Miranda’s High School Graduation

Today was the big day! After three years at Sir Winston Churchill High School (and 13 years of school), it was time for Miranda’s grad. It was held in-person for the first time since 2019, and I think everybody was excited for that. The ceremony was starting at 9:00, and Miranda wanted to be there at 8:00, so we were in the car and on the road by 7:45. The ceremony was being held at the Jack Simpson Gymnasium at the University of Calgary. It wasn’t too hard to drop Dad off nor to find parking and some seats.

The kids filed in, and Miranda settled in for a long morning in what she called “a cheap chair”. I pity her, because ours were more comfortable and we were able to stand up a few times over the course of the three hours.

The master of ceremonies was the principal, Mr. Rajan, and he did a good job of his speech and keeping things moving along. Three different people read out names for three blocks of kids. Miranda was in A-H, so was up and on stage in the first hundred kids. There were 693 graduates to go through.

Miranda got a nice certificate on stage that indicated she had met the requirements to attend. 😄 That is to say, it’s mathematically possible for her to pass her exams, I guess. Good for her!

The end of the ceremony was marked by the kids tossing their caps into the air. It was fun, if a little chaotic. Ian was the best at capturing it. I got a 1-second clip, and Tammy got a still of the caps in the air. Here’s Ian, getting the whole thing.

We fought our way through the crowd afterwards to get to the car and back home again. While we were merging onto the Crowchild Trail, I got a notification on my watch that someone had rung our doorbell. I heard Tammy talking in the back seat to the delivery person (not sure how she managed that) and the package was left on the doorstep. When we got home, it turned out to be some roses from Colin and Carol!

Now we’ve had some spaghetti with garlic toast for lunch, and we resting a bit. Tonight, Miranda will be taking part in the Grad Banquet at the BMO Centre. I’ll be dropping her off and picking her up again later.

Now, the new camera! Only two days ago, we got more information about the grad ceremony itself. We got an idea of what the seating was going to be, whether or not (NOT) you could come closer to take a picture, etc., etc. It became clear that we were not going to be near to the stage, particularly because Dad wasn’t going to be able to climb a lot of stairs. That led to a decision to be made. The old Pentax K100D still worked, but:

The camera refused to take pictures with the long lens attached,
The white balance always is a problem under artificial lights and
The sensor, while good in its day (6 megapixels) was not that great.

So it was either an iPhone photo from a long ways away or a somewhat better 55 mm lens zoom with the Pentax but sketchy photo quality, or…

We chose the new camera option. It’s the Canon EOS M50 Mk II which came with a nice 15-45 mm lens standard, and we added the Canon EFM 55-200 mm lens. We gave it a workout at the park last night and then today, in Ian’s hands, we got good photos of Miranda (see above!)

Just to compare, here is a photo that Dad took of Miranda coming onstage, and next to it is the one Ian took at the same time.