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24 - The Oakville Beaver, Wednesday May 21, 2008 www.oakvillebeaver.com OTHS at 100 Through the years ... across a century PHOTOS BY CHRIS KORNACKI / OAKVILLE BEAVER IT'S WHAT'S INSIDE THAT COUNTS: Oakville Trafalgar High School (OTHS) will celebrate its 100th anniversary this weekend. From left, the former Reynolds Street site of the high school that's now owned by the Oakville hospital and is a designated heritage site; the inscription on the Reynolds Street school, and the new, modern OTHS that bustles with student life today at 1460 Devon Rd. OT reunion set to salute a centenarian By Angela Blackburn OAKVILLE BEAVER STAFF OT -- Oakville Trafalgar High School (OTHS or OT, as it's known by many) is a centenarian. At 100, it has seen lots come and go -- students and staff through its doors, Oakville history outside its walls, even its own school building rebuilt several times over. The once familiar Reynolds Street school building sits boarded up, cold and bereft these days -- a designated heritage building with an uncertain future, now owned by the Oakville hospital, itself slated to move to a new Third Line and Dundas location. Yet OTHS students continue the scholastic tradition blocks away in the new OTHS at 1460 Devon Rd. That's where hundreds of OT grads will gather this weekend -- May 22-25 -- not for this year's graduation ceremony, but the school's 100th anniversary reunion. Some of the well-known grads that have come out of the school that was Oakville's first high school include musician Hagood Hardy, progolfer Sandra Post, Olympic gold medalist Larry Cain, and magician Doug Henning. Some of the better known graduates around town include former mayor Harry Barrett. For some, like Meg Cowan, Wendy Janisse, and current OTHS teacher George Chisholm, generations of the same family have gone to the school. For recent students, the Reynolds Street OT is simply a heritage structure -- the only school they've ever known is the one on Devon Road. "You can still see that girlish smile when she is remembering the fun they used to have back then." Joanne Stevenson, daughter of 100-year-old alumnus Violet (Dryland) Bancroft Whatever the case, as is often said, it's not the building, but what goes on inside its walls, that makes a school. And, 25 years after OTHS celebrated its 75th reunion, many of the same faces who attended that reunion have signed up to say they'll be there again. A reunion website lists person after person registered to return to the reunion, from former Olympic skater Maria Jelinek to Evelyn (Savage) Bullied, the earliest gradu- ate so far signed up to be there -- she last attended OTHS in 1935. OTHS on Reynolds Street was erected in 1908, but the school's roots go back further. Oakville's first school was the Oakville Common School, founded in 1836, not quite a decade after William Chisholm founded Oakville. The Oakville Common School was on Navy Street where the Oakville Public Library's Central Branch is now. By 1850, enrollment had grown and the school moved to a new, larger building just to the north of its original site. In 1854, Oakville's first Grammar School was added -- two rooms were attached to the Common School -- and the building was nicknamed the Union School. In 1871, education jargon changed with the advent of the New School Law Improvement Act -- so the common school became known as a public school and the grammar school was the high school. When the high school outgrew itself, architect Alfred Chapman set about designing a new school building that was erected on Reynolds Street. The cornerstone of the Oakville High School, technically the town's second high school building, was laid in 1908. Its Gothic collegiate style boasted three entrances -- two side entrances for students and the main, front entrance for staff. As the 1900s flew on the calendar, schools saw coal heating replace wood stoves, curriculum standardized, equipment improved. During the First World War, the Oakville High School helped the war effort by growing beans in its fields. See OT page 25