Denis Johnston, VHS class of '67
Interviewed by Alia Sargent
VHS class of 2012
VHS class of 2012
A: How did your family end up in Victoria?
D: My mother was, I think, born in Victoria and grew up on Roseberry, which is just up near the Jewish cemetery...and that was the family home. My father’s mother was widowed in the flu epidemic of 1919 that followed World War One, and to support her two children she ran a boarding house in small town Saskatchewan--she was Englis--she came out to marry a cousin who was a butcher. One of her boarders was the local bank manager, and bank managers got posted anywhere just like the military back then. And he was posted to Victoria, so he proposed to his landlady: he got used to her taking care of him and the landlady had two small children--so he was posted to Victoria and he said 'well, will you marry me and come to Victoria with me?', and she agreed to; she didn’t have a lot of options, as this was in about 1926-- so that’s how she came to Victoria.
My father, one of his boy hood memories was that he had never seen a hotel elevator--he had seen grain elevators but not a hotel elevator--and while his mother was getting married he was riding up and down on the elevator in the hotel Vancouver where they were getting married. And they proceeded to Victoria and bought a house at 15 Cook Street, so your right down by Dallas road and Beacon Hill was across the street, so that’s how he came to Victoria. My mom and dad met at high school--they both went to Vic high and they both graduated in the 30’s.
D: My mother was, I think, born in Victoria and grew up on Roseberry, which is just up near the Jewish cemetery...and that was the family home. My father’s mother was widowed in the flu epidemic of 1919 that followed World War One, and to support her two children she ran a boarding house in small town Saskatchewan--she was Englis--she came out to marry a cousin who was a butcher. One of her boarders was the local bank manager, and bank managers got posted anywhere just like the military back then. And he was posted to Victoria, so he proposed to his landlady: he got used to her taking care of him and the landlady had two small children--so he was posted to Victoria and he said 'well, will you marry me and come to Victoria with me?', and she agreed to; she didn’t have a lot of options, as this was in about 1926-- so that’s how she came to Victoria.
My father, one of his boy hood memories was that he had never seen a hotel elevator--he had seen grain elevators but not a hotel elevator--and while his mother was getting married he was riding up and down on the elevator in the hotel Vancouver where they were getting married. And they proceeded to Victoria and bought a house at 15 Cook Street, so your right down by Dallas road and Beacon Hill was across the street, so that’s how he came to Victoria. My mom and dad met at high school--they both went to Vic high and they both graduated in the 30’s.
A: What was school like for you?
Calamity Players, VHS 1966-67
D: I can remember the first time I set foot in Vic High, and my sister (class of 63) was going to a basketball game at Vic High on a Friday night, and I guess my parents must have said you can go but you have to take your brother, because she certainly wouldn’t have done it willingly because I was five years younger than her. And she was dating one of the basketball stars. So I can remember coming in the Vining Street entrance and down the steps and back then the basketball games were very well attended, and the school was the provincial champion 3 or 4 times between the mid-fifties and the late-sixties; so like every four years they were getting another provincial title, and it was just routine so this was a really big deal. So I can just remember coming down, and the noise building as we walked down the steps and then hitting the floor of the new gym and it just exploded; there was colour, the bleachers where completely full of teenagers and they were screaming for their team and the balcony of the new gym was filled with people and their were cheerleaders, and the Totems had these silk sweat suit outfits that went over their basketball uniform and I just thought oh man I want to come here , this is where I want to go to school--and I never wanted to go anywhere else--and I was twelve at the time and when I was 15 I got to come here--it was only a two year high school at that time and I was a year ahead, I had skipped a grade so I was here from the age of 15 and I was almost 17 when I finished and I just loved it.
I think most kids were unhappy at junior high and I was no exception, I was kind of unhappy at junior high and I always did well in school--that wasn’t the issue, but the things that interested me didn’t seem very important to the junior high culture. When I got to Vic High there were people everywhere who were interested in the same stuff I was interested in, which was history, literature, music, drama. I even took chemistry eleven and twelve which was a terrible mistake--I have no interest in science but I didn’t know it then, I was just interested in everything. So I just loved coming here and it was like the world opened up for me when I came to Vic High. We had a reunion of the class of '67 three years ago, and I went into a committee meeting because I was the president of Calamity Players which was a skit group--we would write and produce our own skits in the auditorium and they elected me president of the group so I was in charge of this. It was like herding cats, they were just so talented. We had two professional dancers in the group. We had one person who went on to become the Chair of Drama at York University, another who became a production manager for the Commonwealth Games and the Olympic Games.
I realised the only people I knew on the board weere people who were in the band and who hung out in the auditorium--there was a grand piano their and every lunch hour someone would be playing the piano, it was just routine--and we would sit and bring our lunches and we would usually put our lunches on the edge of the auditorium and eat and chat--that was our social centre. That was what was bizaree about the reunion--is realizing I knew those people, and a few people I played little league baseball with. You don’t get to know people in your classes very much....
I think most kids were unhappy at junior high and I was no exception, I was kind of unhappy at junior high and I always did well in school--that wasn’t the issue, but the things that interested me didn’t seem very important to the junior high culture. When I got to Vic High there were people everywhere who were interested in the same stuff I was interested in, which was history, literature, music, drama. I even took chemistry eleven and twelve which was a terrible mistake--I have no interest in science but I didn’t know it then, I was just interested in everything. So I just loved coming here and it was like the world opened up for me when I came to Vic High. We had a reunion of the class of '67 three years ago, and I went into a committee meeting because I was the president of Calamity Players which was a skit group--we would write and produce our own skits in the auditorium and they elected me president of the group so I was in charge of this. It was like herding cats, they were just so talented. We had two professional dancers in the group. We had one person who went on to become the Chair of Drama at York University, another who became a production manager for the Commonwealth Games and the Olympic Games.
I realised the only people I knew on the board weere people who were in the band and who hung out in the auditorium--there was a grand piano their and every lunch hour someone would be playing the piano, it was just routine--and we would sit and bring our lunches and we would usually put our lunches on the edge of the auditorium and eat and chat--that was our social centre. That was what was bizaree about the reunion--is realizing I knew those people, and a few people I played little league baseball with. You don’t get to know people in your classes very much....
A: What were your teachers like?
D: I had a number of very good teachers--the drama teacher--I never took a drama course, I always did drama extra-curricular; but the drama teacher Mr. Farr, he was a completely fabulous director, and we did four one act plays in two years, two one year, two the next. That was all we did, we had professional caliber student actors in it--I wasn’t the best actor by a long shot, but I could hold my own with the others and I usually had leading roles. It was always easier for boys in drama because there were fewer of them, and most plays where written with more male roles then female roles. All of this was done outside of school hours...
I had an English lit 12 teacher named Mr. Evans. Mr. Evans was Welsh--he was a beautiful speaker, he could sing--and he was short--Welsh men tend to be short and can sing--and he was a wonderful teacher. He only taught here for eight years--when we left in 1967 he left, and he was sent to the school board to be assistant superintendant, or something and when he left we had a plaque made. The students who really adored him, which was probably six or eight or ten of us, we got together and had a plaque made at some trophy shop mounted on wood, got permission from the principle to mount it at the front of the classroom. It was a takeoff of the old cliché 'George Washington slept here', and it just said 'I.D. Evans taught here 1959 to 1967'. I came back to visit the school a number of years later and I went up to look at the plaque and it was gone--I went down to the principal and said that plaque that we bought for Mr. Evans is gone, he said, "Oh, Denis, he took it.".
I was already interested in literature generally, but that course gave it a structure and I understood the historical progression of literature--I mean the joke about that kind of survey course was from Beowulf to Virginia Wolfe, and indeed there was Beowulf and there was Virginia Wolf in the course and everything in between, so it was a survey course.
I had an English lit 12 teacher named Mr. Evans. Mr. Evans was Welsh--he was a beautiful speaker, he could sing--and he was short--Welsh men tend to be short and can sing--and he was a wonderful teacher. He only taught here for eight years--when we left in 1967 he left, and he was sent to the school board to be assistant superintendant, or something and when he left we had a plaque made. The students who really adored him, which was probably six or eight or ten of us, we got together and had a plaque made at some trophy shop mounted on wood, got permission from the principle to mount it at the front of the classroom. It was a takeoff of the old cliché 'George Washington slept here', and it just said 'I.D. Evans taught here 1959 to 1967'. I came back to visit the school a number of years later and I went up to look at the plaque and it was gone--I went down to the principal and said that plaque that we bought for Mr. Evans is gone, he said, "Oh, Denis, he took it.".
I was already interested in literature generally, but that course gave it a structure and I understood the historical progression of literature--I mean the joke about that kind of survey course was from Beowulf to Virginia Wolfe, and indeed there was Beowulf and there was Virginia Wolf in the course and everything in between, so it was a survey course.
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A: What did you do after high school?
D: I went into university, I actually avoided studying English and theatre which I was good at and instead got a degree in math which I was not nearly so good at because I thought I could get a job with it--which I did and I got a job and went to Ottawa and worked in computer land for a couple of years, and while I was there, what I really wanted to be was a teacher, so I came back. So I had my math qualification and my computer qualification in my pocket and I went back and got teacher training. Mr. Farr by then , my old mentor was co-teaching the drama methods course. I had no credit courses in drama, I had just been doing it most of my life at that point, but Mr. Farr was teaching this methods course in drama and he said oh of course you can take the course even though you are completely unqualified for it--Mr. Farr had me come down and student teach with him. And he had me as part of my practicum for student teaching--he had me direct a play with his grade twelve acting class. He took the grade 11 class and he gave me the kids who knew what we were doing, that was the measure of his quality, and we won the festival that year. We put on a really good production that year, it was ensemble piece with eighteen kids and I had great fun with it and we did a really good job, and it was quite funny and everyone was really happy with it, and at the end of the year Mr. Farr retired so that I could take his job. So I was hired here at the age of 24--I was the drama teacher at Vic high
A: How long did you teach here?
D: I taught here for six years, the first year I taught math, English, and drama, and at the end of it I went to the principal and said please don’t give me any more English, please just give me math and drama and he said you must be really good at it--your so creative. And I figured it out, English has always come easy to me and I didn’t know how to start teaching a kid who couldn’t do English. So I tried all kinds of things that year and maybe if I had stayed with it longer, but neither drama nor math came easy to me; I had to break them down into component skills, and so I think that’s why I could teach both of those--so my other five years here always had typically four blocks of drama and two blocks of math. So I taught math and drama at Vic high for six years and I put on probably eight or ten or twelve one act plays in that time for public consumption and 3 full length plays, almost all of it was extracurricular and I think I burned myself out.
A: I read your valedictorian speech, what influenced you in writing It?
D: Nothing, nothing influenced me I wrote it out of my own head, I have since come to believe that all valedictorian speeches sound more or less the same, but I didn’t know that at the time, fortunately, so I thought I was being very inventive and creative. It was very highly regarded, the teachers told me it was the best one they ever heard. I tried very hard to speak on behalf of people I didn’t even know who went to the school, so that’s why I mentioned Fairey Tech, and I was seeking common experiences, and I mentioned buzzers that hummed, and the water fountains were built for people shorter then we were, and about the long wet walk from fairey Tech to the main building, so there was no influence--it was an honest creative attempt to speak on behalf of everyone.
A: Are there any major differences between teenager now and teenagers when you were in high school?
D: They dress very differently; I’m shocked--when I go to Edward Milne Community School once a week--at some of the outfits girls wear--there was this grade nine girl....who was wearing a low cut peasant blouse, and I’m going 'boy she would have been sent home', and [back in '67 - ed.] I don’t believe women were allowed to wear pants at all, and no one was allowed to wear shorts. Here’s another difference, is that if I or anyone of my kind got into a conflict with a teacher, we were in terrible trouble at home, and I don’t think that’s always the case now. I think that parents now a days blame the school or blame the teacher and maybe our parents did in private when we weren’t present, but boy it was pretty much a united front, we toed the line. I don’t know if people skipped class often, I can remember skipping a class right in the middle of June and I hung out in the auditorium, and got caught--of course--by my favourite teacher, my literature teacher who walked into the auditorium to find out where the hell I was and there I was seated at the auditorium piano chatting as I always was, and he made some comment, and he couldn’t do anything to me I reasoned because I was writing the exam for scholarship, he couldn’t withdraw my recommendation.
D: I went into university, I actually avoided studying English and theatre which I was good at and instead got a degree in math which I was not nearly so good at because I thought I could get a job with it--which I did and I got a job and went to Ottawa and worked in computer land for a couple of years, and while I was there, what I really wanted to be was a teacher, so I came back. So I had my math qualification and my computer qualification in my pocket and I went back and got teacher training. Mr. Farr by then , my old mentor was co-teaching the drama methods course. I had no credit courses in drama, I had just been doing it most of my life at that point, but Mr. Farr was teaching this methods course in drama and he said oh of course you can take the course even though you are completely unqualified for it--Mr. Farr had me come down and student teach with him. And he had me as part of my practicum for student teaching--he had me direct a play with his grade twelve acting class. He took the grade 11 class and he gave me the kids who knew what we were doing, that was the measure of his quality, and we won the festival that year. We put on a really good production that year, it was ensemble piece with eighteen kids and I had great fun with it and we did a really good job, and it was quite funny and everyone was really happy with it, and at the end of the year Mr. Farr retired so that I could take his job. So I was hired here at the age of 24--I was the drama teacher at Vic high
A: How long did you teach here?
D: I taught here for six years, the first year I taught math, English, and drama, and at the end of it I went to the principal and said please don’t give me any more English, please just give me math and drama and he said you must be really good at it--your so creative. And I figured it out, English has always come easy to me and I didn’t know how to start teaching a kid who couldn’t do English. So I tried all kinds of things that year and maybe if I had stayed with it longer, but neither drama nor math came easy to me; I had to break them down into component skills, and so I think that’s why I could teach both of those--so my other five years here always had typically four blocks of drama and two blocks of math. So I taught math and drama at Vic high for six years and I put on probably eight or ten or twelve one act plays in that time for public consumption and 3 full length plays, almost all of it was extracurricular and I think I burned myself out.
A: I read your valedictorian speech, what influenced you in writing It?
D: Nothing, nothing influenced me I wrote it out of my own head, I have since come to believe that all valedictorian speeches sound more or less the same, but I didn’t know that at the time, fortunately, so I thought I was being very inventive and creative. It was very highly regarded, the teachers told me it was the best one they ever heard. I tried very hard to speak on behalf of people I didn’t even know who went to the school, so that’s why I mentioned Fairey Tech, and I was seeking common experiences, and I mentioned buzzers that hummed, and the water fountains were built for people shorter then we were, and about the long wet walk from fairey Tech to the main building, so there was no influence--it was an honest creative attempt to speak on behalf of everyone.
A: Are there any major differences between teenager now and teenagers when you were in high school?
D: They dress very differently; I’m shocked--when I go to Edward Milne Community School once a week--at some of the outfits girls wear--there was this grade nine girl....who was wearing a low cut peasant blouse, and I’m going 'boy she would have been sent home', and [back in '67 - ed.] I don’t believe women were allowed to wear pants at all, and no one was allowed to wear shorts. Here’s another difference, is that if I or anyone of my kind got into a conflict with a teacher, we were in terrible trouble at home, and I don’t think that’s always the case now. I think that parents now a days blame the school or blame the teacher and maybe our parents did in private when we weren’t present, but boy it was pretty much a united front, we toed the line. I don’t know if people skipped class often, I can remember skipping a class right in the middle of June and I hung out in the auditorium, and got caught--of course--by my favourite teacher, my literature teacher who walked into the auditorium to find out where the hell I was and there I was seated at the auditorium piano chatting as I always was, and he made some comment, and he couldn’t do anything to me I reasoned because I was writing the exam for scholarship, he couldn’t withdraw my recommendation.
Calamity Players, VHS 1966-67
A: Have you noticed any changes in society between then and now?
D: I am offended by the sense of entitlement that many people have now a days; they seem to think they deserve this or they deserve that...I think you earn everything, and that was certainly our attitude in school. No one thought of living in their parent’s basement; we all got out as fast as we could, because we thought that was what we should do. So let’s get on with our lives and let’s do stuff, so people got jobs or people went to university, or people went to Europe. People did what they wanted to do but they wanted to get on with it and earn it.
A: What where some of the big local news stories when you were in high school?
D: Expo '67--Huge, It was the World’s Fair in Montreal, it was the first time the World’s Fair had ever been held in Canada. World’s Fair in other venues had been huge events in those venues: Seattle 1962 was huge for Seattle; it was when they built the space needle and the mono rail; in Chicago in the 1880’s it was called the Columbian Exposition or something--they were number two so they tried harder, in terms of U.S. cities so they became the intellectual centre of the United States and all of this happened around the Chicago Exposition. So Expo 67 did that for Canada. In 1965, Canada adopted the maple leaf flag, and the bi and bi commission, the bilingualism and biculturalism and 'O Canada' officially became the national anthem....Expo 67, plus all of the Canadian nationalistic things.
A: What are some of your fondest childhood memories?
D: Being taken to the Victoria Day parade, my parents would take me. Playing softball summer evenings on the grounds of Craigdarroch Castle, before I started going to summer theatre schools or working summers, I would have the summer off in junior high. And there would be pick up softball games every night and there would be ten to twelve kids my age from around that neighbourhood and we would just play softball and shoot the bull.
Alia Sargent
2012
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D: I am offended by the sense of entitlement that many people have now a days; they seem to think they deserve this or they deserve that...I think you earn everything, and that was certainly our attitude in school. No one thought of living in their parent’s basement; we all got out as fast as we could, because we thought that was what we should do. So let’s get on with our lives and let’s do stuff, so people got jobs or people went to university, or people went to Europe. People did what they wanted to do but they wanted to get on with it and earn it.
A: What where some of the big local news stories when you were in high school?
D: Expo '67--Huge, It was the World’s Fair in Montreal, it was the first time the World’s Fair had ever been held in Canada. World’s Fair in other venues had been huge events in those venues: Seattle 1962 was huge for Seattle; it was when they built the space needle and the mono rail; in Chicago in the 1880’s it was called the Columbian Exposition or something--they were number two so they tried harder, in terms of U.S. cities so they became the intellectual centre of the United States and all of this happened around the Chicago Exposition. So Expo 67 did that for Canada. In 1965, Canada adopted the maple leaf flag, and the bi and bi commission, the bilingualism and biculturalism and 'O Canada' officially became the national anthem....Expo 67, plus all of the Canadian nationalistic things.
A: What are some of your fondest childhood memories?
D: Being taken to the Victoria Day parade, my parents would take me. Playing softball summer evenings on the grounds of Craigdarroch Castle, before I started going to summer theatre schools or working summers, I would have the summer off in junior high. And there would be pick up softball games every night and there would be ten to twelve kids my age from around that neighbourhood and we would just play softball and shoot the bull.
Alia Sargent
2012
Go Back to Home Page
