Several hundred former students, staff and teachers gathered to mark the 75th Reunion of the Sharbot Lake High School on Saturday. The original high school is now gone, but the spirit is still alive at the Granite Ridge Education Centre, the Kindergarten to Grade 12 facility that occupies the same property where the first school was built in 1948 at a cost of $90,000.
Prominent Frontenac County resident H.J. Thomson had campaigned for years to establish the first five-room high school in Sharbot Lake. Until then, students in North Frontenac wanting a secondary education would go to Perth or Sydenham and board for the week with relatives or families.
The original school was built to accommodate 80 students, however 128 showed up on the first day of classes. They arrived from all over the County in old bread delivery trucks, discarded army vehicles and half-ton trucks with seats in the back.
Reunion organizer Diane Lake says two former students from the first classes made it to the reunion on the weekend, while a former teacher, now in her 90’s, sent a congratulatory greeting.