Good evening everyone – staff, families, honoured guests, and most importantly, the graduating class of 2025.
You might remember when capturing a memory took a lot of time. You had to load a roll of film, and, depending on your age, maybe wind the camera. You had to take your shots carefully and then wait to see how they turned out. Sometimes, the pictures came back out of focus or overexposed. But occasionally, one of them was just right – a perfect snapshot, the importance of which you didn’t even fully realize at the time.
Graduates, tonight is one of those moments. What makes it meaningful, however, isn’t just the photos, the likes, the clothes, the ceremony, or even the carefully crafted speeches. You will leave here today with far more than a piece of paper, more than the reel. The truth is, at SH you didn’t just earn credits – you built friendships, celebrated successes, and, hopefully, learned from the mistakes.
Those moments – the laughs, the snap streaks (that’s still a thing, right?), the games won and lost, are only a few of the keepsakes you’ll carry. Those shared experiences, some of them captured in photos, but most of them not, are the foundation that you will take with you wherever your journey leads. You've built something that doesn’t go away when you close your locker for the last time: connection.
Years from now, a song, a place, or a familiar face might bring you back to this time. And in that moment, you won’t just remember assignments, let’s be honest, you probably won’t remember those at all; you’ll remember that foundation, that connection to the graduates sitting next to you. You’ll remember how it felt to belong to something, and how it felt to grow together.
That’s what lasts. That connection is what matters.
As Maya Angelou reminds us, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” In many ways, that’s the best measure of your time here. Not just what you accomplished – but how you showed up for others, and how you made this place feel more like home for the people around you.
I see students in the halls – well, I see students in the halls lots – however, I often see them pointing out their parents, or even their grandparents, to their classmates. That will be you, that will be your picture, your connection, one day.
So, as you move forward into whatever comes next – work, school, travel, the couch, or even complete uncertainty – remember that your experiences here have given you more than “book” knowledge. They’ve given you a connection: a community that knows you, a story that you’ve helped write, and a sense of who you are in relation to the people and the world around you.
My only advice, because that’s what I get to do up on stage here, is to stay connected – to your roots, to your values, and to each other. Be kind. Be curious. Be present. Because the best moments in life aren’t always the ones you can capture with a camera. They’re the ones you live fully with the people who matter most.
On behalf of everyone at Stanley Humphries, congratulations. We are proud of you – not just for what you've achieved, but for your connections – to us, to your community, and most importantly to each other.
Thank you.
Mr. Ian Cooper
