Busy with careers and families, people understandably have a hard time getting out to events like school reunions. Sure, it might be nice to see your old classmates again, but really, it's only been a decade since you left school, and what about the car payments and whatnot?

A 60-year reunion, then, makes perfect sense. After all, aside from health problems and possibly distance, what's really stopping you from getting back together with your school chums?

"Even with 10 and 20-year reunions, you know people are busy with their careers, or they're raising kids, or stuff like that," said Norm Flaten, one of the organizers of the Class of 1945 reunion held at the Royal Canadian Legion in Weyburn on Wednesday.

"It's when you get to the later years, like say a 40-year reunion, a 50-year reunion or a 60-year reunion, the survivors are more interested in getting together and reviving old friendships, or simply maintaining those friendships."

The Weyburn Collegiate Institute (WCI) Class of '45 reunion, held in conjunction with the Weyburn Homecoming on the week of Aug. 1-5, was a relatively simple affair. People registered upstairs in the Legion, visited and had coffee downstairs, and then had supper. Participants may have explored Weyburn on their own or taken in the Weyburn Wheat Festival, but that was on their own time.

Mind you, anything more adventurous would have likely added to the already-high level of risk involved with such an event. As Flaten himself pointed out, such gatherings carry the danger of "igniting old flames," he joked.

Though the Class of 45 numbered roughly 36 students, attendance at the reunion was about 50 people, counting spouses, partners and friends of the graduates. In total, there were about 19 original members of the Class of 45 at the reunion, a "phenomenal" turnout, according to Flaten.

Conveniently, some of the returnees still live in Weyburn, but many came from Alberta, B.C, Ontario and as far away as California. Some had been away for years, and some, still with family in the area, knew the city well.

But not as well as once before, perhaps. Take Jim MacDonald, brother to Lona Wilkinson in Yellow Grass, who tried driving up to Haig School; he had to follow the path he used to take to school, because he couldn't find it with a new route.

"(The city) looks great," said MacDonald, who lives now in Winnipeg. "I've always liked Weyburn. I consider this my home, really. I didn't live here this long, but this is where I went to school."

Though the group has gotten together before, one wonders why people would want to get together after so much time apart. Were they all the best of friends, or something?

"Not necessarily. We sometimes competed for the same girls," joked Flaten.

Actually, the class of 45 finished school at the tail-end of, arguably, the worst 15 years in human history. They went through school amidst the Depression, which hit Saskatchewan as hard as anywhere else in Canada, and then came of age during the Second World War.

There was little talk, at least in Grade 10 and 11, of going to college, said Art Wallace.

"The one thing we did know was that most of the boys once you graduated you were going into the service," said Wallace. "The girls were either going to be nursing or teaching."

Admittedly, children today have far more opportunities for sports, education and extravagance (today, cars line up in front of the Comp; in 1945, there was perhaps one vehicle, driven into town by a local farmboy).

But, with mass media coming into its own and bombarding the public with accounts of the war, Wallace would contend that his generation had a heightened awareness of world events.

"My own feelings were we were lucky to go to school then, because it was an exciting time, you know," he said.

Class of '55 reunion

Giving the Class of '45 a run for their money this week was the Class of 1955, who held their own reunion on Thursday evening.

Though many spouses and partners were in attendance, roughly 23 members of the graduating class of 1955 gathered in Weyburn Thursday. Attendees came from all across Canada.

This reunion was for students in the 12A, 12B and Commercial Classes of the WCI in 1955. Though the Commercial program was for those learning typing and office skills, the students in 12A and 12B were split up for some arbitrary reason that no one attending knew for certain.

"We speculate that the 12A's had a higher average," said Russell Olson, who organized the reunion with Delbert Flaaten.

This was the first reunion ever held for the Grade 12 grads of WCI from 1955. At least some of the group, however, had gotten together for a Grade 9 reunion in 1985, said Olson.

The CBC covered that event because they couldn't believe a reunion was held for Grade 9s, said Olson. But the fact was that many of the WCI students at the time were not graduating from Grade 12.

"A lot of guys left school and went to work," said John Badham. "I tell you, I looked at the Grade 9 class that I was in; not many made it to Grade 12."

Extenuating circumstances were involved in keeping the rest in school, of course.

"There's no way my dad was letting me out," joked Badham. "The son of an Anglican minister was not getting out of school."

The reunion consisted of a get-together, followed by dinner and the gathering for all ex-WCI students at the Legion. People talked about old classmates and old teachers (particularly the brutal ones); in scenes that hearken back to their high school, some of them asked each other if they're going to the dance on Friday night.

After not seeing each other for so many years, some of the fun of these reunions comes from just trying to visualize your classmates as they were and bring them into today. This was a fact that many people at the reunion commented on.

Norma Halladay said she took out her yearbook just prior to coming to Weyburn and looked it over, thinking about how many people she could remember.

"OK, I wonder if I'm going to recognize all these people and remember their names. Because after so many years, you tend to forget the names," she said.

Other class reunions held in Weyburn during Homecoming included the Class of 1957, the Class of 1967, the Classes of 1970-1971, of 1980 and 1985.