1969 uy "THE OWL'S HOOT" PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT DAY Elementary and Secondary school teachers from Northwestern Ontario will assemble in Thunder Bay, Friday, October 24th, for the 1969 Education Con- ference. Several special workshops will be held, and many programme consultants, along with other resource people, will be available. Subject work- shops will be held as well and teachers will be choosing those which meet their particular needs . On Saturday, October 25th, business sessions for the various Federation groups of Districts 28 and 29 will be held. The Education Conference is expected to be an educationally rewarding day for educators of North- western Ontario. THEATRE HOUR COMPANY In a country as big as Canada, if takes a lot of | effort and planning to bring professional theatre to school-age audiences who live in communities away from the big theatre centres. There are a half dozen professional companies in Canada whose sole function is to do just this: Give a vital first taste of a live theatre performance to young people - - or what a leading Government minister described as "A flesh and blood audio- visual aid" to teachers and "A lively and entertain- ing introduction to one of the oldest of man's arts, a stimulating personal experience not otherwise available to most students". The Theatre Hour Company, which arrives at Schreiber High School, October 23rd, 1969, has been doing just that ise seven years. Bringing six actors and a small production staff here from Toronto is a complex problem in logistics. They pile into a bus, carry their own portable stage, costumes and props, and usually play two and sometimes three performances a day in schools before moving on to play another town tomorrow. This gruelling daily schedule goes on for a full 20 weeks until they've played to high schools in ev- ery part of Ontario. In fact, the school bookings have been so heavy that the Company can't schedule them all in. This year, for example, they've made a point of playing TERRACE BA NEW iL schools they couldn't visit last year. Here's what happened before the Theatre Hour Company came here: There was at least six months of planning (right after last year's. tour) to arrange a program, invite school applications, set up a travel schedule and then re~ cruit a cast and rehearse the current programs . Everything organized, the company of six actors and production staff left Toronto by busg on the first leg of a journey to the Northern part of Ontario. They would later cover Western, Eastern and South ern Ontario, sometimes performing in a different community each day, logging thousands of bus= miles during the season. At each stop - They often play to two different schools each day - the sets have to be unloaded, the stage set up, the actors have to find an area to put on costumes and make-up, and all in one hour . Usually they-give their first show at 9a.m. It lasts 75 minutes, including a question period by the students. Then the stage is dismantled (with the help of volunteer students - and it takes "ten strong boys" to do it) and the whole show is packed into the bus and goes to another school in the area for its second performance that afternoon. ~ It's like that every day for twenty weeks of the Theatre Hour Company's seventh season. It is one theatre company's way of pioneering. And very likely, given the vast expanses of Ontario it's the only way we can do it. \ \ THOUGHT OF THE WEEK Those who have finished by making all others think with them, have usually been those who be- gan by daring to think with themselves. Charles C. Colton. EXHIBITION VOLLEYBALL On Thursday, October 16, Schreiber Girls and Boys Volleyball Teams met the Terrace Bay Teams in the first exhibition games of the season. They were held in the Schreiber High Gym and commenc- ed at 3.5 p.m. Schreiber Girls won 2 out of 3 games in the first match. The scores were Schreiber 15, Terrace Bay 7; Schreiber 5, Terrace Bay 15; and the third and last game, which was the most exciting and decisive - cont'd page 16