For some Queen E grads, this summer’s reunion will be a chance to feel 18 again

Chad Feehan / Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Members of the Queen Elizabeth Regional High School graduating class of 1984 will get a chance to catch up and relive their glory days when they get together for their second reunion in 40 years, this time at Shenanigan’s bar and restaurant on August 3rd.
Co-organizer Dawn Furey is getting on the horn as early as she can to make sure she reaches as many of the 174 graduates as possible.
The class’s last official reunion was held at the Kelligrews Lion’s Club in 2009, where about 30 classmates showed up to exchange memories of simpler times.
The organizing team hopes to reach far more people this time around.
“We don’t want to miss anyone,” Furey said. “If we don’t do it now, we might not get another opportunity to see everybody and get everybody together again.”
Furey moved to Ontario in 1988, eventually settling into a job at General Motors where she recently retired. She’s been lucky to keep in touch with old friends over the years, including connecting with them on her many trips back to the island.
Even though Furey has lived on the mainland longer than she lived in Newfoundland, she says she can still recall the smells and atmosphere of the wooded and water areas she grew up in as a child.
“Those are the scents from your childhood that you take with you all through your life, no matter where you’re living,” she said. “No matter how long you’re away, Newfoundland is always home.”
Furey still has fond memories of graduation night, held at the Parish Hall in Foxtrap. In addition to the dinner and dance, they paraded through town with cars decorated with streamers and tissue paper flowers, which were littered along the streets the next day.
After the afterparties, Furey and her friends made their way to Signal Hill to watch the sunrise, capping it off with a feed of McDonald’s in the morning.
Furey’s core group of friends always make the effort to link up whenever she makes her way back to the island from Ontario, some of whom she’s known since Kindergarten.
“I don’t run into people in the grocery store who I went to school with. It’s nice to run into people that you know,” she said. “It’s kind of fun to see where people have gone and what they’ve done, especially the ones who stayed home and got jobs in Newfoundland.”
Now that the class members of ‘84 are in or approaching retirement age, Furey said people are not only visiting home more often, but moving back outright.
“There seems to be a lot more retirement migration heading back towards the east coast,” she said.
As for the reunion, she hopes each and every person in the graduating class gets the invite, even if someone can only drop in momentarily.
Occurring in the middle of the George Street Festival and right before the St. John’s Regatta, Furey said it’s the perfect time to coax people back to the island.
“Maybe there’s people who’ve been away for a few years. This might be the one little extra thing that gets them home this summer,” she ventured.
Reflecting on the time that’s passed since graduation, Furey is excited to reconnect while she still has the chance.
“Some days I still feel like I’m 18. Other days I feel like I’m 56,” she said, laughing. “These are people you spent these formative years with, and it’ll be interesting to see where we all went and what we all did. Forty years is a long time… It would be really nice to have the opportunity to connect with old friends and catch up.”
Would-be participants of the reunion can connect at qerhs84@gmail.com.