(Thomas Froese)
Jonathan Froese high jumps at his school in East Africa in this 2015 scene.
(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, September 19, 2026)
In our soaking socks, just two of us were left high jumping. That’s what I remember about that track and field day at Maple Crest School. Pouring rain and drenched socks. We’d taken our shoes off to be lighter.
Paul won, almost an afterthought to the memory. “Hey, remember high jumping in the pouring rain?” For years we talked about it. And everything else.
“Remember when Mr. Chamberlain took just me and you to McDonald’s?”
“Remember when he broke his yard stick on the desk of Jackie Bowes?”
“Remember Mrs. Walker telling Terry Pelowski, ‘Don’t open your mouth again,’ and he walked past her with his mouth wide open, so she chased him across the soccer field?”
“Remember when Shawn McGilly scored our first goal ever in soccer?”
“Remember Enzo Coplin beating the *&^%# out of Robin Michaud, and Robin always wanting more?”
“Remember Mrs. Clark?” Do I remember Mrs. Clark? I was in love with Mrs. Clark. “Remember when she sent me and Pittawanaka to the office because we couldn’t stop laughing in her class? We got the strap!”
Maple Crest, a small Niagara public school with a fine Canadian name, was democratic. So you could choose the thick, red strap or the thin, black strap, which actually stung more on the palm.
“Yeah, then you and me got the strap for our big fistfight on the school’s front lawn. And we laughed!”
Paul lived across from Maple Crest in a plain house with his parents and five siblings. I was there all the time, especially for Mrs. Blakely’s cookies and street hockey with Paul, always Leafs and Canadiens.
One winter, for the entire neighbourhood, Mr. Chamberlain flooded the school’s field and put up boards. We couldn’t believe it. Our own ice. Huge. Then the next year. And again.
Maple Crest was eventually closed and demolished, giving way to Maple Crest Park. First, a school reunion. There someone photographed Paul and myself, now men, in front of the school holding the large trophies we’d been awarded as kids.
“Oh my God, it’s Tommy Froese!” said Mrs. Walker when I walked into an old classroom. “You loved reading. You were years ahead. And you always liked putting things in their place.” Are you kidding? Remembering your students for two decades?
Which is to say that this isn’t really about Maple Crest or Paul and myself. It’s about how even a small school with a big heart can have an outsized influence on your life.
I just read about a young boy, the writer William P. Young, trekking into the bush with his reluctant father who left him behind. No surprise, William cried and cried. “I remember it like yesterday, the white dot of his shirt disappearing and reappearing, getting smaller each time. I have no memory of ever finding him.”
This is how a kid’s brain works. It’s like wet cement. Put your hands on it and the imprint stays.
It’s something good to think about during back-to-school-month, kids back in class with their lunch and fears and hopes and whatever else they’re carrying. Consider growing challenges in public schools. Whoever you are – teacher, parent, friend – don’t underestimate your influence.
One day my own boy was high jumping at his elementary school on the other side of the world. I took a photo. It’s telling. No matter where or when you jump, you’re a lucky soul if you learn to jump over at least something in life and have a good time doing it.
This isn’t about performance. It’s about being in a place – a school is one good example – where you’re loved for who you are, not for what you do, a place where someone will tell you that the party, indeed the circus of life, isn’t complete without you.
The good news is that if you don’t find this in one place, you’ll find it in another. That little boy, William? That’s what he discovered. If it wasn’t so, we’d all be lost.
Holding trophies they’d been awarded in 1977 as 11-year-old boys, the writer and his friend Paul Blakely in front of Maple Crest School two decades later.