Awalt’s Arcade gets QHS students playing on the same team
Ruby Pratka, Local Journalism Initiative reporter
editor@qctonline.com
As Quebec High School students prepared for exams and graduation and started looking ahead to summer this past week, history teacher DJ Awalt’s classroom was one of the few places they weren’t eager to leave.
Over the past eight years, Awalt, who amassed a huge video game collection growing up in Prince Edward Island in the 90s, has transformed his classroom into Awalt’s Arcade, filling it with vintage game consoles. On their lunch breaks, students stream into the classroom, waiting in line to challenge their classmates to multiplayer games and try to beat each other’s high scores at Pac-Man, Mario Bros and other classics.
Awalt said the idea for the arcade started to take shape when his girlfriend noticed that the games were taking up rather a lot of space in the couple’s Quebec City apartment. At the same time, he said, “I saw kids on their phones during breaks, not talking to each other. I wanted to do something like an arcade to give them a place to socialize, because that’s what an arcade is supposed to be, a place where you play with your friends. Games are great for bringing people together.”
Students from throughout the school come to the arcade and get to know their class- mates. During the QCT’s recent visit, Mohammad, a shy Secondary IV student from Iran, who arrived in Quebec City with his family a few months ago speaking no French and hesitant English, spent the period re-enacting a Liverpool- Real Madrid match with four other older students on a FIFA console. Secondary I students Owen Mackenzie and Raphaël Cloutier were trying to beat Mackenzie’s pinball record. Other students lined up in front of an old TV to play a popular fishing game. Another Secondary I student said he’d learned about the arcade from his older sister and brother, and it was one of the reasons he chose to attend QHS. The annual weekend overnight game marathon, where Awalt keeps the arcade open all night, is the stuff of teen legend. Some of Awalt’s fellow teachers also drop in on their lunch breaks or after school, trying to outdo each other.
Awalt moved cheerfully from console to console, handing out extra controllers. “Now, kids play a lot of online games, and people aren’t always nice online,” he said.
“Everyone here,” Cloutier chimed in, “is nice.”
The younger students in the room are expected to finish high school in 2027 or 2028, after the planned opening of the new consolidated high school. Awalt hopes he’ll be able to take the arcade with him when the school moves, maybe even putting it in a separate space outside of his crowded classroom. “There’s a need for spaces like this in all schools, where students can have fun and socialize. We hope the same sense of community will still be there in the new school.”