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Creston's 2016 Prince Charles Secondary School historians look back on 13 years

Skylar Eyre and Noelle Lavallee were the 2016 Prince Charles Secondary School graduating class historians...
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Prince Charles Secondary School 2016 historians Skylar Eyre and Noelle Lavallee.

Prince Charles Secondary School class historians Skylar Eyre and Noelle Lavallee gave the following speech at this year's graduation ceremony:

Skylar Eyre: Good evening parents, teachers, family, friends, family friends and fellow graduates. I’m Skylar Eyre.

Noelle Lavallee: And I’m Noelle Lavallee.

Both: And welcome to an evening you’ll never forget.

SE: All right, enough of that. We wrote this speech to have one last, big, collective memory sesh with you all, considering we are parting ways this coming fall. Now, to get to business.

You know, we really have been through a lot together. We’ve been together in two centuries and millenniums. And remember that time we survived an apocalypse?

NL: Dec. 21, 2012. Yup. And that time Kim Kardashian had a baby and named it after a direction.

Both: Ah, North West. #Kanye2020.

NL: Kanye West, what a guy. Remember that time he —

SE: Yo, Noelle, I’m really happy for you. Imma let you finish but remember that time he interrupted Taylor Swift at the VMAs?

NL: And remember when Leonardo DiCaprio finally won an Oscar?

SE: We lived through Y2K, witnessed the first black president of the U.S.A., saw the demise of the America as Donald Trump rose to power, and sat back and watched the most attractive Canadian prime minister, to date, elbow a member of Parliament right in the chest.

NL: Don’t forget, we also watched in horror as Darien Bergman’s body flew across the snack table at grad all-nighter. But luckily, Tracy Ross’s bacon-wrapped perogies were spared.

SE: We also spent the years watching as couples came and went. Shall we reflect on a few?

NL: Ah, Hans and Jessica.

SE: Jeff and Ally.

NL: Heather Weitzel and Ben.

SE: And Matty and Luke.

NL: Those were the days…

SE: Now we’re adults. Too bad we don’t look like adults. Remember when we were in Grade 8, how all the seniors looked like they were 25? What happened to us?

NL: And how everyone else’s sports teams seemed so good? Speaking of teams, though, PCSS does have good sportsmanship! Maybe our motto should be, “We may get creamed but we’ll never stop trying!”

SE: You know, our class is really one big team. We’ve seen each other at our best and we’ve seen each other at our worst.

NL: (Thanks puberty.)

SE: Remember Grade 8 orientation when we all met? Most of us were small, weird, pimple faced kids, and we were hanging out in cliques while asking each other mandatory introductory questions.

NL: How awkward… But we still somehow made friends. Speaking of friends, remember that one time Jasmine Sulko spent $170 on a beach chair?

SE: Or when Bernie cut his hand while performing in the play Class Dismissed?

NL: He just casually stuck his hand into his pocket and let it saturate with blood while waiting for intermission so he could go to the hospital to get stitches.

SE: What a trooper.

NL: Remember when all of the people who have birthdays at the beginning of the year began getting their Ls and Ns, and all of us people with birthdays at the end of the year had to wait? So. Jealous.

SE: Or when Shianne Gronen was forgotten for an hour after a sports trip in Calgary? They seriously forgot her — like, they actually drove for an hour without realizing that she wasn’t in either of the cars.

NL: Now we’d like to say a few thank yous to the staff.

Both: Thank you.

SE: Thank you to the secretaries of the school, Ms. Jackson, Mrs. Ogilvie and Mrs. Fleck, for yelling at us and organizing our entire high school careers.

NL: Thank you to the counselors, Ms. MacDonald, Mr. Fischer and Mrs. Lawrence, for never giving us the classes we wanted, but also for dealing with all of our problems.

SE: Thank you to the library staff, Ms. Shreeves and Ms. Saigeon, for making us forget countless drinks on the side counter because we weren’t allowed to bring them in.

NL: Thank you to they gym teachers, Mr. Ferguson, Ms. Thorne, Mr. Nelson and Ms. Takeda, for making us hate our lives during a countless series of beeps, during which we had to sprint from one side of the gym to the other while listening to the most ghastly sounding person talk. As well as making us run the not-so-fun run, the milk run, thrill hills and through the pit of hell and back. but at least we all stayed fit until Grade 11 when we could opt out!

SE: Thank you to Mrs. Miller for accidentally writing “PORN” on our tests instead of “P or N” for “positive or negative connotations”.

NL: Thank you, Mr. Fischer, for providing us with endless entertainment when you would talk about stimuli and then scream, to show us how a living organism would react to outside stimuli and scare Shianne every time, as well as many others.

SE: Aaahhh! Sorry, we just wanted to make sure everyone’s still awake.

NL: Anyway, we’d also like to thank Mr. Fischer for showing us pictures of his alien — kids! His kids… They’re very cute now.

SE: Thank you to Mrs. Christiansen for teaching the conjugations of verbs in the past and present, even though I probably won’t need to conjugate an imperfect tense verb as an artist. But at least we all know the basics to communicate in either Spanish or French.

NL: Thanks, Mr. Nelson, for having fun pretending to be mad at kids when you called them into your office just to talk.

SE: Thanks, Ms. Hawkins, for fun sex ed in Grade 8 by teaching us to scream out anatomically correct terminology and for showing us countless pictures of your cats, Meshouga and Lucifer.

NL: (She’s a crazy cat lady.)

SE: Thank you, Mr. Coe, for eating chalk and telling us we could too. Although it definitely went against everything our parents taught us as kids, about not putting stuff in our mouths.

NL: Thank you, Mr. Gribbin, for making us all look for your lost dog when it was actually in your garage the whole time, and also for constantly losing your glasses on top of your head. And thank you for being the first cool teacher to get a Smart Board.

SE: Thanks, Mr. Banman, for documenting everything and for making history fun.

NL: Thank you, Jackie Mynott, for being the mother of the school and for feeding all of us fry bread and much more.

SE: Thanks, Mrs. Douma, for providing travel opportunities even though we were your personal purse racks.

NL: (Don’t worry, we won’t tell Darren about the new one.) Thank you, Ms. Shreeves, for always bringing delicious treats to the class but never sharing with the students.

SE: Thanks, Mr. Cobbe, for being a legit principal, bruh. But actually though, thanks for being a great principal.

NL: A special thanks to Ms. Radonic for planning all of this and taking on the responsibility at the beginning of the year to plan this one weekend that will soon be over, but we’ll never forget it.

SE: And lastly, thank you to all of the teachers,

NL: staff,

SE: families

NL: and everyone else who has supported,

SE: coached,

NL: motivated

SE: and pushed us to be the best we could be.

NL: Without your help and guidance, none of us would be here today.

Both: Thank you, grads of 2016, for all the memories!

• • •

Previous class historians have included Reede Hawton and Victoria BownsGrant Gailius and Rylan Lavallee and Ben Lansing and Braylon Gorham,