LIVING TESTIMONIES PROJECT BASED LEARNING 3-D PUZZLES ...

teacher Miss Sybersma. We sang Sur le pont d’Avignon / L’on y danse, l’on y
danse /Sur le pont d’Avignon / L’on y danse tous en rond. Later I found out
that there is an elaborate dance associated with the song. But we didn’t
dance. We just sang about dancing.
Many great things happened in the new gym. We had heavy ropes
dangling from the rafters to teach us rope-climbing skills. I remember
freezing in pure terror near the gym ceiling on those cursed ropes, with
teacher Al Zeitsma coaxing me back down. I remember acting in Cry,
the Beloved Country and giving a Student Council election speech in the
gym. And I remember many, many “Chapels” on Wednesday mornings.
We had our rst bona de intramural sports program, and hosted several
tournaments. We had bazaars, talent festivals, and community events. I
even recall attending wedding receptions in that gym. The 1968 wing
served HDCH well for 21 years.
However, the 1968 addition had some issues. Somehow the building
inspector had missed the unsupported concrete block wall on the second
oor which threatened the rst oor science lab. This was not good. The
o ce was small, and sta had few e ective work areas. The gym oor
had unforgiving tiles, not wood. And I always wondered about the new
entrance that still required guests to climb up and then climb down a
staircase. The gym had a balcony, which was a mixed blessing;when
windowless classrooms were built on that balcony in the mid 1970s, it
became obvious that better solutions were needed. Classes were taught
in the kitchen and the church basement next door. Temporary portable
classrooms stayed about 15 years. We wore the wing right out.
It was the 1980s, and I was now teaching in an original section of
the building which somehow felt safer than the addition. The building
committee reported that new wing was living a life of its own, settling at a
di erent rate than the original building. To help spruce things up a bit, the
art department decided to add colour to the halls. With funds from selling
garbage bags and greeting cards, teacher Erna deVries bought a palette of
paint colours, and I was part of a team that changed the lockers from military
green to a rainbow of colours. Ultimately, the costs of doing a complete
building renovation was only marginally less than building a new building
from scratch. When HDCH moved to the Glancaster campus in 1989, the
new owners felt that the best use of the addition was to remove it.
For its time, the building had been functional. When the 1968 wing was
torn down, it was replaced with a community garden and a church parking
lot - a little variation on Joni Mitchell’s Pave Paradise and Put Up A Parking
Lot. Nothing remains but memories and some photos. And the original
building has been transformed into a food bank.
HDCH community event ca. 1970
It’s a mystery!
Who is this woman? Join the conversation on the HDCH Alumni
Facebook page.
hdch.org | Fall 2012
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