Chapleau High School students exposed to new machines including 'push button phones' while on work experience program in 1972

Home Ec Club. CLICK TO ENLARGE

Graduating students in the Chapleau High School Communications and Business Procedures class of 1972 were exposed to many different machines while on their work experience program at businesses in Chapleau and elsewhere.

According to an article in 'Ad Astra', the school yearbook, following a tradition, graduating students were placed in area offices for work experience. "The theory followed was that there was no better teacher than experience."

Organized by teachers Ora Way-White and Margaret Rose Fortin, while the majority were placed in Chapleau some worked in Kormak, Sheppard and Morse, Island Lake and even Wawa.

"While in the their job situations, the students were exposed to many different machines, such as the postage meter, Xerox copier, Paymaster, Telex and the Addressograph, which they had not encountered previously," the article noted.

It added that several learned to operate "push button telephones" and to handle incoming and outgoing calls in a business-like manner. 

However, the article did note that "the well known adding machines, the typewriter and the duplicator were in constant use".  As I recall, the first computers arrived in CHS classrooms in the early 1980s, but Grade Nine students were still using manual computers, no electric ones for them, but that changed too of course.

The article added that as always co-operation from the business community was tremendous. With the introduction of the credit and semester system at CHS not all of the students were able to receive time off from the school to spend a full week in an office. The program was adapted to permit those students to work part-time at jobs until they had completed the necessary number of hours, and Mrs. Way-White and Mrs. Fortin were proud of what the students accomplished in spite of shortened hours. 

At the end of the work experience program, the teachers met with employers for evaluation purposes.

"As always, co-operation from the business community ... was tremendous."

The article also noted: " Chapleau High School owes a debt of gratitude to the business community which has once again given the students this practical experience.

"The community support in the Chapleau area would undoubtedly be the envy of many a larger high school."

Forty years ago when these students were part of this work placement program, which in many ways was a pioneering project to get students out of the classroom, an addition had just been added to the school to meet the increased enrolment as  the baby boomers arrived and new courses were introduced as well as the change to credit and semester system.

In sharing this article, I could not help but reflect on those years at CHS, which to me at least, who had started teaching there in 1969, were a time of great change. I had been a student at the old school on Pine Street, and there I was in this new place on the hill. That in itself, was revolutionary.

To this day, I recall heading there for my first day, walking over the old overhead bridge, and being picked up by Ovide Cote, who then was manager of Collins men's wear department. Mr. Cote was on his way to the school to speak to students in the Home Economics course taught by Marie Tremblay. 

But changes were coming. In 1984, I was writing 'Sons of Thunder ... Apostles of Love', the history of St John's Anglican Church to mark its 100th anniversary in 1985, in longhand. 

When I had completed the draft M.E. 'Bobbie' Pellow, Joan MacGillivray, Jean Newcombe and Frances Corston typed it out. 

Then Kendra Broomhead, at the time a CHS student,  transferred it to a computer at CHS, and Sharon Devine of the teaching staff finished the 'computerizing' process, and the pages were all ready to go to the publisher. I was fascinated to watch Kendra and Sharon as they used the computer to basically desktop publish the book.

Never, at the time did I think that in 1994, 10 years later, I would be at College of the Rockies in Cranbrook BC, launching the first college post graduate program in New Media Communications at a college in Canada. That program was the forerunner of social media communications programs today.

Back to CHS, at that time, one of the highlights of the week was for teachers to have lunch prepared and served by Mrs. Tremblay's students giving them practical experience. 

It was a time of great change in education, and the computer era was not even on the horizon in 1972. 

Thanks to Donald Warren for making available the photo of the CHS Home Economics Club in 1972 from 'Ad Astra'. My email is mj.morris@live.ca

All children are special with needs!

"MOM" Muriel E (Hunt) Morris

When I was an editor at the Chatham Daily News more than 40 years ago, my mother decided to come from Chapleau and spend the summer with me. To keep herself busy during the day, she decided to take a summer course in education.

The times they were a changing in the late sixties in more ways than one, and education was included. Mom, who had taught school for 34 years at the time became increasingly frustrated with the new thinking in education being set out by the professor.

One day the professor said in effect that teachers must "account for individual differences" in children, and used some other trendy words in his lecture. Mom, who had not said a word in class all summer, raised her hand to ask him a question.

"Don't you mean that all children are special with needs?," she asked. I don't recall his reply to Mom, but I do know the rest of the class agreed with her. After spending her entire teaching career treating each and every child as special with needs, Mom retired two years later after teaching at Chapleau Public School and at Kekabeka Falls, shortly after I returned home to teach. My mother was Muriel E Morris.

Mom taught elementary school and emphasized the child before the subject content always.

Obviously she had no use for the labelling of children, or anyone else for that matter.

Let me give you an example that involved me. I was teaching economics at Chapleau High School, and almost all the students in my class failed a test. I was having coffee with Mom and pontificating against my class in typical teacher fashion. Mom stopped my little rant, made some suggestions including that maybe I scrap the course content as I had prepared it, and start over. She also suggested I might want to think about finding another career.

"Start where the students are, not where you are," she recommended, adding that she didn't have the foggiest notion what I was talking about when I tried to explain the material on the test.

I took her advice and we started over. In fact, as Junior "B" hockey was very big in Chapleau at the time, I used a hockey rink to teach the factors of production.

Some years later, a school board member, on a tour of the school, stuck his head in Room 104 and asked me, "Is there where they teach hockey?" I replied yes it was and offered to demonstrate. He didn't take me up on the offer.

Today, more than ever, I believe my mother was right, and I was so fortunate to finish my teaching career at College of the Rockies where I helped found a grad program in new media communications which was very student centred. I will always be indebted to Dr. Wm. Berry Calder, the president of COTR, who believed that the future is now in 1994 and supported me as we pioneered web based communications when many told me that email would never really catch on.


The advances in internet technology since I retired in 2000 have been phenomenal, and today I think of the possibilities for a real student centred education system where it is accepted that each child is special with needs.

I would be most interested to hear from you. Please comment or email me at mj.morris@live.ca