The following is the valedictorian address given during graduation ceremony at Clearwater Secondary School on Friday evening, June 5:
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, my name is Reid Rebinsky.
And my name is Justin Sutherland.
Tonight I see before me future doctors, lawyers,and about $10 million worth of organs. One thing I have learned in high school is when speaking in front of a large group of people, imagine them all naked and well ... you all are looking fantastic tonight.
What we are here to talk to you about this evening, is something called grit. Grit is courage, bravery and the strength of character. Just kidding I’m pretty sure Mr. Coates has given you all this speech multiple times, eh Coates?
No, but the purpose of our speech is to recollect our high school memories and take what we have learned over the past five years, to help us be successful in the future.
However, first, on behalf of the class of 2015, we would like to thank our family, friends, and the wonderful teachers of CSS for being here today.
First of all, I would like to thank Mr. Whelen for leading by example and showing us to never give up, just like he never gives up on the Leafs ... and Mr. Lau for teaching us to always try our hardest at everything, even just during a non-competitive game of musical chairs.
We also would like to send out a heartfelt thank you to Skye Buck whom is no longer with us but I am sure he is over there sinking 3’s and dunking hoops. Besides being an amazing athlete, Skye left behind a great legacy at CSS and within the community of Clearwater. He shared his love of sports, positive attitude, and left us with words to live by: “The only real failure is the failure to try.” All we can do is get up in the morning and try our best. Nothing else matters.”
Skye inspired myself and many other students with this quote for the years he taught at CSS. Every time I came across something hard during school, such as a lousy research paper for example, Skye’s quote would fill my mind and this would drive me to work harder to achieve success. I also found this quote extremely valuable during Mr. Whelen’s lengthy lectures – it inspired me to try my hardest to stay awake. It inspired me to try and duck when Mr. Buck threw chalk at us in Math 8. As many as you also know, we have been deemed “the worst class ever” since Grade 8, so this quote drove us to hold onto the title as the years passed by.
As we move forward in life Skye’s quote is one that we should try our best to keep in mind. Starting this new chapter in our lives is going to be scary. We have been lucky enough to have grown up in this small town where we were not only nurtured by our families and friends, but by our teachers and community members.
Up until now we have always had someone to nag us, “Are you passing math yet? Did ya get your homework done? Why are you late? and my favorite, are you high?” They also helped us make all the tough decisions.
Our failures have been owned by ourselves, our parents, and the community. So it is reasonable that when we leave the shelter of this town and begin making our own decisions, owning our own failures, we will be afraid. This is where it will be valuable to think of Skye’s quote.
As long as we are trying our absolute best and continue to push forward, we never will have truly failed.
With all of our newly found freedom of choice there will be limitless opportunities that come along with our feat.
For the first time in our lives, our parents will be right: we can be whatever we want to be when we grow up, doing or trying anything we please.
As long we acknowledge that our setbacks are not ultimately failures, we can do anything with our lives.
Alright, so we’re here to celebrate the fact we’re out of this place for good ... unless some of you plan on coming back here to teach. *Cough* losers *Cough* but really, think, after tonight we have a few weeks left of school and then we are out into the real world – because the world we’ve been living in up until now has been imaginary.
No longer are we “Out Here” but we will soon be “Out There” and quite frankly thats pretty freakin scary.
Deciding what you want to do with the rest of your life can be stressful, so we’re here to help predict your futures.
Seeing as we’re not receiving yearbooks for our final year of high school, we’d like to take some time now to award the superlatives. Least likely to take over the family business – Larson Wadlegger, most likely to be a millionaire – Daniel Schuh, Most likely to spend 1 million on his truck, Austin Rauch, most likely to get his car run over while in park, Husman Sharif, Most likely to break every bone in their body before the age of 21, Robin Fraser, best beard game goes to, Jacob Madden, most likely to end up in a cop car every night – Curtis Podbisky, cutest couple – Justin Hudema and Austin Willier, least likely to be successful – Reid Rebinsky, biggest life of the party – Kiran Sharif, most likely to be a softy – Jared Walker, best 27 year old – Cole Fink, Best hair goes out to Husman and his wicked poolboy life guard hair.
Now, coming from a small logging community we cannot help but guarantee you a few of the young men and women whom are uncomfortably seated up here will become employed in the logging industry, whether it be cutting trees or planing boards. But nonetheless we have some future millionaires up here like myself. Callum Macleod is going to be a pipeline welder, burn rod get check kinda guy he’s gonna drive a lifted diesel, the things gonna roll coal like a train and he is going to be hard as ... ya we will leave that part out.
Mitchell Graham will one day put his immense knowledge to work and become some high class wolf on Wall Street-like figure and be the life of every party in the world and make that cash money.
So now that we’re past all that school crap, let’s talk about the good stuff. Like all the real life things we learned over the last four years – or five in some cases.
Little things we figured out, like how to style our hair so it looks like we just got out of bed, and, as all the guys know too well, how to hide an erection.
Which conveniently leads us into the final, and I’m sure in most cases, favourite lesson high school life gave us. Sex-ed. And I’m not talking about what they taught us in health. I’m talking about rounding the bases, Adam and Eve-ing it.
I don’t need to go into details of how high school taught us about sex-ed very much, a lot of you did a lot of it. And the rest of you can use your imagination. But I will say this: It was a blast. Pun intended.
Overall, we’ve made some great memories and learned a lot of valuable lessons. We’ve been given advice at school that includes everything from “never get an arts degree” to “don’t eat the yellow snow.” We’d like to leave you with just one last piece of advice before we part with high school. Live long and prosper. Oh, and Life’s a Garden, Dig It.