Dear Ontario alumni, it is always a joy in reading your beautiful web page, and no less the professionally produced newsletters. A belated but sincere congratulations to your 30th Anniversary from your west coast contemporaries. Hats off to your editorial staff and content contributors.

Wondering how your left coast alumni association is faring? Let our members do the talking to you directly:

1. Scenario-Planning meeting room, an atmosphere of mixed optimism and pessimism, subjects under discussion-- July Fraser River Picnic, September Mid-Autumn Festival celebration and December Christmas Charity Ball. The executives kept asking each other "how many will come?" ""what is the break-even point?" "what if it rains?" "will they like these games?" "Will the ticket price deter participation?"
2. Scenario-Salmons struggling upstream through Fraser River, St. Markens subcommittee preparing for the onslaught of members to the BBQ. Japan Yip, our director, a graduate of 1976, was diligently scrubbing the outdoor grills. His heartfelt enthusiasm gave us the comforting thought that younger graduates may be interested in carrying on with the St. Mark's School spirits, afterall. Can the association attract more alumni like Japan? We have 5 1980's members, we need more. Our teacher-advisor, Margaret Tsang can be the catalyst.
3. Scenario-Lantern Riddles- Our persuasive president borrowed some designer lanterns from Lingnam School for our celebration. It reminded us of the annual Welcoming Night for new Form One students in our school in Shaukiwan.
4. Scenario-Planet Mars in company with full moon in the southern sky. Event- fund raising for BC Paraplegic Association, Basil Wong set up a sponsor-a-singer karaoke during the Mid-Autumn event. It raised over $600. This is a precursor to the main fund raising in December.

Probably not unique to our association, the younger participants, for good reasons, were not overly enthusiastic with our traditional party games, nor could they be actively involved in the conversations about St. Mark's School of those bygone years. It is a huge challenge and solutions depend largely on honest input from the younger alumni.

Communications between our members have been enhanced through group leaders, each liaising with schoolmates who graduated around the same years.

We view the time separations between graduation years as vacuums that would captivate our alumni's curiosity to find out more about each other. Perhaps not so much for gaining knowledge as to discover about the wonders of friendship.

Dennis Ho
Secretary, SMSAA(B.C.)