Conrad Boyce is the editor and publisher of the Cosmos. He has a BA in English from the University of Alberta and a diploma in journalism from Grant Macewan Community College in Edmonton. He lived and worked in the Yukon and Vancouver Island before arriving in Ontario in 1995. Beyond these pages, he is the Artistic Director of OnStage Uxbridge, and the technical manager of the Uxbridge Music Hall.
In the future spotlight
With a few exceptions - perhaps those who had to stand for the full two and a half hours, or those who had to crouch uncomfortably on the ground - most of the capacity crowd at the all-candidates meeting at the Seniors’ Centre Sunday night seemed to thoroughly enjoy the proceedings. Certainly in the couple of days since, we’ve had many people call or drop in to thank us for staging the event (which apparently no one is doing in either Scugog or Clarington), and to comment on the uniformly high quality of the folks on the stage.
I must agree. All of them seemed comfortable with a microphone and passionate about their party’s platform, and even Libertarian candidate Blaize Barnicoat, by far the youngest of the six, had she been accused of dressing a tad inappropriately for the occasion, would have smiled and said that it was hardly the Libertarian creed to attempt to abide by anyone else’s dress code.
The candidates represented a wide age range, with, I suspect, each decade represented (the incumbent being close to my near-senior status, if not over). But as I watched and listened to them, they morphed into a group of 11 to 13-year-olds that I had encountered just a few weeks earlier at Scott Central School in Sandford. Because that group was just as passionate and just as talented.
I had been delighted to receive an e-mail invitation to be a judge at the school’s annual Public Speaking Contest. It wasn’t a voluntary exercise; every student in Grades 6 to 8 at Scott Central was obliged to prepare a three-minute speech on a topic of their choosing. Their teachers gave them tips not only on the drafting of the speech, but on its presentation - when to look up, when to look their audience in the eye, what hand gestures to use and when.
Now, the top 14 speakers had been selected to deliver their work in front of all their assembled classmates, and in front of us judges, whose task it would be to select three of the students to move on to the regional contest the following week in Mount Albert. The judges were also three in number, and I was honoured to discover that the others were VIPs indeed, who were veterans in the judge’s role. One was a celebrated graduate of Scott Central, singer and music teacher Leah Speers (now Daniels), whom I’ve known since she was seven in the Uxbridge Youth Choir. The other was a respected parent volunteer at the school, Rev. Andrew Allison, the popular preacher at St. Paul’s Presbyterian Church in Leaskdale.
Never having judged a school speaking contest before, I wasn’t certain what to expect. Would they all speak haltingly about “adult” topics like capital punishment or abortion? The other judges assured me I was in for a pleasant surprise. And they were right. I was blown away.
Some of them did speak about “serious” topics: Jordan on teen suicide, Oliver on smoking, James on animal abuse. But they brought them down to a meaningful level, using examples and language that hushed their pre-teen audience. And they obviously weren’t topics that these kids had picked out of a hat. They believed strongly in what they had to say, and we listened.
Rachel talked about the role of women in wartime, using the experience of her own relatives to make herpoints. Sarah talked about dreams, Maddy about the pros and cons of starting school later in the morning.
David spoke passionately about the need for a good skatepark in Uxbridge, and how Council was letting their youngest citizens down by dragging their feet on the issue.
The judges alternated in giving critiques to the speakers, and I always seemed to get the future stand-up comics. There was Donnie, who talked about the benefits, and the burdens, of being an older brother. There was Liam, who extolled the virtues of Kraft Dinner, and lectured us on just how it should be prepared. There was Christy, who advocated that her room had every right to be messy, and told us why it was the universe unfolding as it should.
All in all, we spent only a little more than an hour listening to these amazing youth. But I wished it had been longer. They were funny, they were moving, they were just plain eloquent. I never heard how our three choices did at the Mount Albert contest, whether they went farther. But I suspect I’ll see some of them again. Maybe at Yuk Yuk’s, maybe at a Council meeting advocating for their community, and just maybe at an all-candidates meeting for a future election, sitting behind the microphone. The public speaking program at Scott Central is that good.
