By 1946 the enrollment at the high school had increased to the point that the four rooms in the main building were no longer adequate. An extra classroom in the basement of the main building was added. Beside this room was the wood stove furnace and it made that basement classroom very hot.

In 1947, three new rooms, affectionately called the “chicken coop” were added to the north side of the main building. A walkway was constructed from the main building “the barn” to the three rooms in the chicken coop. The temperature in the walkway varied from torridly hot to frigidly cold. Sandy Ferguson remembers the strong smell of heating oil that permeated the walkway.

In the fall of 1949, with the enrollment of 225 students, a second floor room in the Van Horne Council Chambers was improvised as a classroom. Sandy Ferguson and Diane (Hill) Mason attended Grade 9 and 10 classes there. Nicknamed “The Loft”, this room was used as a Grade 9/10 classroom and was the scene of a number of good natured pranks carried out by the students on their teachers. In between periods, teachers would rotate from one building to another. For the teachers, this entailed a lengthy walk carrying books and supplies. For the students, this meant unsupervised time in the classroom. Since “The Loft” was separated from the main building, there were no bells indicating the start and end of periods. A few of the boys changed the time on the classroom clocks, deceiving the teachers about the real time, which resulted in being released a few minutes early at the end of the day.

There were of course other more dangerous pranks carried out by the students. On one occasion a teacher by the name of Mrs. Fraser was teaching in the main building and when she looked out the window of the classroom, to her great dismay she noticed her son Kenny climbing the roof of the Anglican Church. Other alumni remember students being literally hung out the second floor window and held by their pantlegs!

Grade 9 initiation was started during the 1946-1947 school year and was well-established as a school activity by the 1949-1950 school year. Sandy clearly remembers not being afraid of the activities planned by the Senior students. A slight embarrassment is the memory recalled by alumni when they bring to mind the initiation activities of the late 1940s.

On one Friday early in the school year, the Grade 9 students were made to dress in outrageous costumes. The boys wore women’s clothing which included a night gown, a turban, and on their backs they carried a doll in a papoose. According to Sandy, a papoose was used by native women to carry an infant on their back. The girls were dressed in men’s long underwear and a pair of shorts. On their heads the girls wore Fedora’s adorned with flowers . (A Fedora is a felt hat worn by men during the 1940s until the 1960s. Detectives are often depicted wearing Fedoras in movies made during this time period. At DHS, a Fedora hat was the fashion statement of the time. Many teenage boys wore a Fedora, along with baggy pants with a long chain attached to the belt and hung down the pant-leg and back up into the pocket). The grade 9 students were paraded throughout the school and were greeted, not by jeers and insults, but by hand clapping and cheers from the Senior students. Freshman were also required to “bow down” when they encountered a senior student. At approximately noon, the grade 9s were paraded downtown with the seniors following behind singing the school song. The 1949-1950 yearbook adds that people from the community “thronged the streets while camera shutters clicked”. That evening, a dance in honour of the Grade 9s was held at the teen canteen. An article written by Irene Titze in the Argosy of that year concludes the Grade 9 initiation by writing:

“Later, when I thought it all this over, I knew that I enjoyed it and felt as if I really belonged to the high school. Initiation was a good way to make us feel as though we were a part of it”

It is of interest to note that the dances organized at the Teen Canteen were not planned by the high school, but rather by the Youth Council. How did the Youth Council organize such activities? Who was on the Youth Council at the time?

Sandy Ferguson also remembers Gordon Wood as a strict but fair administrator. He was known to patrol the hallways and was able to direct students back to their classroom as he knew their names and their course schedules.

Sandy remembers the time he spent with Gordon Wood who chaperoned the DHS curling team in 1953. This DHS team was the Northern Ontario high school champions in 1953. After winning the Northwestern Ontario championship, (other schools in the Northwest district were Kenora, Fort Frances, Sioux Lookout and the Port Arthur and Fort William) the team returned to Thunder Bay to play the winner from Northeastern Ontario, which was represented by Billy Grrom from Sudbury. The Dryden team lost the first game that morning. During the luncheon that followed, Gordon Wood stood up and gave a speech saying that he still had total confidence in his boys and that they would win the contest. He was correct. That afternoon the DHS team won the second game and a tie-breaker was scheduled to be played at 5:00 pm. DHS won the game and the already exhausted teens were scheduled to take a flight to Saskatoon that evening. Sandy Ferguson remembers how tired he was that day. The brooms that they used at the time were very heavy in comparison to the brooms used today.

During the Dominion tournament in Saskatoon of that year, the DHS team placed 5th. Sandy remembers the many social functions that were organized for the teen players. Included were banquets and tours of the University campus in Saskatoon.

Some of the teachers that Sandy recalls are Mrs. Keenan (music teacher) and Miss Graycheck who taught English. Mr. Dunlop, who was known as “R.K.B. Dunlop, was a science teacher well remembered by the students. Sandy does not recall having being assigned a lot of homework, but he did add that “you made sure that you had any homework assigned by Mr. McMaster completed”