Morden’s newest school recently installed a time capsule to mark the milestone of its opening.
Time capsules are a long running tradition in conjunction with the completion of a new buildings, so space was left for one block to be removed and replaced when École Discovery Trails school was finished.
A brand new brick dated 2024 was installed earlier this month to mark the year that the school opened, and Mike Malchuk and Justin Fedoruk from Alpha Masonry were brought back to do the honours. Malchuk was on site at Discovery Trails when the first brick was laid, and Fedoruk came on site two weeks later.
“We actually brought in masons who worked on the school to come in and actually finish that last brick,” said principal Samuel Jerema.
There had been a bit of a delay in placing the time capsule because they wanted to have things to represent their first year of operation.
“We wanted to have an opportunity to fill that time capsule with memorabilia from our first year at École Discovery Trails instead of doing it right away in September of 2024,” said Jerema.
The items in the time capsule range from ‘Dino’ student lanyards to a flash drive with photos from the grand opening as well as a scoresheet from the Dino girls first ever sports banner when the Grade 7 girls won the zone basketball title.
“There’s a number of other things like a pencil … the thought was when I put the pencil in, it was kind of thinking maybe in the future students won’t know what a pencil is,” Jerema said.
It all was put in place in a copper box that fits in behind the stone, and the school did a livestream so that everyone could be part of it.
Jerema feels the opening of a new school is a significant thing for a growing community like Morden.
“It’s an important milestone for the school. Just like the grand opening, this is kind of an event to officially launch the school into the future, like here we go,” he said. “We’ve established this school. It’s up and running, and here’s what life was like in our first year. All of these items kind of tell the story of our first year at Discovery Trails, and it’s really neat to be able to share this with all of the students. The feedback from the teachers was really positive about how engaging that was for the students to be part of that history.
“I think it’s a pretty big milestone for Morden … and it’s a very busy facility,” he noted, citing the example of the local Ukrainian school program using the space as well. “It’s more than just a school. It’s a space for the community to come and learn and grow and be active and engaged.”
