A discovery in the wall of a classroom at Winkler's Garden Valley Collegiate (GVC) has stirred up some excitement.
Fifteen years ago during a parent-teacher meeting, GVC Automotive Instructor Robin Mondor was told a story that greatly piqued his interest. He explained a visiting parent informed him of a time capsule in one of the walls of his classroom. Then, five years later, another parent shared the same story.
Since then, Mondor said he's been waiting for the day when the wall would come down. That day recently came, slowly revealing three glass vials containing tightly wound papers with signatures dating back over 50 years.
GVC's automotive classroom was originally the school's art room, and the brick wall taken down was the former kiln room.
"So when it came time to tear this down, I told Carrie (GVC Principal) the story that there's a time capsule in this wall, and I want to be part of the destruction of the wall," Mondor said with a laugh. "And so we started taking things apart. We took the seal off the top just to look down, and we discovered in one of the corners that there was this little vial that looked sort of like a test tube. And so I pull it out, and sure enough, there was something in there...And then Zane Strydom (GVC automotive Instructor) and I started to take the wall apart a little bit more and found another one. And then we found the third one."
GVC Principal Carrie Friesen says once they made the discovery, they had to unravel a small mystery. She said the papers had little codes written on them, and they were unsure what those codes meant.
"And what they (codes) did was they corresponded with page numbers in the yearbook. So, of course, that wasn't clear to start with, but upon a little investigating, we put our heads together and we figured out that it was actually referring to a page number in the yearbook and every single one of those students faces and names corresponded with the signature on some of the papers. So yeah, it was pretty fun."
Friesen says they're now looking forward to seeing if any of the people that signed their names would like to come and take a look at the find.
The papers also included the name of a teacher from 1972.
"We kept taking the wall apart because we always thought there would be art and stuff like that from the art teacher," added Mondor.
Mondor says the first paper they unrolled contained the name, Robert Cooney. He was the first auto teacher in the program at GVC.
"It made my week," added Mondor. "It made my year because it's so exciting. I've always heard about it and I've always wanted to try to find it. I was always looking at the bricks wondering, which one looks different? But I never thought it would be in one of these little test tubes."
