Like me, my friend Nick was an “8-year-man” at De La Salle College Oaklands, a Catholic high school located just north of downtown Accordion City. We spent grades 6 through 13 there, during which time the school hosted its most famous student, Keanu Reeves, who spent a year there and was notable for:
- Having a oddball name
- Having an oddbal nickname: “The Wall”, for his skill as a defenceman on our hockey team. He still bears this nickname today, but now it’s for his acting ability.
Ever since Keanu’s rise to fame, editions of Acorn — our yearbook — containing the Master Thespian are in great demand. Copies of the yearbook from his brief time with us have since gone missing for the school library, and no, you can’t have mine.
“Del”, as the school was affectionately known, was an all-boys school when we were there. Students from grades 6 through 8 wore the middle-school green blazers while students in grade 9 and up wore blue blazers. Since I’ve graduated, Del has gone co-ed and everybody wears green blazers.
Nick recently posted a photo of an informal group called the De La Salle Country Club, of which I was a member. The Country Club had no real structured activities: we were just a bunch of friends who brought our own lawnchairs to school to hang out during our breaks when we weren’t annoying the staff at the nearby McDonald’s or the now defunct Cafe Marika, whose motto could’ve been “Serving alcohol to Toronto’s youth since they were 16”.
Here’s the photo, which was taken in the winter, probably late 1985 or early 1986. Pictured in the photo from left to right are: Steve, Greg (above Steve), Nick and Yours Truly:
This is what a marvelously misspent youth looks like. Steve, Greg, Nick and me at 18.