Joe Thornton:
CLASS OF 1971
Crescent Heights High SchoolClass of 1971
Calgary, AB
Southern Alberta Institute of TechnologyClass of 1973
Calgary, AB
New Brigden SchoolClass of 1968
New brigden, AB
Sedalia Elementary SchoolClass of 1962
Sedalia, AB
Joe's Story
Life
I'm still hammering away at making movies. I've been Producing an animation show for APTN called "Raventales". Have another one in the works for Teletoon and Jetx. Telefilm just gave the go-ahead for development on a new screenplay that I am writing. I have had one screenplay optioned by a Hollywood company so far - their last big project was "The Fourth War."
I also discovered some time ago that wood carving and sculpting was a very tension relieving past time, and funny thing, the stuff actually looks like I wanted it to when I'm done!
The kids are all pretty much all grown up now, the ones that survived that is. My son Chris died just before his eighteenth birthday in 1994. It's unfortunate that parenting and relationships didn't come with manuals.
A line from Forest Gump: "Life is like a box of chocolates", Ummm, No! I'd say that life is more like an onion, made up of many layers, each one only discovered by peeling off the previous one, each more fascinating then the last. If you are a jaded individual, that's another whole story, one that I certainly haven't lived!
Then there is the oft used: Life is a journey, not a destination... it is so true, there is so much to learn, so much to discover. If you let the accumulated pain in life be your only focus you will never be open to learning, growing.
You begin to know something only when you finally realize that you don't know anything. So with that in mind, greet each day with a smile, knowing that it is full of opportunities to be savored. Most of all learn to laugh and appreciate what you do have. Try shifting to a bit more of a "live for the moment 'cause that may be all I have kind of approach." It's surprising what seems important and what doesn't when you exchange the comfortable rose tinted glasses for the unvarnished, unprotected view of everything around you.
School
Wow! What inspired questions they give us here! Biggest crush and they use the singular! Being a typical teen-aged male at the time, I think that the appropriate question would have been who wasn't a "crush?" What the hell is this - true confessions? Well let's see... grade school through junior high... Phyllis Blair, not sure she ever knew that...
Just after I turned 16, I moved to Calgary to get away from the old home community - there wasn't a lot of what I would consider wonderful memories there.
In Calgary I started off working nights at Canada Post sorting mail and attending Crescent Heights High in the day - sleep? who needed sleep? The first six months I lived with my grandparents then I was totally on my own.
It wasn't until I got to Crescent that I can say that I found teachers that aspired to inspire. Back in the country schools, most teachers seemed to be just plugging away trying to get through their days... although my elementary school teacher Marilyn (Hunseth) Kroeker was certainly an exception, there weren't a lot after that, that were.
In Crescent I was privileged to take classes with Grant Reddick, Doreen Smith and Lloyd Ericsson. All were passionate about what they were trying to teach us. Grant was a top notch former broadway actor (had actually appeared onstage with Sir Laurence Olivier) who came back to Calgary after a self determined make it or break it time period in New York. He literally changed my life directions. I likely would have been a mechanic or something similar if his drama classes hadn't captivated me. That lead to after school theatre projects and my life sort of mapped itself from there. It was during that time that I met Keith Jaquish, Dennis Milbrandt and Jim Leyden. We formed a band for awhile, made some music and had a few laughs with that.
Lloyd Ericsson was our Music teacher whose claim to fame was an award winning choir in town, and the fact that he had taught and inspired several world class opera singers during his tenure. He and Grant along with my English teacher Doreen Smith, rescued me more than once when I was in trouble with the front office.
On the way to school one bright sunny September morning I met the girl who was to become my high school sweet heart - Anmargret Jaeger, at a bus stop outside the Beacon Hotel at 16th Ave and Centre Street. (That was j...Expand for more
ust before they lowered the drinking age to 18 - almost all of us had already been inside without challenge). We eventually married and had three children.
Grant Reddick was single handedly responsible for my future career in film by having decided that Keith, Dennis and I were to go to SAIT to continue our studies. None of us had the means to go to university, however SAIT was coming along beautifully with its new Cinema Television Stage and Radio courses. An old friend of Grant's - Kay Grieve, was the drama instructor there and between the two of them, they got us all enrolled.
Since then, I can't say that life has ever been dull. Many ups and many downs but never dull.
College
Fondest memories - myself, Mike Wier and Dennis Milbrandt competing as the CTSR entrant in the Student's Union Sponsored Pub Crawl competition. It was organized like a regular road rally with a driver, a drinker and a navigator. Various bars across the city were part of the circuit, you had to get your drinker to the bar with the instructions given, get validated as the drinker had to consume, I believe, three beers at each of about six bars and be the first back at the Students Union lounge for the last round of beers... After the first three bars much time was spent hanging out the window between stops I seem to recall... I was the navigator and Mike Weir was the driver... We didn't win but out of a dozen or more teams I seem to remember that we didn't place worse than third. Most of that having to do with Mikes driving. I vaguely remember that at one point we were contemplating short cutting across Riley Park... can't remember for sure but I think that we actually did, it was that kind of a ride!
Another moment was the afternoon that no one could get through their lines while we did our final rehearsal of the classic "Oedipus the King." I believe it was Keith Jaquish that made the first mistake about ten minutes in and for the next thirty minutes or so we were all laughing so hard we were rolling on the floor, trying to deliver our lines but failing badly... and Kaye Grieve, chest heaving and eyes streaming, struggling desperately not to show that she too was laughing at the whole mess... the show did go off without a hitch to a packed house later that night.
The second term Dennis Milbrandt decided that as a past time he was going to build a hang glider (didn't matter that the concept didn't even exist in the greater world yet) in the theatre set shop.
The now popular delta wing design was only being tested by NASA at the time and we hadn't heard about it yet, so Dennis' concept was to go bi-plane, using light weight aluminum tubing for the main structure pieces with traditional "doped muslin" stretched over the frame. It made for drum tight wings - the body being an open affair.
Construction went on for several weeks, garnering attention even from the Aviation Classes. None believed that it would fly. A number of us pitched in helping with assembly under Dennis's watchful eye. The day came for the flight test. The wind was just right. The hill behind the Tower our classes were in was as a good a place as any for a test flight. All went well initially, Dennis valiantly charging along the top of the hill looking like many a predecessor from old newsreels.
Like the newsreels, he started to lift off - leaping hopefully as the breeze caught the wings. As fate would have it, that was the same moment his toe discovered a marker stake that the Survey class had left behind... the rest, well - it was a pretty ugly wreck. Farful (the appropriately christened glider) got bent up really bad. Dennis got beat up pretty bad, glasses bent, face bloodied - he moved like he might have cracked a rib or two. Body and ego bruised, limping severely and saying literally nothing he strapped the bent and broken pieces of Farful on the top of his Austen Mini and took it home where parts of it still remain in the rafters of his garage. I have always regretted not having filmed those moments. We had always planned to but the camera wasn't available that day and Dennis was eager to get things "off the ground". The rest, as they used to say in the old newsreels, "was history."
CTSR was never dull!
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