Nicholas Donaldson
J.W. Walker students had the rare honour of witnessing a 25-year-old time capsule being opened on Monday in the school gym.
Following an assembly on the topic of perseverance, students watched Dianne DeBenedet and Judy Johanson open a peanut butter jar that had been closed since 1992 when it was buried.
The jar was encased in concrete and the top had to be chipped off before the assembly began.
DeBenedet explained it was her Grade 2 class that had buried the capsule at the former Alexander Mackenzie School, which was razed many years ago.
The capsule was dug up and kept at J.W. Walker when the new school was built, and sat with the label “open in 2017” for a few years.
Johanson, who was the librarian at the time, said the idea for the capsule came when she read the students a book called “One Small Blue Bead,” which was about a caveman boy who dreams about other caves like his.
The students wrote letters and drew pictures about what their lives were like to show to the children of the future.
DeBenedet read the letters out to the students assembled on Monday, which told about the types of vehicles people drove and mentioned the local mill being one of the safest in Canada.
“I’m just surprised at how well-preserved the paper is,” DeBenedet noted.
“It’s like it was put in there yesterday,” echoed Johanson.
DeBenedet and Johanson both said they wished they had told the children to put in more specific information, like what kinds of things were on TV and what toys they were playing with, to better show off how times have changed.
DeBenedet also had some photographs of the children that they decided against putting into the capsule because they thought they would fade.
She also had the original newspaper article about her pupils burying the capsule that she was able to show to the students of today.
Johanson said she plans on getting the contents of the capsule laminated, with J.W. Walker principal Kevin Knutsen saying they could be displayed in the entrance of the school or in the library.
He also noted plans are in place for Walker students to create a time capsule of their own.
