Main Event Plans (MCHS 2015)

If you check the pulldown menu for this page, you will find links for six separate pages.

For your convenience, they are also listed here:

Main Event Plans

Ideas and Suggestions

Reunion News (including Newsletters)

Conversations with Teachers

Database of Photos and Texts

Grab-Bag for Attendees

[End of list]

An update on Main Event Plans can be accessed here:

MCHS 2015 organizing committee met in Kitchener on June 17, 2015

What’s planned?

Following is just a taste:

• We’ll start at 6:00 pm on Saturday, October 17, 2015 with a meet and greet.

• There will be a fun display of memorabilia.

• We are working on a project to create DVDs based on PDF files of MCHS annuals from 1961-62 to about 1975, and to distribute them at the reunion. This is a labour-intensive task but we believe we have enough time to complete the project before October 17, 2015.

• Also a non-stop display of PowerPoint slides with a focus on the “Before” and “After”.

• We’ll have a display of photos and texts about students and teachers who have passed away; we’ll have a playlist of ’60s music that includes songs and performers that particular students, who are no longer with us, are known to have been especially fond of.

• We will also play Stay Awhile, the recently released documentary about The Bells, one of whose singers, Jacki Ralph-Jamieson, graduated from MCHS in 1962. The doc will play continuously on a separate screen, at the reunion, which people can stop to view at any time

• Buffet Dinner at 7:30 pm.

• A Dance follows later in the evening featuring a DJ, James McDonough of Able Entertainment, and all your favourite songs from the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s.

• People who just want to chat will have plenty of quiet places where they can meet old (and new) friends and catch up on the past half-century.

• The event officially ends at 1:00 am. But that could be just the start.

• Spouses, children, grandchildren, and friends are welcome.

The fees cover the buffet dinner, rental of the Brule Rooms C at Old Mill Toronto, AV expenses, and other costs associated with the reunion. As a non-profit project, we seek to break even on the event. Whatever money is left over will be distributed as raffles and prizes on October 17, 2015.

Configuration of Tables

For this reunion, we’ve arrived at the concept that we would have round tables, so that people could talk across tables, rather than being in a situation where the extent of conversation only extends to the person on the left and right. People start off at the tables, set up according to the year of graduation.

Buffet Buffet Dinner

We’ve also established that we would have a buffet, where people are free to circulate and find people to talk to. We will have high, narrow tables arranged at the periphery of the room, so that people have a place to put their drinks, if they are having drinks.

Our aim is to ensure that everyone feels at home at the reunion.

Photo Displays

We’ll have photo displays, set up on easels, showing the school then and now. We’ll have a photo display and brief texts about classmates who have passed away.

Your name tag will feature your yearbook photo, so that people will know who you are. Many people have mentioned that knowing who somebody is, is not an easy task after 40 or 50 years have passed.

We’ll have name tags with large yearbook photos, or photos of people at age 17 if they were not in the available yearbooks. Plus we’ll have a colour-coded system, on name tags, whereby people can find other people from their same graduation year.

As well, we’ll have a way for people to identify (if they wish) what lines of work including volunteer work they’ve been engaged in. We’ll include this kind of optional detail on name tags as well as on display boards, where we have photos, names, and other details on display.

We’ll have printouts of all of this information, as well, with contact information included for people who wish to share such information.

We are working on photography and audio-visual requirements for the event, as well as details related to entertainment, with a focus on 50s and 60s – and early 70s! – music and dancing.

We welcome your suggestions

We look forward to meeting you at this event, which is being organized entirely by volunteers. We are currently refining the details regarding the format of the event. We welcome your feedback and suggestions. Please contact us through the contact page or use the comment box below. Or send an email to Jaan Pill at jpill@preservedstories.com