Ãcole Herbert Spencer Elementary School's principal says she knows the torture of young love when she sees it in her students.
Tracy Fulton has been there.
"I have a lot of sympathy when our little kids in Grade 1 fall in love with each other, and the girls chase them around the playground, and they want a kiss. - I can really relate," Fulton says, laughing as she tells about the times she ran after her now-husband Jack, who was then just a terrified first grader.
"I probably pinned him to some tree and kissed him," she says, "because little girls do that. I don't have that memory, but I know they do that.
"It was pretty much love at first sight," she says, smiling at the memory of little Jack. "He was the cutest freckle-faced kid you ever saw."
Fulton went from being a lovestruck Spencer student in the 1960s to a teacher and now head of the school that is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year.
Memories - like Fulton's and many others - will be on display at the school's anniversary party in June. The school has been calling for former students to send in written submission of their favourite grade-school memories, which will be posted them on a "walk down memory lane" at the anniversary.
"Probably the strongest memory for me is from October until early in the spring, everyday from Grade 1 walking to Queen's Park, by ourselves, to go skating, and it was 10 cents," Fulton says. "All of these kids would flood into Queen's Park, and we'd leave there at four in the afternoon. It would be dark, and I remember Jack walking me up Regina Street carrying my skates and my mom standing in the window waiting. Then he'd drop me off, and he'd walk home."
That was in the days when kids could walk to the park by themselves.
Spencer teacher Emily MacLeod was a student at the school in the 1980s, when kids were no longer allowed to roam quite so freely.
MacLeod has a multi-generational connection to the school. She and her two sisters followed in the footsteps of her father and aunt who went to Spencer, and now her niece is a Spencer student.
"I loved to be here," MacLeod says about her elementary school days. "The learning was great, but aside from that, it was the friendships and the pride in the school and the experience from day to day."
MacLeod wasn't quite as boy-crazy as Fulton, though.
"I really just didn't have time for them," she says about boys.
"I remember boys trying to pin me down or pulling my braids. I remember getting quite frustrated with that. I don't remember blatantly chasing them. - I remember actually one boy continually pulling on my ponytail and me finally turning around and giving him the whatfor right as the teacher walked in, and I was the one who got into trouble."
The school building has changed over the years, and for MacLeod being in a new school building has swept away some of the nostalgia.
"The physical building is different, so it's not the same," she says. "It feels like a different school, but there are aspects that feel like the same. For instance, the pride that you see in the kids about their school."
There is also a similar level of community involvement and support from parents, she says.
"That felt very familiar to me. You know, just being a part of what Spencer is and the energy felt familiar to me."
The school is hoping that as many former students and staff as possible make their own "connection" back to Spencer next month and attend the school's 100th anniversary open house on June 9, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
www.twitter.com/nikimhope
