St. Paul’s School principal Quinn Haider unscrewed the top of a long silver tube. He pulled out crinkled sheets of paper covered with drawings and writings. Haider pointed to an article from Yorkton This Week written 25 years ago. It was about the creation of the time capsule Haider had just opened.
The time capsule was created in 1992. Students and teachers from St. Paul’s filled the tube with predictions and aspirations for 2017. The capsule was sealed and placed in careful storage for 25 years. This week, it was opened.
Current and former St. Paul’s students gathered in the auditorium to catch a glimpse into the past.
Haider said the articles written in the capsule were great examples of “voice” (writing from a personal perspective). Haider encouraged students to find their voices.
Some people who filled the capsule with their ideas in 1992 were on hand in the auditorium. Doreen Rathgeber, who was a grade 1 teacher at St. Paul’s in 1992, was there.
“There were some trying times [in 1992],” she said. “We were worried about Quebec leaving us.”
“Politics were quite an issue,” she added. “It’s wonderful to see how people have evolved and moved on.”
The capsule-writers read their old predictions out-loud to the crowd. Students and teachers thought that by 2017, the air would be heavily polluted, physical money would be rarely used, and the St. Paul’s building might be a fast-food chain.
Rathgeber thought education would be much different in 2017, with students receiving radically new lessons through technology.
“I probably over-predicted what I expected to happen,” she said. “But I really think [technology’s] going to get there very soon.”
The current crop of St. Paul’s students will have a chance to replicate the time-traveling tube. They’ll be writing predictions and stuffing them into a time capsule, which will be created in May 2018.
Rathgeber, when asked what she’d put in a time capsule today, said she wants greater global unity.
“Hopefully people will be more compassionate to one another,” she said. “I think that journey will continue more than we can understand.”
