Peter Black
May 15, 2024
Local Journalism Initiative reporter
peterblack@qctonline.com
The graduation season is upon us, as legions of Quebec youth take the next confident step forward on the pathway of life. It is a time of pride and hope for the future leaders of the land.
It is also a time for many a well-worn cliché about hope, pride and pathways to grace the inspiring addresses of guest speakers at hundreds of graduation ceremonies across the province.
Your scribe was invited on two occasions to be the guest speaker at a high school graduation – same school, about 10 years apart, so either memories faded or the grad committee was desperate.
In any event, in the interests of trying to avoid some of the above-mentioned clichés, I decided to try to connect with the graduates by way of what I thought were original approaches.
For the first speech, under the theme of triumphing over adversity, I chose to seek revenge on a teacher who had been my nemesis from primary school to Grade 13 (this was Ontario).
The climax of the speech was my thrilling description of a showdown in Grade 11, when I defiantly ignored said teacher’s suggestion – in front of the whole class! – that I ditch the arts stream and switch to shop. Who knows? If I’d taken his advice, maybe now I’d be a rich and retired lathe operator.
For the other speech I opted to use a then-popular song as a metaphor for academic success, the truly inane “Friday” by one-hit wonder Rebecca Black (no relation).
I interpreted her lyrics – “Lookin’ forward to the weekend” as “looking forward to post-secondary education” and “fun, fun, fun” as “marks, marks, marks.” Turned out to not be the crowd-pleaser I thought. Tough crowd, these future leaders.
I think my best bit was how the group of eager and earnest fresh-faced graduates brought to mind the Quebec NDP caucus. This was June 2011, a month after the election that saw Quebec elect 59 very, very surprised N-Dippers to Parliament. (Three elections later, one NDP MP remains).
So, heaven forbid, were I to be called upon again to address high school graduates, more than a decade after the last go, what could I possibly say?
The underlying message of the two previous remarks was to embrace and find your place in a rapidly changing world – this was well before smartphones had begun to infest the young brains of the planet, when the Internet was still a marvellous tool for the advancement of humanity.
How about … “Dear Class of 2024. Don’t despair; the future might not be totally bleak. Some of you might find jobs you like, but most of you won’t.
Some of you might be able to afford a house if you scrimp and save for 15 years to scrape together a down payment. Most of you will have to wait until your parents leave you the house, unless they sell it to pay exorbitant nursing home fees – pray you don’t get stuck with paying for that.
Some of you will go on to English CEGEPs and universities in Quebec, where you will contribute to the decline of the French language. Some of you will leave Quebec because of the persistent paranoia about the state of the French language and develop and deploy your skills elsewhere.
Most of the young women graduating today will go on to dominate in professional schools from law to medicine to dentistry to accounting to architecture, with business and engineering the next targets.
As for the young men? S’up, dudes? The number of male high school graduates aspiring to post-secondary education in Quebec is plunging, with mental health issues becoming epidemic.
This “failure to launch,” this inability to escape from the parental basement and take responsibility for your life, is a crisis the experts say is a recipe for social upheaval.
Enough of the doom and gloom. The fact is, dear graduates, there has never been an easy time to take the next step into the future. Graduating classes from time immemorial know their destiny is in their own hands, no matter what the graduation speaker says.
But “fun, fun, fun” equals “marks, marks, marks.” That’s inspirational!
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