- il y a 3 mois
Part 7 – What is left?
What is left of the Midland experience. Duncan Green shows us through some souvenirs, the kids who were at Midland at its closing talk about their regrets and Annie Kidder draws some lessons about what this kind of event means for the fabric of Canadian society and politics.
What is left of the Midland experience. Duncan Green shows us through some souvenirs, the kids who were at Midland at its closing talk about their regrets and Annie Kidder draws some lessons about what this kind of event means for the fabric of Canadian society and politics.
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ÉducationTranscription
00:00Anyway, I shall talk to you soon.
00:03OK.
00:08When I think about what is left, for physical paraphernalia,
00:11we have to go down to the beaches.
00:13This is where Duncan Green lives, who showed me what he had salvaged from the final debacle.
00:17More on that later.
00:19As for what's left in people's minds,
00:21I thought the best thing would be to talk to the most recent batch of students,
00:24the people whose face is Sharon Hirshenhorn showed me,
00:27shining from the glossy pages of the final yearbook.
00:30So the school was considered an inner city school.
00:32Why was that and what does that mean?
00:34Inner city?
00:35Scarborough's the ghetto.
00:37That's my daughter's opinion.
00:40An inner city school.
00:43The students there are not from economically advantaged families.
00:48They don't have many options open to them.
00:51A lot of them are new arrivals in Canada,
00:53so there's the added problem of them learning to speak English well.
00:58Post-secondary education is not, in some cases, even a possibility for them.
01:04They are directed into the work world,
01:06because their salaries are required for the family to keep afloat.
01:10You can see by the faces, we are very multicultural, both staff and students.
01:18I met them in a place I'd never been before,
01:21the corner of Birchbound and Lawrence,
01:23Winston Churchill Collegiate.
01:27Hi, my name is Vineet, Vineet Manta, and I started going to Midland.
01:40Actually, when I came to this country, that was two years ago,
01:42and that was my first school I started going to.
01:45Where did you come from, where you were from?
01:48I've come from India, Bombay.
01:50So what do you remember about the Midland experiences, they say?
01:55I don't know, I remember a lot of things.
01:58Like, the thing I miss most, or I remember most,
02:03is when I ran for elections for a Presidentship for SEC.
02:08You all remember that?
02:09You lost.
02:10Yeah, and I lost, but still, it was a lot of fun.
02:14Vineet is what we need.
02:16Yeah, and that was my slogan, Vineet is what you need.
02:19So, and it flopped as usual, but it was a lot of fun,
02:22having everyone with me, you know, supporting me,
02:25and then not voting for me.
02:27It was a lot of fun.
02:28Yeah, okay.
02:29Alright.
02:30No, no, no, go with it.
02:32Alright, that's good, we'll come back.
02:33Can you give me your name, please?
02:34Hi, my name is Bristy,
02:36and I was in Midland for four years, from my grade 9 to grade 12.
02:40Oh, long time.
02:41Yes, a long time.
02:43What do you remember about this school?
02:45Now that I think about Midland, everything I remember is positive.
02:49Like, I can't remember, actually nothing happened bad to me in that school,
02:52and everything was awesome.
02:54What I liked the best about Midland was that it was small,
02:58and everybody was a family, and all these people sitting here,
03:01I don't know all of them, but I know their faces,
03:04and so in Midland, you knew everybody pretty much,
03:07even if you don't talk to them.
03:08And, you know, you go down the hall,
03:10you say hi to ten people before you could get to class.
03:12And the teachers, you knew all the teachers,
03:14and you're like so friendly with the teachers,
03:16not like a big school where you can't even get in touch with everybody.
03:20And, actually, now one thing I regret is not going to all the meetings
03:25and everything when Midland was closing down,
03:28and I thought, you know, I was just thinking,
03:30oh, I don't need to go, it will never close down,
03:32because, you know, with all these people in here,
03:34the government would never close it down.
03:36But, to my surprise, they did.
03:38But I really regret, you know, not showing up myself
03:41and saying what I had to say for you.
03:44Can we make a connection between this and the way that democracy functions in Canada?
03:48I know.
03:49Yeah.
03:50I mean, I think what's been interesting for me is going back and reading about Ryerson
03:55and reading about the sort of the beginnings of how we,
03:59how and why we got a public education system that was, you know, free and universal.
04:05And he talked a lot.
04:07And we used to know, but except now we kind of toss off, you know,
04:10it's the cornerstone of democracy.
04:12We say those kind of things, but we forget, you know, what it means.
04:15And I think that we have to remember that the reason that you have to have a public education system
04:21in order to have a democracy is that you have to educate voters, for one thing.
04:28You have to educate people who can participate in the democracy.
04:31And it's vital that you give that education on a fair basis.
04:37You have to give everybody an equal chance to be educated enough to participate in the democracy.
04:42The motivation for collecting these signatures and possibly forming an association?
04:49Well, we thought that perhaps, you know, if there was going to be nothing left,
04:56this whole institution was going to vanish,
05:00that perhaps we could be the nucleus of something that would live past the dying of the institution.
05:07And that, of course, is the past student bodies.
05:10All years, all decades, not just the sixties.
05:15So it's in its infancy right now.
05:18It hasn't really developed yet.
05:20And it's always the time and energy issue, of course, of being able to do this.
05:25My name is Manojewijewardina, and I was in Midland for two years.
05:31And that's when I came to Canada.
05:33I went to Midland.
05:34That was my first school.
05:35I came from United Arab Emirates.
05:38I'm originally from Sri Lanka.
05:40And the only thing I don't like is the reason why they closed the school.
05:46It wasn't good enough, just because that each student is given a specific square feet.
05:52None of, nobody considered, like, what we would feel about the closing.
05:58None of us thought it would close, because, I don't know, Midland had a lot of history.
06:04That's to us, I'm not sure.
06:05You know, it's funny, because I used to work in theatre,
06:08and there was many years of fighting for Canadian culture.
06:11And I sort of went to this function of a theatre that I'd worked in
06:16that only did new Canadian plays.
06:18And I thought, oh, you know, I wonder why do I do what I do now when I did that then.
06:23And I realized they were part of the same thing,
06:25and that part of the fight for Canadian culture was, in a way,
06:28and in a way a fight that maybe we didn't win very well.
06:31And the kind of things you lose are other parts of your culture,
06:35public education being one of them.
06:37And I think that the fit between public education and democracy works both ways.
06:43For one thing, you have to have a public education system in order to have a democracy.
06:46And for another thing, in a democracy, there are different levels of democracy.
06:52And one of the levels we're losing now is the sort of local democracy level
06:55that school boards represented that were part of the, you know,
06:59we had school boards before we had, before we were a country,
07:02before Confederation there were school boards.
07:04And they were set up to meet local needs.
07:07It was really important that you actually did that.
07:10I've heard it said that the academic standards weren't very high.
07:13There were a lot of basic level students, that sort of thing, and so on and so on.
07:17Was that fair, do you think?
07:18No.
07:19No.
07:20No, it wasn't.
07:21They tried to help everybody at every level.
07:23They tried to help everybody at every level.
07:26So that, people say a lot of things, but it's not true.
07:29Yeah.
07:30They're just jealousy.
07:31Yeah.
07:32Because Midland is so better.
07:33It's cool.
07:34It's wide open.
07:35It has a nice swimming pool.
07:36The gym.
07:37The football field.
07:38The cafeteria.
07:39The fries.
07:40The mayonnaise.
07:41Whatever.
07:42Whatever.
07:43Anyway.
07:44Exactly.
07:45The foyer was the best part.
07:46It's so big.
07:47Compared to this foyer, it's like ten times bigger.
07:48When you walk in, it's like a football field right there.
07:51You can just play hockey or cricket or whatever.
07:54Yeah, when I came to the school, I heard a lot of, like, I heard that Midland had a bad
07:59reputation, but you don't know how good it is until you're there.
08:02So, yeah, I don't think they should make comments if they don't know anything, so.
08:08And the academic standard really, like, depends on yourself.
08:11I think people think Midland is, you know, not as high level as other schools, but what
08:17I found was, I'm doing OAC right now, so I had a big change from grade 12 and I had
08:22to come here and finish up my OACs.
08:24What I think is that, in Midland, you got a lot of help, because you had a small school
08:29and all the teachers knew you and they're willing to help you.
08:32I mean, like, other schools, I've talked to my friends who go to other schools, it's
08:35like, they give you something and you're totally on your own.
08:38But in Midland, you got help from other teachers, you had questions and you had to,
08:41you could go to other, you know, help, get help from people.
08:52Is the dog allowed down here?
08:54Mm-hmm.
08:55He's coming.
08:56Yeah, he's actually, he's pretty good about things now.
08:58So tell me about this stuff.
09:00Well, this, of course, is a basement storage room and, uh, the, uh, uh, in this, uh, storage
09:08room we have accumulated, uh, all of the, uh, plaques that were up on the walls for Midland.
09:15Uh, if we hadn't taken them, they would have ended up in the garbage.
09:19Mm-hmm.
09:20And, uh, there are graduating year photos that, again, were screwed onto the wall and we
09:26took them down because they would not have survived the, the experience.
09:30You also have some trophies and stuff here, right?
09:32Oh, yes.
09:33There's trophies, there's old football helmets, there's video tapes that you were looking at
09:38earlier.
09:39These, uh, probably aren't regulation anymore.
09:43Because all of this stuff was going, uh, into the garbage.
09:48Oh, yes.
09:49Yeah.
09:50Archery, championship, girls, 1981.
09:54So, on and on.
09:57And, you know, all of this ended up being dumped in one room.
10:01Uh, all the pictures that had been up on the wall for the, uh, closing ceremonies, uh, the
10:06current students last year had, uh, put them up on Bristol board.
10:11And so, uh, in the auditorium and gave people an opportunity to go around and, and find
10:16themselves, uh, on the wall.
10:18And, uh, all of that would have been disposed of and so it's now here.
10:22Mm-hmm.
10:23Okay.
10:24So, it's, it's, what's left of Midland is in the basement here.
10:29And yet, I've been told that when people were forming the committees against the school
10:34closing, there weren't too many students involved.
10:36Uh, how come?
10:37Um.
10:38Okay.
10:39How come the students didn't mobilize more?
10:40No one actually, actually believed that Midland would actually close.
10:43No one actually, like, thought that.
10:44Like, I guess all of us were like, yeah, no, it won't close.
10:47Like, you know, we went there for two years.
10:49Or, it wasn't.
10:51Yeah.
10:52Yeah.
10:53Yeah.
10:54Just a second.
10:55Can you start that again?
10:56Till, till the last minute you didn't know if the school was closing down or not.
11:00And, I think, just a month before Midland was actually closing down.
11:04Like, Midland was closing down in June.
11:06And, in May or in April, we came to know that the school was closing down.
11:11In May.
11:12In May they actually, like, it was a formal thing that the school was closing down.
11:15And there was an understanding 150 years ago that you, about the importance of public
11:23education, about the, you know, Ryerson said it was, you know, it should be the first charge
11:27on the wealth of the province and that it had to be publicly funded and it couldn't,
11:31none of the expense should fall on parents.
11:34And, um, and he understood that.
11:37And he understood it because it was important, um, that you educate a civil community, I think
11:43he called it.
11:44That, you know, that we were educating citizens here.
11:46And that that's why it's not just an issue for me because I'm a parent.
11:50I mean, he even talked about the difference between training and education.
11:53And that it was not training that, that people needed.
11:56It was a, he talked about the importance of all the different, all the different faculties
12:00that had to be brought into exercise.
12:02And about the arts and music and drawing and, um, physical education.
12:07And I think that, I don't know, it's like a lot of things these days, having a democratic,
12:17you know, participating in a democratic society, having public institutions.
12:21I think we've, we've forgotten the original reason why we had those things.
12:27And in forgetting that, we kind of just assume they'll always be there.
12:30And in making that assumption, we put them in danger.
12:33And they're in danger by all different kinds of go.
12:35There's tons of cuts happening by NDP government, governments too, provincially.
12:39And so it's not, and it's in that way that it's not necessarily a left, right thing.
12:44It may be more in that way that we've forgotten our, you know, Canadians were always, you know,
12:49we did have a culture, I believed, maybe I'm wrong, but, um, and part of it was an understanding
12:55of our social responsibility and we were nice, you know, we cared about other people.
13:00And I think that, that those, those things all go together and that, that's, that becomes
13:05the real concern when you start to have a funding formula based on square feet.
13:10You go, that's never been what an education system was supposed to be about or for.
13:14And, and, and shows us that this, you're not, you don't get it.
13:19You know, this is not the, um, you know, where we, where we should be heading at all.
13:24One of the reasons that they closed the school.
13:26So people say is that there weren't, there weren't too many options because,
13:29because there were so few students, they weren't able to open up the options.
13:32Was, was this a problem?
13:33No, not at all.
13:34I think it's the opposite because they had fewer students.
13:37That's why I think fewer students had more options than compared to this school.
13:41No, honestly, that's what I think.
13:42Almost all kinds of sports.
13:43Like we have almost all kinds of sports, like carol, chess, and like, uh, archery.
13:48Basketball, hockey, cricket, football, volleyball, swimming.
13:52The other thing about.
13:54The other thing about.
13:55I gotta move.
13:56Yes?
13:57I'm waiting for you because I knew that.
13:59The other thing about Midland that I don't think any of us mentioned yet,
14:02it was very multicultural.
14:04And that was such a positive thing about Midland because everything that would happen,
14:07multicultural day, everything that would happen, it would be so multicultural.
14:10So, you know, you didn't have discrimination and all that in that, in that little school
14:15as much because you couldn't live with that.
14:17Mm-hmm.
14:18If you, if you're like a, you know, discriminating others, you couldn't really be in that school.
14:22Mm-hmm.
14:23Because everybody around you is from a different country, speaks a different language at home.
14:26And like everything was so much fun, like multicultural day.
14:29And we had things that other schools didn't have, like we had a cricket team.
14:32Not every school had a cricket team.
14:34Oh.
14:35Pretty rare, no?
14:36Yeah.
14:37Yeah.
14:38And we had Karam and everything.
14:39And like, you know, we had multicultural teachers.
14:42Teachers from India would teach Karam and from the Caribbeans, they would teach Karam and stuff.
14:47There was everything.
14:48Like, I don't think there was any lack of options in Midland at all.
14:53Sorry.
14:54Sorry.
14:55She's taught with a cricket team.
14:57Midland was the first collegiate in Scarborough to have a cricket team.
15:01Wow.
15:02The first.
15:03The first one was the second.
15:08Sir, what was your connection to Midland?
15:11Actually, I went to Midland in 1963.
15:141963.
15:15Same year I was there, right?
15:16Right.
15:17The second year that I opened, yes.
15:18Yeah.
15:19And I was the first black student to graduate from Midland.
15:22Yeah.
15:23If you look at those photos, they're awesome.
15:25Okay, let me talk to an ex-English teacher of Midland here.
15:32So, do you, do you find, do you find that what the kids are saying is pretty well true about the atmosphere in the school?
15:42I, yes, I relate to a lot of what they're saying.
15:45I noticed in my classes, being able to look around the class and see the, the mix of cultures.
15:53But not only that, what really impressed me there was that the different cultures worked together.
15:59The students were each other's friends.
16:02They didn't just stick with students from their own culture.
16:07But there was such a mix and it was just amazing to look out and see that kind of interaction going on.
16:13I'll always remember that about Midland.
16:16Well, I can say that this event has politicized me.
16:23I've always taken the opportunity to vote.
16:27I have always made my concerns known.
16:32But this was the first time that I had the courage to step up to a microphone and say what I felt publicly.
16:38This was the first time that I spoke to my students in terms of,
16:43don't sit back and be complacent.
16:46Because people up there are making decisions that are going to affect you for the rest of your lives.
16:52Speak up now. Become politically active now in your teens.
16:57And I thought, how can I, as an educator, mobilize the students in my care without becoming a demagogue.
17:05Without saying, you must believe what I believe.
17:09I hope I try to teach them, believe what you choose, but act on your beliefs.
17:14Don't sit. Don't sit on your hands.
17:17When you have the opportunity to vote, do it.
17:20Don't say it's just one vote. It won't matter.
17:23It does matter.
17:29I never thought I would see the day when someone would say that an event concerning my high school had politicized them.
17:35After all, my memories of the place were completely and totally apolitical,
17:40a source of some carping and criticism later on.
17:47The building remained dark and closed throughout that winter.
17:52It didn't show any new life until I returned more than a year later to find the doors sporting a new color and crested with a new name.
17:59If the fundamental goal of the Conservatives had been to make more space available for private education,
18:08this was an idea that Jeff Kendall had expressed to me, here they succeeded brilliantly.
18:14And the new occupants didn't even seem to have the same qualms about partial leasing that the school board had had.
18:21There were all kinds of groups and activities occupying different corners of the premises.
18:27Sharon Hershenhorn might take some comfort in the fact that the new school promotes an international focus.
18:32I'm not sure it's exactly what she had in mind.
18:37So I guess Cal and Brian had been right.
18:40There just hadn't been the political will to keep it open.
18:48Anyway, in the autumn of 2003, I learned, along with the rest of the world,
18:53that that particular Conservative government had finally got booted out and a new period was opening in Ontario politics.
18:59But how much of the damage could be restored?
19:03And was there the will to restore it?
19:06Once you've destroyed things that were of value, you can't just go back to the way they were before.
19:12Even if you reinvest, destruction creates its own inertia.
19:17The community reorganizes itself and things go on, differently.
19:22The loss and the cost are perhaps largely intangible, but they are there,
19:27nonetheless absolutely real.
19:31I just hope that the next time some political huckster says that the way forward to true happiness is downsized government and less expenditure,
19:39people will think a little harder before they buy it.
19:41before they buy it.
19:45A
20:46We're right back.
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