Listen closely, and you can still hear the Panthers roar.
It’s been 50 years since the doors closed on the old Pelham District High School in Fenwick and from time to time, former students have gotten together to reminisce about those good old days.
It happened again earlier this month when some 200 “Panthers” from the Canboro Road school got together at the Fonthill Legion. Attendees came from as far away as British Columbia for the event.
“That's where the name came from. It came from us,” Vilma Moretti said. “We've been Panthers since the (19)30s.”
The school was located at the corner of Canboro and Balfour Street and was home to as many as 1,200 students at its peak. It opened in September 1927 and, until 1958, served students from Fenwick, Ridgeville, Fonthill, North Pelham, Effingham, Wellandport, Wainfleet, West Lincoln, and parts of Welland, and Thorold.
After 1958, things began to shift with the opening of the Thorold/Fonthill High School, followed by E.L. Crossley Secondary School – named for a former Pelham High School principal – which opened its doors in 1963.
Now an apartment building, the former school did host one reunion in 1994.
“They let us have the first floor and we had a wine and cheese in the gym,” Moretti said. “We had decade rooms on the first floor.”
Since then, the group attending each reunion has gotten smaller, but the events are always emotional, Moretti said.
“There's so many hugs and tears,” she said.
Conversations recalled many stories from the school’s past. Sports successes, events and others that were more personal in nature such as sitting for detention.
“That was the conversation,” Moretti said.
“And I always said, well, that’s what remembrance is and then you just make up stories anyway,” she added with a laugh.
This reunion was the ninth time former students have gotten together – the last reunion was held in 2018 – and Moretti said it is more than likely the last one. At least one where she is involved in organizing it. The work is demanding and many of the people involved in organizing it are getting older.
“You never know at this age, late 70s, early 80s,” she said. “You don't know what tomorrow's going to bring.”
But then again, the demand still seems to be there, she said.
“So many people now are saying, you know, we had such a good time … don't you think we could?”
Asked if the fact this most recent reunion could be the last meant this year’s event was bittersweet for Moretti, she answered in the most succinct way possible.
“Yep,” she said.
