When my elementary school days ended in the early summer of 1953, my emotional state of mind was still whirling from the loss of my father in January of that year. Frankly, I felt dizzy and uncertain about everything.
My best friends, George Bourbeau and Roger St-Amand had chosen to go to LHS, but without telling me why. Although we were already spending every Saturday afternoon together traipsing the farmers’ fields of Dracut Massachusetts, this important decision they kept to themselves.
My mother made this decision on her own, I believe. I don’t recall ever proposing any other possibility. Indeed, I could see the rationale of going from a parochial elementary school to a parochial high school, namely St-Joseph Boys, as a perfectly logical choice.
It would be decades later when I realized that not all high schools were equally supported financially. This issue is and was important when the cost of chemistry and physics laboratory equipment such as microscopes, test tubes, Bunson burners, etc. are considered. Similar supplies were also needed to conduct experiments on living things, such as in biology and botany.
Parents, who sent their boys to St-Joseph Boys School, usually had one thing in common, i.e. the lack of extra money for any frivolous expenses. Certainly, the school needed adequate heating and plumbing. Chalk and blackboards were clearly in ready supply. These were the essentials.
However, the cost of supplies normally needed to conduct scientific experiments may have fallen by the wayside. The Marist brothers, our teachers, never mentioned this thorny, administrative issue.
I do recall, however, that we had no microscope in our classroom nor any Sears and Roebuck telescope to examine the night sky. However, in our small cocoon, this fact did not seem to matter. We did have a general science textbook to guide us in our studies. Maybe, experiments were unnecessary?
