CENTRE WALK

By Verne Edquist. Toronto: Devondale Books, 1993.

Centre Walk is a collection of reminiscences told by former students of the Ontario School For The Blind, now called the W. Ross Macdonald School for the Blind. The titles of chapters consist of the name of the alumnist who is sharing their recollections in that chapter. What follows is my commentary on specific chapters.

First, let me say this book isn’t written very well. The foreword and the preface contain the same text, and what should be called the table of contents is called the index. Also, it’s not really in chronological order. There's a recollection from a student who started in 1911 followed by a student who started in 1872.

Ernest Lot
The school didn’t even really have academic subjects until 1916. A lot of schools for the blind were that way in the nineteenth century. The focus was on teaching them life skills. Blind people don’t need to know classic literature or calculus or anything like that. The students went into Principal Gardner’s office and demanded he add more academic subjects. He said, “Get out of my office.” Typical. The place was under the Office Of Institutions And Asylums!

They had square pies.

When the students moved into residences, there was no place to put anything. Typical of the school’s logic.

In this era, they started having the students go home for Christmas. So, prior to this, you went there for ten months straight from the time you were six or so for eleven or however many years. When you graduated, you didn’t have any connection with your community because you’d been in an institution for the last eleven years of your life.

Robert Trouton
He attended the school from 1918-1926. He recalls a student being put in the school prison for putting his boots on his bed. The school had a prison. Why does that not surprise me.

He says the handicapped function better as a group. Actually, they drag each other down do to their lack of social skills and thus are unable to function in society when they leave the school.

One kid went to the infirmary, was put to bed and the nurse forgot about him for three days. What a bimbo.

Susan Yonge-Jones-Mosher
She says the school helped her function socially in society. However, this is probably only because she had the foundation before she went to the school. She had five siblings to play with, plus their friends.

Donald And Helen Westbrook
When the students greeted each other, one person would say “Good day” and the other person would say their name. How stupid!

Donald feels the standards of discipline were higher at the OSB. He says that discipline in public schools these days is sorely lacking. He’s comparing apples and oranges. You would have to compare the standards of discipline at the OSB to those of a public school at that time.

The domestic sciences teacher would have a partially-sighted girl measure the liquid. What the heck? There isn’t going to be someone to measure liquid for a blind person when they get out on their own.

They had a sadistic gym teacher. He would cuff boys under the chin or slap them for walking with their arms outstretched, probably thinking they were homosexual. One of the senior students pushed the teacher up against the wall and threatened to break the teacher’s neck if he ever did it again.

There was a discrepancy between the OSB’s exams and the Department Of Education’s exams, so the educational standards were lower after all.

The piano tuning teacher didn’t think blind people could do repair work. So much for the school being a place where blind people could excel.

In about 1933 or 1934, George Radcliffe, the night watchman, mysteriously disappeared. Apparently, from a story a teacher told us while I was attending W. Ross Macdonald School for the Blind, Radcliffe liked to go into the girl’s residence at night and look at them naked. Hopefully he got killed.

Donald and Helen met through the school’s music program. They would meet secretly. One night, Helen’s meeting with Donald was reported to Miss Murray. Miss Murray said, “If you are after boys at fifteen, what will you be like at twenty-five?”

Helen replied, “Probably selling myself on the street corner since your stigmatizing my sexual feelings which, by the way, are perfectly normal to have at my age.”

However, Miss Murray would take Helen and Donald to social events to perform together so she can’t have disapproved of their relationship that much.

Helen says blind people are told they are being watched by the public all their lives and they have to do better. Sure, you need to act in a way that is acceptable in society, but I ain’t got a darn thing to prove to anybody.

Herbert Sutheran
He arrived at the school with a bag of chocolate bars given to him by his family. He was shown an empty locker to put them in and was told he could pick them up later. When he went to retrieve the chocolate bars, they were gone. The staff took them. Those jerks!

He was shown to the dining room where dinner consisted of cereal and apple sauce.

Many of the students talk about going to a restaurant, going shopping or helping a neighbouring farmer dig potatoes. Man! The only time we went off school property and interacted with the sighted world was when we went to the Tim Hortons at Brantford General Hospital.

Bill Clark
He was a Salvation Army preacher, though the book doesn’t mention anything about him being born again. He had a weird teacher in Grade 2 who called him Bee. She said that if Bill couldn’t produce honey then there was no point in her staying the rest of the day. He has written some books and done some other work for CBMI.

Janet Stevens
She says that when she went to OSB, many girls would marry the first man they met when they got out into the real world. She says this does not happen today. Actually, a lot of girls from the school continue to date boys from the school exclusively after they leave.

Gerald Taylor
He came to the school for Career Day once. I didn’t attend his session, but the kids who did said he rambled on in a bunch of nonsequiters.

He talks about the school’s attitudes toward sex. He says they weren’t properly informed. He treated women he ran across after he left the school abominably, and even at thirty Gerald’s wife said he was still naïve toward women. It was the same way when I went there, really. Anything that happened below the waist was viewed as horrible. If a boy accidentally walked into the girl’s change room or washroom, people would act like it was a really big deal. The kids would make sexual ineuendos all the time.

Jasmin Schuhardt
She used to review descriptive videos for the CNIB’s newsletter, Wordsworthy. Then she went to university to be a psychologist.

She touches on how she really wasn’t prepared for the outside world upon leaving school. She also talks about how she was told to stand up for herself at home, while being told to be seen and not heard at school. I found a similar situation when I went to the school. Girls were sheltered and you got the impression the staff wanted to turn them into weak young women, perpetual damsels in distress, if you will, like Bo Peep or something. I was even told that if the girls were sitting together in the living room and one of them got up to go to the bathroom, the staff would ask them where they were going.

Michael Davidson
He recalls John Howe, whom he calls an excellent gym teacher. When I was there, Mr. Howe didn’t do much of anything. He left it to the other gym teachers to do most of the actual teaching.

Michael Davidson also has the most humourous anecdotes in the whole book.

Dr. John Vandertoun
He was a music teacher at the school when I was there. He also preached the Sunday sermon at the 2004 alumnae reunion. It was the worst sermon I ever heard. He treated the Bible like a book of good advice and not as the inspired Word of God which it is.

He also recalls Bill Murphy with fondness. Mr. Murphy retired at the end of the first year I was there, but I found him to be a kind and encouraging man.

Jeff Heeley
Jeff Heeley is probably the most successful attendee of the W. Ross Macdonald School For The Blind, but you have to keep in mind he left the school at the end of Grade 7.