The Prince George Senior Secondary School’s 50th Reunion for the class of 1974 is taking place this weekend.
But not all memories will be joyful ones for the 844 students who graduated that year.
It was the biggest graduating class in Canada’s history up to that year and many experienced the greatest heartbreak of their young lives when their fellow students perished during a Willow River canoe trip that took place on May 10, 1974.
Eight classmates and friends died during the canoe trip through the bolder-strewn rapids and steep rock walls of the Willow River Canyon, including Paul Trudeau, 17; Robert Haney, 18; Dwight McFarland, 18; Brian Weaver, 18; Ian Rice, 17; David Walker, 18; Murray Sales, 18, from Prince George and Jeff Pick, 16, from the Queen Charlotte Islands.
Each of the students, and those who have passed away in the last 50 years for a total of 112 students from the class of ’74, will be honoured in the memorial room at the Coast Inn in downtown Prince George this weekend.
As an extra tribute to the students who died on the canoe trip a few of the people attending the reunion took a drive out to the Willow River rest area, close to where the teens lost their lives.
There were plenty of tears and heads bent in sorrow as the small group gathered at the memorial cairn that carries the names of each boy who died and these poignant words of comfort:
“These eight young men tragically lost their lives in a canoeing accident on May 10, 1974, in an impassible canyon just down-stream from this rest area. The whole community felt the loss but their memories are still very much alive today.”
“They were our friends,” Gerry Van Caeseele says. “It was just so horrible that it happened and there are some people who chose not to canoe with them that weekend and have to live with that and it was just horrible because there’s never really been any closure for anyone.”
At the graduation ceremony 50 years ago Carolyn (Olsen) Phillips-Cusson was valedictorian and gave the speech.
“I talked to Carolyn after she gave her speech that day and she told me about how she read the feelings of all the students because their friends were dead,” Van Caeseele recalls.
“I could just feel it,” Phillips-Cusson says. “As an air force brat who just arrived on the scene I was probably the perfect person to give that speech because I didn’t really know the people who died. I think anyone else would have crumbled but I tell you I was a mass of jelly because I could feel the energy from the audience. I thought holy cow, I’m not even talking about our high school, our future, because everyone is thinking the same thing.”
Everyone knew the students who lost their lives, Dan Robin, PGSSS 50th Reunion committee chair, says.
“These students were sports people, everyone talked about them, there were over 800 students just in our class and in the school there were four grades so there were more than 2,000 students so you can’t make friends with them all but you heard about these guys, and some were even in your class and you can’t help but being hurt by the loss,” Robin says.
To that end, along with the memorial room there is a legacy project from the class of ’74 in the works that begins at the reunion with a silent auction of more than 90 items with 100 per cent of the proceeds going to bursaries for Prince George Secondary School students who will pursue further education geared to community service, including social work and health care professionals. The students who are gifted with these bursaries won’t be those with the highest grades, Robin added, but those who are most community minded in their current volunteer efforts who already exemplify what it takes to be a community leader.
“This is a story that has been talked about for the last 50 years,” Robin says about the tragic loss of the students. “We’re hoping this reunion and the memorial will finally give people a bit of closure on this horrible thing that happened so long ago.”
