As former classmates at Chesley High School in Chesley, Ontario, Carl Wathke and I have many pleasant and enjoyable shared memories enjoyed as students in that wonderful little high school in Bruce County.
Roderick excelled as a student, an actor, a singer, a basketball player, an a hockey player.. Rod became a history teacher and he was one of our classmates who obtained a mark of 100 in the Grade 13 history examination in 1954.
In 1949 our little high school burned down. Our school board quickly built a temporary steel building but we did not have a gymnasium or auditorium for several years so P.E. and acting were done respectively in St. Anne's Hall and on the Oddfellow's Hall stage.
Rod, Carl Wathke and Ken Ruhl performed the stage play " Brothers In Arms " by Merrill Dennison. I can still see Rod fuming with anger when Syd said his mate might be back in time to drive him to the railway station at Kaladar " if he only had a boat ".
Every other year our school would produce a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta. Here Rod excelled again. On the basketball court Rod & Wietse Posthumous were top scorers. I can, in my minds eye, see he and Wietse, Carl & George Wathke, Jack Martin, Bob Skrinar, and Jim McNeil playing in some BIA games..Rod was never a great runner or ball player and our little town did not have a curling rink but he sure excelled at road hockey. I can still see him and all of the Long, Mary & River Street boys playing under the dim street night with their only protection being Eaton's catalogs wrapped around their shins.
How pleasant are these Chesley school memories from the 1940's & 1950's.Many of my old classmates will have other memories of Rod and I'll bet our classmate, John Downing, former editor of the Toronto Sun will recall many of our memories in his Newspaper columns.