Alumna

So I read at my high school today, almost exactly 20 years after graduation.

All day, people kept saying how odd it must be for me, to be back...but I'm used to the idea that bricks and mortar lasts longer than people.

I think that's because I went back to the University of Winnipeg two times to take a course or two after I graduated.

But more than that, I even like the idea that a school is more than just the people that inhabited it at one time.

Because those people entrust it, bricks and mortar, to the next generation of students, the next generation of teachers.

And so it was good that I got to be a student at College Jeanne Sauve and it was good that I got to teach there, if only for a few hours, today.

Thanks to Mike McGovern for having me, thanks to the Grade 11 and 12s classes for having me, and thanks too to Diane Plamondon, my Grade 12 English teacher, for coming in to have tea with me.

I especially like that although she struggles with poetry, she's on her third bemused read of Hump.