Built and established in 1876, it is an architecturally proud and elderly house of education, the high school that my granddaughter attended. She lives, as it happens herself, in an (since modernized and built upon) old log schoolhouse that was established to give initial elementary education to local children in 1864, located a 20 minute drive from Arnprior. Which is why she attended Arnprior District High School, an institute of secondary education that is proud of its tradition of providing a sound and distinctive education to generations upon generations of young people in this farming community.

"Red Velvet" Student performance group

And that is where we were, last night, at the 2014 Commencement ceremony for graduating grade 12 students. It was a packed house, with about 160 fresh-faced 18-year-old lads and lasses graduating high school. The venue was the gymnasium, larger than the auditorium, it seems, to accommodate the audience of parents, grandparents, invited guests and presenters along with staff, packed into that limited but sufficient space that was thankfully well air conditioned, to witness the ceremonial proceedings.

Graduating students were ceremoniously garbed in the usual graduation costume of solemn black robes covering the carefully chosen dresses and suits the graduates had chosen to mark their special day. They were similarly ceremoniously piped in by the traditional strains of an ear-shattering bagpiper, emphasizing the original prevailing culture, as they filed quietly and proudly toward two choirs of chairs set up on either side of the podium from whence the proceedings began to present themselves to the waiting audience of proud families and friends.

Graduating Honouree presentation

This was no event geared toward the impatient and those for whom such time-consuming niceties are anathema. Nor was it even representative of any audience-geared event orchestrated for celebrity culture. But it was an event honouring dignity and purpose in life and those attending were hushed in the intensity of their attention to unfolding traditional introductions, and loud in their applause when each of the graduates was called to the stage to be presented with their certificate and congratulated, some posing ostentatiously for photographs.

The first hour was tolerable for those prepared to sit out the proceedings in respect of the occasion and the honourees. The second slightly less so, as the various awards representing a myriad of causes and entities were ticked off and the presenters presented while the recipients gratefully accepted the acknowledgements of their community integrated activities. They ranged from the Arnprior Aerospace Technology award, to the Fish & Game Club Awards, to Community Safety Partnership Committee Awards, Coffee house awards, Royal Canadian Legion scholarships, Arnprior Optimist Club, Funeral Home award, Knights of Columbus, Town of Arnprior, Ontario Power Generation, and 4H clubs...and all manner of various memorial awards; the list seemed endless, on the north side of 75 individual scholarships and awards.

Fairly short shrift was made, on the other hand with the announcement of the Ontario Scholars, those students who had distinguished themselves through the achievement of having attained excellent academic records and whose end-of-semester grades demonstrated their commitment to their ongoing education and their future professions.

Staff entertainment group

With each introduction of the graduates a brief acknowledgement was voiced indicating their future; roughly 60% of the graduates were moving on to university or college, in disciplines as various as law, engineering, medicine, science, technology and the trades. For some of the graduates it was made evident that their choices included going directly on to work in the trades, farming, the service industry, and some had already secured their future employment.

Best friends

Of the total graduating body, 38 were announced as Ontario Scholars, our granddaughter and her closest friends among that list.