The MCHS ’60s Reunion organizing team met on Sept. 9, 2015 in Kitchener, Ontario

The MCHS 2015 Event Committee met on Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2015 at the Boston Pizza at 190 Gateway Drive in Kitchener. Stephanie Shaar (MCHS ’69) of Montreal joined us for the meeting. We much enjoyed meeting Stephanie, whose participation added much of value and interest to the decision-making process. There is so much value in such face to face meetings.

Among the attendees at the Sept. 9, 2015 meeting were (left top right): Lynn (Hennebury) Legge, Scott Munro, and Jaan Pill.

On my way home from Kitchener, I stopped in Dundas, Ontario, where I came across a 1960s-era Buick Wildcat convertible.

Our budget person, Lynn Hennebury Legge, reported at the meeting that we now have one drink (alcoholic or non-alcoholic) per person taken care of, so far as the budget is concerned.

We also noted that, at the Oct. 17 reunion, the role of each Designated Driver will be an important one as is the case in any event of this nature. We owe many thanks to the role that Designated Drivers will be playing on occasions during the reunion weekend where alcoholic beverages are served.

The subtext is: Please don’t drink and drive.

As additional registrations come in, as they have been coming in in recent days, we anticipate that we will have sufficient funds to be able to have two bottles of wine (one red, one white) and one bottle of sparkling water in place, at each of the 7 or so round tables that we will have at the reunion. Each table sits 10 people.

Each table will have candles on it, supplied by Old Mill Toronto, whose staff are going all out to ensure that we establish a suitable atmosphere of conviviality and good cheer as the festivities get underway.

Budget

Along with Lynn Hennebury Legge’s impressive and much appreciated work in getting our budget details to line up properly, we also owe many thanks to Gina Davis Cayer, whose keen eye for financial details is also much appreciated, as we work to ensure that we get the best possible value for our money, at the Sixties reunion.

Grab-bags for attendees

Each attendee will be receiving a personalized grab-bag. Each of the bags will include 100 business cards, with the grab-bag owner’s name on each of them. The cards are for the Speed Getting Acquainted Game, which is also known as the Business Card Game.

Please take care and be fully alert when driving in Toronto during the reunion weekend. Please note the fine for distracted driving starts at $490. The penalties go up to a maximum $1K fine and three demerit points for drivers who text, email or talk on handheld phone.

The grab-bag will include a wide range of other items, which are calculated to be a source of overwhelming pleasure for each attendee. Among the items will be an Agenda for the evening, which in its current draft form goes roughly as follows.

Agenda

6:00 pm: Registration, with Stephanie Shaar, Gina Cayer, and Nancy Renz (maybe among others) working as a team to process the registrations. Lynn Legge will perform as the floater, ready to address any log jams or bottlenecks that may emerge.

6:25 pm: A member of the organizing team will introduce the members of the Event Committee and the Database/Newsletter Team. He will also note that attendees are free, during the course of the evening, to wander the labyrinth of hallways and passageways throughout the Old Mill property, when and if they wish to find quiet places to chat before wandering back to the Humber Room.

Old Mill Toronto features many quiet places, outside of the Humber Room, where MCHS 2015 attendees can take a moment, if they wish, and find a quiet place to chat for a while.

In keeping with research that suggests that sitting is the new smoking, we urge attendees to engage in walking conversations and in other ways, to keep moving, to keep mixing and mingling. We also want to note that the foyer just outside the entrance to the Humber Room, where Walter Psotka will set up his on-the-spot photo studio, complete with a portable, high-end printer, is also a great place to mill about. Just watch you don’t bump into one of the sharp weapons or rifles hanging on the walls in the foyer!

6:30 pm: You will note that the above-mentioned speaker will have exactly five minutes to speak before his time is up. Organizers of the event will come equipped with stopwatches, to ensure that speakers stay within the allotted times.

If a retired MCHS teacher wishes to speak, we will discuss with them beforehand what the optimal length of the talk will be. We can see a situation where a teacher would speak for a bit longer than five minutes, simply because they were our teachers.

And we move on. At 6:30 pm, Lynn Hennebury Legge will introduce us to the Speed Getting Acquainted Game.

7:30 pm: The Humber Dinner Buffet gets underway. People can sit anywhere they want. We have decided not to assign tables by graduation years or by any other formal criteria. The point of the exercise is that we are here to mix and mingle, and to get to know people that we may have never met before. We are here, truly here for this reason: to mix and mingle; that is the underlining narrative of this great event.

8:30 pm: We’ll have a five-minute talk featuring another member of the organizing committee; one or two former MCHS teachers will say a few words, if they wish; Walter Psotka the photographer will say a few words (about the benefits, in this case, of taking notes at meetings with the Revenue Canada Agency); and an MCHS alumnus will share a few words about his career.

9:00 pm: James McDonough of Able Disc Jockeys, who knows the Humber Room well from previous engagements, will perform as our esteemed D.J. for the evening, which will take us all the way to 1:00 am. James McDonough will use a playlist that Gina Davis Cayer has developed over several months in consultation with a wide range of MCHS alumni. We owe many thanks to the great work Gina is doing, along with the other members of the organizing team, on behalf of the MCHS ’60s Reunion and Celebration of the ’60s.

Table arrangements and privacy policy

I can only cover so much ground in one day of writing, and site visitors can only read so many words before they go on to other exciting pursuits.

Our next meeting is on Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2015 at the same Boston Pizza in Kitchener, where we regularly meet. All MCHS alumni are welcome to attend.

Privacy of information

In a subsequent post, I will share a more extended discussion regarding the table arrangements at the reunion (we have decided there will be no assigned seating), and will also discuss our strategy, with regard to ensuring privacy of information, as it relates to the sharing of contact information, and as it relates to the posting of videos and photos of reunion attendees at the MCHS 2015 website and elsewhere.

With regard to the latter point, in the event you DO NOT wish to have your image appear, either as a photo or video, online, please let Jaan Pill know of your preference, as soon as possible, by contacting him by email at jpill@preservedstories.com of by sending him a text, from anywhere in North America, at 416-722-6630.

Also, please contact us if you have comments or questions about any topic. As well, please feel free to post comments at the blog post you are now reading.

Montreal – Then and Now

By way of an update: Bob Carswell has let us know of a Facebook group. Montreal – Then and Now. Worth checking out!

Infographics

We would like to prepare an infographics display of the approximate budget figures for the reunion, for posting to the MCHS 2015 website. If you as a site visitor are familiar with information graphics, even at the most basic level, and would like to help out with this process, please contact us.