Seniors are students again at Balmy Beach’s 100th birthday

Local seniors, some in their 90s, were transformed into kids again as they toured Balmy Beach Community School on its 100th anniversary on May 12.

The Pine Avenue junior school, in the Queen St. East and Beech Ave. area, opened its doors to current students, teachers and parents, as well as hundreds who attended and worked here since it opened in 1907.

Terrance McCrea, who turns 90 in June, was one of them. He first went to Balmy Beach in 1922, when original principal Jennie Yeo oversaw things.

“I was here 20 years ago at a reunion and I met a lot of people I knew,” McCrea said, as he toured the school with his sister and nephew. “I kept close touch with a lot of them (classmates), but a lot of the men died off.”

He recalls horses being used to dig trenches when an extension was added to the school. Additions were made to the site over the years, including 1910, 1914, 1921 and 1928.

That was all before the old school building was torn down and the current one was completed in 1975. While the building has changed, that did not stop the memories from flooding back for many former students.

Various classrooms were set up as “decade rooms”, with display boards and memorabilia from each era.

Bob Burgener attended the school from 1931 to 1940. On a table in one room dedicated to sports, he eyed a trophy with his name on it. It was for a half-mile race around the school property that he won – barefoot, by the way. On the back of the trophy is a barely visible inscription with his name and the year 1940.

No other name is on this trophy and he proudly picked it up to pose for a picture.

Like many residents, Burgener went to Malvern Collegiate Institute.

“I played football at Malvern and then I was in the air force for two years, from July 25, 1943 to Aug. 30, 1945 until the end of the war (WWII),” he recalled.

He was 17-1/2 when he joined up and was an officer in the air force by 18.

Burgener says he saw quite a few old classmates at the reunion.

“They look different, but their spirit is just the same,” he said.

Ken Browne now lives in Willowdale but as a child his house was just blocks from the school on Scarborough Rd., then later on Silver Birch Ave. He attended the school in kindergarten in 1940 and then again for several years starting in 1945.

Browne ran into an old classmate named Norma, whom he found out also lives in Willowdale.

During the celebrations, Browne’s brother Peter, a bagpiper, was on stage along with politicians such as current city councillor Sandra Bussin and school staff and students.

In the 1930s memorabilia room, sisters Carole and Kay Keeling chatted with Mary Fox Pezzack. All three went to school here from the mid-1930s until 1944.

The Keeling sisters lived at 149 Balsam Ave. in a house, since demolished, that was beside the school.

“We were late for school practically every day,” says Kay Keeling. “It’s because we lived next to the school.”

Her sister Carole rhymed off most of her elementary teachers by name, recalling them fondly. Most of them were females in the ’30s and ’40s, although a few male teachers worked at the school as well.

“Growing up in the Depression (in the 1930s) it was either you sink or swim,” said Carole. “We were at school during the wartime years in 1941, ’42, ’43.

"We collected newspapers to recycle and knit scarves and mitts for the sailors.”

The school kids would also hold sales to raise money for the war effort.

Over in the 1940s room, women sat around and caught up on who has what ailment and who has passed on. While in the 1950s room, three gentlemen looked at old photos and reminisced about what had changed in the area since their boyhood days.

All this while present day students helped with registration and listened to speeches about the “good old days”.