When I was in Grade 8 at Maple Ridge Junior Secondary School (MRJSS) in my hometown, Haney, B.C., I was assigned to cover school events for the Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows Gazette, our community's weekly newspaper, which was published on Thursday every week.
Most of the material in my articles was just passed on to me: lists of members of sports teams who had played at recent games or track meets, results of the "honor roll," and so forth. I don't remember why I was selected to do this, or who selected me -- maybe I showed an aptitude for journalism at an early age?
This assignment kept me busy for two years, from 1961 to 1963 when I was in Grades 8 and 9, and when I "graduated" to Maple Ridge Senior Secondary School (MRSSS) just down the street, I kept reporting on school events in the same manner. I don't know who was responsible for assigning me to do this there either.
While I continued reporting school news from 1963 to 1965, when I was in Grades 10 and 11, from 1964 to 1965, I was also the editor of The Ridge Rambler, the MRSSS school paper. In the 1965-1966 year, the junior and senior schools were amalgamated into just MRSS (Maple Ridge Secondary School).
When I originally created this page, I was using a digitized version of the actual articles (like this one) but this turned out to be very time-consuming as well as a real PITA for some of them which were oversized. As a result, I have switched to just running an OCR (Optical Character Recognition) program on the scanned images of the articles which extracts the text which is then formatted by me into an HTML (web) page.
Here is an example of what I had to do to restore some of these articles which have been kept in a scrapbook for almost 60 years. This is a particularly bad example, though; it reminds me of the extra features on DVDs where they talk about restoring the movie.
Maple Ridge Junior Secondary School News
1961-1962 SCHOOL YEAR
November 23, 1961
Remembrance Day
December 7, 1961
December 21, 1961
December 28, 1961Christmas Concert
February 1, 1962
February 8, 1962
February 22, 1962
March 8, 1962
March 15, 1962
March 29, 1962 (#1)
March 29,1962 (#2)
April 12, 1962Open House
May 17, 1962
June 7, 1962
June 14, 1962Track Meet 1962-1963 SCHOOL YEAR
November 29, 1962
Remembrance Day
December 6, 1962
December 13, 1962
December 27, 1962Christmas Concert
January 24, 1963
February 7, 1963
February 28, 1963
March 21, 1963Public Speaking
April 4, 1963
May 9, 1963Talent Show
May 16, 1963
May 23, 1963 (#1)
May 23, 1963 (#2)Inter-School Track Meet
May 30, 1963MRJSS Track Meet
June 6, 1963 (#1)Track Meet News
June 6, 1963 (#2)Track Meet News
June 27, 1963Prom; Grade 8 & 9 Awards; Hollyburn Trip
July 4, 1963Article of interest:
PTA Concert(not by me, I think) Maple Ridge Senior Secondary School News
1963-1964 SCHOOL YEAR
September 26, 1963
October 3, 1963
October 17, 1963
October 31, 1963Magazine Subscription Sales
November 7, 1963Clubs Assembly
November 21, 1963Honor Roll
December 5, 1963Tribute to JFK
December 12, 1963Christmas Concert
December 19, 1963
January 23, 1964
January 30, 1964Honor Roll
February 13, 1964
February 20, 1964Valentine's Social
February 27, 1964Pastor Emberg
March 5, 1964Public Speaking
March 12, 1964High Q Quiz Show
April 16, 1964
April 30, 1964
May 7, 1964Honor Roll
May 14, 1964Spring Prom
May 28, 1964Exposition
June 11, 1964Grade 12 Awards; Elections
June 18, 1964Grade 10 & 11 Awards 1964-1965 SCHOOL YEAR
September 17, 1964
October 1, 1964
October 15, 1964Grade 10 Initiation; Social
October 29, 1964Band Contest
November 5, 1964Reach for the Top
November 12, 1964
November 19, 1964Remembrance Day
November 26, 1964Honor Roll
December 10, 1964
December 24, 1964
January 21, 1965
January 28, 1965Honor Roll
February 4, 1965Winston Churchill Memorial
February 11, 1965
March 4, 1965 (#1)
March 4, 1965 (#2)Ridge Rambler
March 11, 1965
April 15, 1965
April 22, 1965Democracy in Action; U.N. Club
May 6, 1965Honor Roll May 15, 1965
Full-page ad for MRSS "Exposition"
(This is a very large-sized file.)May 27, 1965
Exposition
June 3, 1965Elections; Grade 12 Awards
June 17, 1965Grade 10, 11 & 13 Awards
June 24, 19651965-1966 SCHOOL YEAR
March 30, 1966
The King and I
WORDS
“Words” is a series of three articles which appeared in The Gazette discussing the “hippie problem” which had appeared recently in Maple Ridge. There is no date on any of these, I think they may have appeared in the late 60's or early 70s. I wrote an article about something similar for the Georgia Straight in June of 1970.
Article #1 • Article #2 • Article #3
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