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89-year-old great-grandmother to become B.C.’s oldest high school graduate

A new crop of graduates at the Agassiz Centre for Education in British Columbia. (Photo courtesy Agassiz Centre for Education)

Cathleen (Kay) Eddison left high school at the age of 16 — more than 70 years ago — for a job as a BC Tel switchboard operator.

"Times were tough then," Eddison, the youngest of five children, told the Vancouver Sun. "You needed a little pull to get a job like that in those days."

Eddison never looked back. Over the next few decades, she worked for the provincial Ministry of Health, married and raised a family.

But she always regretted not finishing her schooling.

Now 89, Eddison is set to become the oldest high school graduate in British Columbia — and maybe in all of Canada — on Wednesday.

"My family is so proud of me, it's almost embarrassing," she told the National Post from there Agassiz, B.C., retirement home.

Her son, Paul Eddison, 65, calls his mother "sharp as a whip."

"We are so absolutely proud of her," he said. "It's just been a dream come true for her and us too."

Eddison and her classmates, 80-year-old Adriana Peters and 70-something Maureen Baker, returned to their studies thanks to an innovative High School Seniors program through the Agassiz Centre for Education (ACE) alternative school.

While Eddison sailed through English, she found math difficult.

"It's tough. I pulled off 90s for my English and my socials (studies), but math — we're just really getting into it now," Eddison told the Vancouver Sun in April, noting algebra was particularly difficult. "My mind just doesn’t run to mathematics as well as it does to the other subjects."

In the end, Eddison managed to pull off an impressive 86 in her math course.

The seniors' participation in the program inspired the younger students, said ACE teacher Ray Steigvillas.

"When they're there, the other students all seem like they're much more focused because they realize that if these older people are coming back to school, then it's really a worthwhile thing for them," he told the Chilliwack Times in April.

Coming to her graduation ceremony this Wednesday is Eddison's 17-year-old great-granddaughter, Sierra Eddison-Lindsay, who also just graduated from high school.

"She's smarter than her nana," Eddison bragged to the Vancouver Sun.

"It's crazy that we’re both there in the same kind of moment in our life [and] we get to experience it together," Eddison-Lindsay, who will be going to the University of Victoria in the fall, told the National Post.

Eddison's offers some advice to young students:

"Stay in school, get your high school (diploma), everything starts from there," she told the Vancouver Sun. "And get the best grades you can because getting into university now is not that easy."