Cornies: Bigger school boards still better than none

On Tuesday morning, my phone chirped the arrival of a photo from Toronto, where one of my granddaughters was headed off to her first day of Grade 1. Dressed in pink and white, with rainbow-coloured shoes and a new shoulder-length haircut, she looked the picture of confidence, eager for her 10-minute walk to school.

More chirps followed the next morning, as our older, London-based granddaughters marked their returns to school, the eldest headed for her first day of high school.

The photos provoked a reverie of my own first day of Grade 1 in 1959. My mother packed my tin lunch box; my father took me to the dirt lane that traced the eastern edge of our farm, then wished me luck.

We’d rehearsed that walk a few times: down the lane, past the irrigation pond, up the hill alongside the sand pi