Riverwood Academy holds virtual graduation get together for senior students

WING'S POINT — It wasn’t the ending any of the 13 Riverwood Academy graduating students wanted.

They wanted their day in the sun, to revel in their academic accomplishments and celebrate the past dozen years of their lives.

Here’s the thing about endings: rarely does one get to choose how their story ends, as fate usually has something else in mind.

For the baker’s dozen of senior students at the small all-grades school in Wing’s Point, fate disguised as the COVID-19 pandemic decided their graduation would not happen as they had planned.

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Instead, they got a cancelled school year and quashed celebration.

“It was kind of disappointing,” said Level III student Sarina Squires. “This was our next chapter and we could go out and explore and with all of this going in, it just kind of flipped.”

Still, there was a silver lining, as there tends to be, for this group. After some messages were exchanged between teachers and parents, it was arranged for the parents to submit baby and young-child photos of their graduates for a slideshow.

Those same teachers made a slideshow offering up pieces of advice they had for the latest group of students to leave their care.

Those two items and more were rolled out during a virtual get-together of the graduating class, their parents and teachers the week of May 11.

“It was a good chance to have a little bit of fun,” said Riverwood Academy principal Jonathan Williams. In his sixth year at the school, he taught the group since they were in Grade 8. “They enjoyed it and they shed some tears.”

There has been some talk of holding a proper graduation ceremony in the fall, but there is nothing concrete yet.

The makeshift graduation ceremony gave them the chance to pay their respects to a friend and former classmate, Brett Hillier, who died when he was in Grade 8.

He was a part of their friend group and they wanted to pay tribute. They’ve made efforts to include him as a part of their class and this graduation was going to be no different,

“We had a memorial all planned out for him on our grad day,” said Squires. “We included him as much as we could in our planning because we knew how much we wanted him to be there that day.”

"We’re all like a little family because there aren’t many of us." — Hillary Blake

The seniors at Riverwood Academy are a tight group.

If there was a high school party and one of them didn’t attend, their absence would be noted by the rest of the group.

“We’re all pretty close. We’re all like a little family because there aren’t many of us,” said Level III student Hillary Blake.

After they met online, some of the group donned their graduation dresses and suits and did some social distancing graduation photography at the school.

It wasn’t the closure of their high school careers they wanted, but it was closure nevertheless.

“We still enjoyed our day,” said Blake. “We also had a good time. “

Nicholas Mercer is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter covering Central Newfoundland for Saltwire Network