Boiler Hall was colloquially known as Perv Hall, as it was at one time a notorious venue for what we now call sexual harassment, formerly known as boys being boys. The boys habituating the hall were mostly the jock types, which included not only the usual suspects from the starting lineups of the football, basketball, and hockey squads, and their hangers-on, but also the elite junior hockey players who were only in town because they'd been drafted by the local Jr. A team.
The elite players certainly saw themselves as such, and carried on accordingly. This lead to friction with the locals, and particularly a sub-group of locals informally referred to as the "Shallow Lake Boys."
Shallow Lake is a hamlet roughly half-way between Owen Sound and Sauble Beach. It's not a college town or anything like that. It's pretty much all hard-working, hard-partying, dump-truck drivers and diesel mechanics, and the hard-working and hard-partying women who love them. It's the kind of place a caring dad spends years in the garage with his young son fixing up a 500 horse-power hotrod that'll be ready to go on Junior's 16th birthday.
The brainiacs running our Board figured the best strategy for educating our guest hockey players was to keep them together as a class, maybe on the theory that they'd bring out the best in one another. Alas, it doesn't work that way. Put twenty obnoxious and entitled elite male teens in a room together, and they don't bring out the best; it goes in the opposite direction. They get more obnoxious and more entitled, which I'm sure any seasoned educator can tell you.
I was only favoured with "teaching" these wankers once, when their regular babysitter was away. I thought I'd take the opportunity to discuss with them the very real-life imperative to have a Plan B just in case your dreams of NHL stardom fail to come true.
Well! Did that ever piss them off!
With one exception, every single one of them absolutely knew they'd be raking in the millions sooner rather than later, so what's this shit this out-of-touch teacher is talking about?!
That exception was Joel Ward. To the best of my recollection he's the only one out of that class who managed to make a decent career in the NHL. Most of the other guys faded out of hockey after a few years in the minor pros. When you're 29 years old and playing on the second line for the Mississippi Mud Hens for two hundred bucks a week and a free apartment, well, hopefully that's when they recalled my words of advice.
The tensions between the Shallow Lake Boys and the out-of-town Jr. A guys was building. It wasn't that both groups weren't equally vulgar in their sexual harassment, but in a high school setting these bullies were always backed up and cheered on by their tall blonde and generally very hot girlfriends. Over the course of the semester several of the girlfriends changed allegiances and became "Puck Bunnies." I think that was the straw...
While I missed the actual festivities, I heard many detailed accounts. A Shallow Lake girlfriend called a recently defected Puck Bunny a skank, a couple of would-be NHLers took exception, and, long story short, those elite athletes were given a good thrashing by the local boys.
Not too long after, the Board prioritized changing the culture in Perv Hall. The elite athletes were disbursed throughout the system instead of being grouped together. By the time I retired, Perv Hall was perv free, harassment free, and a safe place for even the geekiest and most nerdy of misfits.
I call that progress.
