Chapter 22. The secret door

It must have been one of the best-kept secrets of the entire new building project. For obvious reasons those involved wanted it kept as quiet as possible. They certainly didn’t want the cook to know.

Despite having what he thought was an impregnable storeroom for his new kitchen, Charlie still couldn’t lock up his baking and be sure it would all be there when he returned. The masters, of course, had to be kept in the dark but so also, it seemed, did just about everyone else.

I only found out about it when interviewing participants for this book yet I had been in a good position to know. I was in charge of one of the construction crews.

The secret it turns out was one of those delightfully mischievous by-products of my class being regarded as the most competent crew on the job site. During my Grade 11 year the senior grades spent one day each week working on the building. Because of our reputation, we were given the responsibility for completing some of the key phases of the project.

The effort that went into providing unrestricted access to the storeroom would have won hearty approval from even the master practitioners of boarding school mischief, Stalky and Co., in Rudyard Kipling’s book of the same title.

We arrived for the fall term in 1966 to find ourselves im­mediately caught up in an enormous do-it-yourself-building project. The staff had doubled in size to nineteen (19) during the summer so there were was a lot of pressure to provide more living accommodation.

The decision to replace the dining room building had been made the previous winter. It was agreed the boys should do the work, partly for the experience, but primari­ly because it would cut the $80,000 cost in half. It would also mean no money would need to be raised in advance and construction could begin right away.

The health inspector was definitely in favour of starting sooner rather than later. He had never given the dining facilities anything more than grudging approval, and each year his request that they be replaced sounded more and more like an ultimatum.

The masters tended to regard his complaints as overblown. They were aware of the ankle-deep water that forced the dishwashers to wear rubber boots, the unappetizing sight of insects stuck to flypaper above the dinner table, and the occasional flood from an overflowing toilet. But otherwise, condi­tions were reasonably sanitary, the boys were generally healthy, well-fed and they had a roof over their heads.

The condition of that roof was another matter. Setting out pails to catch the drips when it rained had become commonplace. The kitchen roof, in particular, leaked like a sieve but at least you knew the water was probably rainwater. There was no such assurance when water poured down from the ceiling into the dining room. It almost always was because a toilet upstairs had overflowed.

The storyteller in me would love to be able to report there was one particular moment that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. The incident almost certainly would have involved Mr. Byfield and it would have happened during the singing of grace. The ensuing eruption would have registered at least a seven on the ratch scale. Alas, I don’t recall such an event but the cumulative effect of various overflows no doubt led to the decision to replace the building.

Things got underway that spring but there wasn’t much much progress before the canoe trips began. We did nail together more than 100 roof trusses on sawhorses set up on the playing field. This operation was directed by Art Rostad, the project’s chief carpenter and only paid worker.

When we arrived back in the fall the project went into high gear. Students in Grades 8 to 12 were put on a six-day workweek. Each class devoted one day a week to the new building and spent the other five in the class­room. The plan was to close up the one-story 10,000 square-foot dining room and classroom complex before winter and finish the interior in time for occupancy by the following spring.

The external design was pretty much determined by the structure to which it was being attached – an army-style bar­rack painted white which served as the dormitory. Architect Neil Osler came up with what was essentially a second barrack only larger. It was the same length but twice as wide, running parallel and joined in the middle, to form an H.

The hallway from the dorm led past the new front entrance on one side and the single masters’ living quarters on the other. It then descended a short ramp into the dining room and kitchen which together with the meat room occupied the north wing. The hallway to the left passed the laundry room, canteen, and furnace room before entering the south wing which housed the library, laboratory, and new classrooms. A boot room led to a back door where a gymnasium was later added.

My class got its first shift on the job site the day the Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey, happened to be visiting the school. We were pouring concrete for a section of the foundation. There were 12 of us in the class and we worked like a well-oiled machine. That day we completed what had previously taken three days. Foreman Rostad was so impressed that from then on whenever there was concrete to pour we did it.

A week later, a Winnipeg Tribune photographer caught us in action pouring yet another section of concrete. On September 27, with the near-perfect fall weather about to end, we worked late into the night finishing the last section of concrete. As the New Building Bulletin No. 4 recorded, Forfar, Baptiste, and Stephens manned the trowels and a gas-powered compactor until after midnight to ensure our efforts that day would not be ruined by a change of weather. They barely got to bed before the rain began.

As my October 16 letter described our next big achievement came on Thanksgiving Day Monday when we erected the last 30 trusses to complete the roof. One day later the plywood sheeting was on and the roof was ready for shingles – a job that was given to a contractor to ensure there were no leaks. In just over a month student crews had laid the foundation and erected the outer shell for a new building. During the same period, some of the masters had been busy scrounging materials or soliciting cash donations. Work was never interrupted due to a lack of either.

Following the fall mid-term break, a new strategy was adopted for keeping construction going and the creditors at bay. It had been decided that the meat room would be completed and put into opera­tion as soon as possible so Saturday selling could begin.

To do this the entire school was put on double duty. This meant twice as many bodies were available each day during the duty periods. Surplus bodies were shifted to either working in the meat room or beefing up the construction crew. Mr. Rostad would probably have liked our entire class on his crew but he had to settle for half a dozen of us including Baptiste, Davies, Stephens, and myself.

A contractor was hired to nail up and tape wallboard in all the rooms and install the windows but we carried on with other inside work. I spent most of November installing electri­cal outlets and switches. Baptiste and Davies on the other hand had the job of finishing the attic and putting in the insulation. They finished the attic, all right, but not quite the way the blueprints called for.

One day several months later as he strained to stop himself plunging through the hatch over the storeroom Bap­tiste probably wished he had not been involved in redesigning the attic. Below Mr. Thompson was taking way too long to gather some items for a late lunch. Davies had done what he supposed to and flicked the storeroom light on and off but he only managed to stall Mr. Thompson for a moment or two.

Baptiste had barely jammed himself into the well of the hatch when Mr. Thompson entered below. For­tunately he didn’t look up. Baptiste hung on for dear life, not daring to even breathe. Finally, the ordeal was over. The door closed and the light went off. He had escaped detection.

Baptiste wasted no time replacing the hatch door and crawling back to safety. He may have come away empty-handed but was relieved not to have given away the secret.

If Mr. Thompson had caught him he undoubtedly would have been able to figure out how Baptiste got there. No one knew the building better than Mr. Thompson. With student help, he had installed all the plumbing and wiring. He knew that two layers of firewall separated the north wing attic from the south wing. But he also knew no student was more familiar with the construction of the attic better than Baptiste. Mr. Thompson would almost certainly have guessed that access had some­how been altered, thereby giving entrance to the storeroom. A close inspection would have revealed the secret. Either that or once caught Baptiste might have felt compelled to confess. But of course, none of that happened.

The secret door would not be easy to detect. Near the eaves, two small pieces of wallboard had been used for the firewall, one on either side. Neither had been nailed. If you knew where they were it was only a matter of lifting them out and crawling through.

The attic in the south wing could be accessed through the laundry room and then it was a matter of passing through to the north wing by the secret door. A guard at either end was all that was needed to ensure safe passage in and out. Bap­tiste remembered a number of successful visits to the storeroom through the secret door. He wondered if it was ever detected and closed.

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