On the road - Shawn's Sense with Shawn Loughlin

Last week, through my daughter and her burgeoning career as a student at Hullett Central Public School, I was reminded of the magic of the field trip. A day away from school, out in the real world, with your friends, teachers and maybe a parent or two. No class, no recess, no bells or announcements - just a bus ride and a destination that, more often than not, you’ve never been to before.

 

For Tallulah, last week, this was certainly true and she went to the movies for the first time. In her four years on the planet, we had not yet taken her to the movies. So, by the time you read this, she will have been to see a movie with her entire school - munching on popcorn in the dark of the theatre with a movie playing on the big screen in Goderich.

 

It had me thinking back to some of the field trips of my youth and how excited we would all be when they came around. First off, as a relatively old dude, I was taken off guard when we paid for Tallulah’s trip through an app. No more cash in an envelope, I guess.

 

Going to school in Scarborough and then in Pickering, I was within the GTA, so many of our excursions were to spots in Toronto and the surrounding areas. I remember frequent trips to the Ontario Science Centre (one of my favourites - thanks for nothing Doug Ford), the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) and the Toronto Zoo, to name a few. 

 

Having the world of entertainment in Toronto at our disposal also meant that we could go to shows in the city when it made sense to do so. I know we went and saw Phantom of the Opera in Toronto and then Swan Lake later on. We did, at times in high school, make the lengthy trip to Stratford to see Shakespeare productions by the storied theatre company when we were studying the work of “The Bard of Avon”. 

 

I’m sure there were many more, but I can’t remember them all. One big one that sticks out is our graduation trip, which was a few nights away in Algonquin Park. We stayed at a very nice hotel with a hot tub, a pool and tennis courts and we planned for weeks in regards to all the junk we’d bring. We filled the drawers in our hotel room with bags of chips, pop and candy. In the days before drinking and doing drugs and acting out in any kind of a serious way, this felt like about as transgressive as it could get. Though, having said that, a few of us did get in actual trouble on the trip. There was a scheduled movie night for us within the hotel and a few of us skipped out to play night tennis. That didn’t go over well with the teachers, but it was nothing that couldn’t be fixed by a mild chewing out. 

 

As a student at Humber College, I guess we took what could be considered a field trip when we took an overnight bus to New York City for some sort of student journalism awards ceremony that was taking place at the Roosevelt Hotel. This was, however, simply an excuse to go to Manhattan. We were dropped in the middle of the city in the early morning hours of St. Patrick’s Day. Depending on how much you had slept on the bus, seeing a bit of the parade was either exciting or a bit much. 

 

Then we split up for a few days before the awards and the trip back. We saw the sights, played basketball on an old-school New York outdoor court and made the trip out to New Jersey to see a Nets game (they were still in New Jersey then) with my cousin Mike. I also went to the iconic CBGB before it closed, which is something I’ll always remember.

 

What field trips will await Tallulah (and Cooper, eventually) in the future is anyone’s guess, but was she ever excited for the theatre.