Journal Staff
It was unchecked box on Reginald Learn’s bucket list.
The 84-year-old Sarnian had a distinguished career in transportation and eventually becoming Chief of Operations at the federal Canadian Transport Commission.
But he had one regret, he said. He hadn’t graduated from high school.
So the pride was evident last week when Learn walked across the stage of Sarnia Collegiate Institute and Technical School to accept his diploma, decked out, like the rest of his younger cohort, in Blue Bomber blue and white.
Reg Learn had finished Grade 11 in 1950, when he took a job with the railway and worked his way up the ranks.
When the school board announced last year it planned to amalgamate SCITS with St. Clair, he wrote to see if he could be part of this year’s graduating class.
The rest, as they say, is history.
The commencement ceremony held June 9 was an emotional one at the school.
This fall, students from St. Clair will attend SCITS while the Murphy Road school is renovated, and the following year the combined student body will move over to St. Clair.
SCITS, and its long history, will cease to be.
As these photos by The Journal's Glenn Ogilvie show, that bittersweet feelings continued on Friday when, for the last time, students and staff dressed up for a final “blue and white” day at the Wellington Street school.
