My time at TT undoubtedly shaped the rest of my life, especially professionally.  I developed an interest in video production sometime around grade 2, and played around with the camera at home.  I started borrowing that big VHS shoulder mount camera, bringing it to school to use for my projects around grade 4.  Up until I graduated in grade 9, there wasn’t a project that didn’t involve me making a video.  I used to hire myself out to classmates to make their videos for their projects… Mostly for favors or candy.  We shot many movies for fun in the halls and classrooms of the schools in both Glenora and then Callingwood, and even had teachers and custodians playing characters.  I still have some of these movies, and now I’m older than the teachers who were playing around with us.  We felt so at home in school, and had such special connections with the staff.   In grade 7, I failed the report portion of a project, but got 100% on the video portion, and my teacher Leslie Heppleston said, “Don’t worry, one day you can make videos for a living, and won’t have to write reports”.  

So, fast-forward to 2021.  I have a video production studio in Edmonton called Reel Mensch Studio.  We produce TV commercials, documentaries, event videos and the likes.  We are also the place where you take your old VHS tapes and film reels to digitize to watch them on a computer.  So to bring you up to speed on what I’m up to now… It’s the same thing I was up to when I attended TT as a student, except now we charge money for our video productions, and I don’t write reports… And I’m bald with a beard.  My circle of friends is still the same cohort that grew up together at TT.  I drop my daughter Ella off every morning at the same school we went to, and I always run into one, if not several of my classmates in the layby, dropping their kids off too.  (Jan. 2021)