting Professor at the University of New South Wales), I remained on staff until retirement.  I retired as from Dalhousie as Professor of Psychology and Associate Professor of Medicine in 1995, although I maintained a "pro bono" hospital appointment in the Department of Medicine at the Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre until I turned 65 in 1999.

As well as teaching, much of my university time was spent in research, a large part of it concerned with underwater physiology and performance in humans. Consequently, I spent a fair amount of time scuba diving in different parts of the world.  The work took me from Bucco Reef off Tobago to the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, and from Jamaica and Barbados to Hawaii and Fiji.  (Nothing but work! work! work! you understand.)

In 1981 I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, but it did not really affect me seeriously until about 10 years after that.  By then, I was not diving anyway, although I was still heavily involved in university teaching and working at the hospital's Hyperbaric Medicine Unit.

I am married to Georgina Thorpe (my third wife), who is Scottish and a former nurse in the RAF's Fighter Command.  (She looks after me very well and keeps me out of what little trouble I am capable of now.)  I have two girls (by my first wife) whom I reared as a single parent from the time they were 5 and 7. They are now working in Ontario and each has two daughters, so I have four grandaughters.

I value the time I spent at Moncton High and for how well it prepared me academically for the things I did later.  Although I am now pretty much restricted to a wheelchair, I am looking forward to getting to the Reunion if at all possible, and to seeing everyone again

9 Nov 2001

The committee for the '51 high school reunion who are working with the '52 committee are as follows: Diane (Branscombe) Mugridge (lisatodd@nbnet.nb.ca), Hubie (LeBlanc) Barr (hub.gred@nbnet.nb.ca), Vaughan Alward (alwards@nbnet.nb.ca), Jean (Budd) Neilson (jneilson@nbnet.nb.ca) and Judy (Davies) Rothwell.

We hope to add to this committee as things progress and any questions could be directed to any of us at the addresses above.

14 August 2002

After MHS, Jean went to business college and I went to Mount A. Jean eventually worked as a secretary at the Moncton Air Traffic Control Centre and was tempted to become an Air Traffic Controller but I intervened.

I graduated from Mount A in 1955 in commerce, we got married the same year and we took up residence in Montreal.

We lived in and around Montreal for 12 years and loved it. All three of our children, 2 girls and a boy, were born at the Royal Vic in Montreal.

My first job was with Shell Oil and in 1957 I became a computer programmer using an IBM 650 which was the workhorse of the computer industry at the time. The IBM 650 cost a little under $1M, required a special climate controlled room and had less processing power than your TV/VCR. I was one of two chosen to be Shell's first computer programmers in Canada.

We moved around a lot: Montreal, Halifax, Toronto, Waterloo and a few other places. After living away for 35 years, we returned to Moncton in 1990.

Jean was mainly a stay-at-home Mom and as well as raising 3 children, she became a gourmet cook, a chauffeur, a figure skating mother, a master mover and managed a very organized home. We could move and be settled by nightfall.

After we returned to Moncton, Jean worked as a volunteer at The Moncton Hospital in a variety of roles including doing hearing assessments on newborns, working in the breast cancer screening clinic and in palliative care.

After my early years in computers, I gradually moved into more general management. I eventually was appointed Manulife Financial's Marketing and Agency Vice-President for Canada.

Jean had breast cancer almost 5 years ago and we are coming up to an important milestone i.e., the 5 year mark and the time when she can stop taking Tamoxiphen.

I was actively involved with The Moncton Hospital Foundation and other community work until 2001. I have had irregular heart beat problems (atrial fibrillation) that have gotten worse in the past few months. I am into a process now that I hope will soon lead to a regular heart rate and the absence of shotrness of breath.

We have only one grandchild, Johnny, in Toronto. Our girls live in Toronto and our son in Ottawa.

It has been fun working with the Reunion Committee. Jean and I are the co-Treasurers and I am the computer guy. We've established contacts with classmates we never really knew and re-established contacts with others we haven't seen for 51 years.

If someone had asked me while I was at MHS whether I was learning anything, I would have answered "of course not". I have to admit ,however, that when I went to Mount A, I was as well prepared as any of my fellow students from across Canada. In fact, I felt better prepared than most.

I once encountered a businessman from Toronto who said that Moncton High School was the best high school in Canada. He had come into contact with a few graduates whose grammar was very good. I replied that his assessment was correct but I must admit that I still don't understand half the "stuff" in "Mastering Effective English".

John Neilson

26 July 2002

B.Sc. Math and Physics (UNB), M.D.(McGill), Ph.D. Biophysics (UWO), FRCPC (Internal Medicine with Cardiology) (London and Toronto), Bioengineering Oxford. Then mix of teaching, research and clinical work at UWO and University Hospital, London, Ont. Retired 1998 and moved to N.S. Married Frank House Dec. 94 and he died Feb. 00. I've just had back surgery early in May and so won't be at the reunion, but would be happy to hear from any of you by email. Retirement is great and so is Tatamagouche.

15 June 2002

Came to MHS in 1949, after emigrating to Canada from Poland, via Ireland and England. Until graduation, I lived on farms in Memramcook  East and Upper Coverdale and commuted to school by bus or hitchhiking. I loved my times at the school, enjoying a friendly acceptance by classmates and teachers in my new country. I cherish these early days, so I am looking forward to seeing again old acquaintances at the reunion. With Bill Baker and Rogers Macdonald, I went to UNB on a Beaverbrook entrance scholarship, but eventually graduated from McGill (BSc) and U. Ottawa (MSc) in geology. Afterwards, I worked for mining companies, mainly in exploration, until 1967, and then for the federal government, gathering a national database on mineral deposits. I took an early retirement in 1990. I was married in 1964 and had two sons, born in 1966 and 1967. They are both married and I have three grandchildren. My wife died in 1997. I have since found another life partner in Anna Dukszto and we enjoy a fairly busy social life and travelling together.

4 July 2002

Known as one of "The Welch Twins". Twin brother Gerald, deceased Oct/01

Graduated as Registered Pharmacist (College of Pharmacy/ Dal.Univ., Halifax, 1955) Retired 1995. Career involved Retail, Hospital, College of Pharmacy, Cont. Pharm. Educ., etc., as well as having one Pharmacist daughter/owner of two N.S. drugstores.

Married Lowell Phillips (class of' 50) – 1956. Widowed – 1990. Remarried -1995 to Kenneth Gladwin, MD, Dartmouth, N.S., family Medicine-40 yrs

Retired 1999

Five children, all Univ.educated, all career involved (includ. their spouses)
Eight grand-children plus- three step-children, four step-grandchildren

Live between Dartmouth, N.S. & Phoenix, Ariz.

Our hobbies: golfing, music(singing), stain glass, computer, reading, travelling

The e-mail address of kengerri@hotmail.com will reach us in both Nova Scotia & Phoenix Would be so pleased to hear from any of you.

Gerri Gladwin