During its 140-year history, thousands of students and teachers have walked the halls of St. Mary’s High School and Ian Hindmarsh is no different.
Like many others, Hindmarsh re-visited the school for its Monday night 140th anniversary celebration and open house event.
To celebrate the school’s historic anniversary, dozens of yearbooks and grad pictures were displayed throughout the school’s downtown campus, with refreshments and cake served, open classrooms and a live basketball practice all available during the open house.
Hindmarsh said the open house was a unique opportunity to re-connect with former colleagues and even former students.
“I thought I’d probably run into some people that I taught, some of the teachers that I’ve been with and this was probably the easiest way to do it,” the longtime teacher said.
In the 20-some years since he retired, the school, both building and culture, has drastically changed, Hindmarsh said, who first taught both the girls and boys sides of the school, before both were integrated.
His old stomping grounds, the second-floor biology and science wing, seemed to be the only part of the school that was relatively the same.
Now 50-some years after his move to Canada from Australia, Hindmarsh said his original one-year plan for coming to Canada was miscalculated.
“I met a very nice girl from Saskatchewan in the first year and then I fell in love twice, with the outdoors here, because they were so different from ours (in Australia), the snow, cross country skiing, downhill skiing, getting up on those mountains, getting out on the rivers,” he said.
The school’s second-year principal Greg Masterson, said that the school’s legacy is ever evolving.
Back to 1885, it started out as a small school of pioneers and Indigenous students and then a boys school, a girls school, a community school, we had the flood in 2013 which necessitated renovation and overhaul, and I say to our kids, we look at 140 years of history, but I want them to look ahead and go 20, 40, 50, 100 years from now, what are people going to be saying about them and their legacy, and that’s part of what we’re doing here, is evolving over time and growing new learning opportunities,” he said.
School history continues to be special
Masterson said that even before his direct involvement with the school, the St. Mary’s community of students, staff and alumni was and continues to be special.
“I’ll go to events outside of school and people find out I’m the principal at St. Mary’s and usually there’s somebody who went there, who has a parent who went there, sibling that went there, there’s a real sense of pride in having attended St. Mary’s,” he said.
“We see people come back for masses and other events and I think tonight’s a great example of people coming out just wanting to be back in the school again to see classmates and former colleagues and see what things are doing.”
Looking into the future, Masterson believes that with their existing background of school’s all within a two-block radius and new developments like the collegiate design lab, St. Mary’s will stand the test of time.
“I’ll pull my crystal ball out here, we’re situated ideally in the core here. That provides a lot of opportunity for offering Catholic education in the core of Calgary, right beside the cathedral,” he said.
“That’s really one of the benefits we have for our students. In fact, today we went to a mass, 1,000 kids walked over to the cathedral. In terms of location and history, there’s a lot of great things that can happen at St. Mary’s in the next 140 years.”
