McCoy High School hoping for an in-person grad, streamed live to loved ones

By KELLEN TANIGUCHI on April 19, 2021.

ktaniguchi@medicinehatnews.com@@kellentaniguchi

Monsignor McCoy High School has a plan in place for 2021 grads to get together for a mass and a cap and gown ceremony at Holy Family Parish, which would be livestreamed for family and members of the community.

“This group of students haven’t been together all as one since the beginning of their Grade 11 year,” said Paul Bauche, the school’s principal. “It’ll be about a year and a half since those kids have had a chance to all be together again, so for us to be able to offer that to these kids for their graduation, once we realized it was something that seems possible at this time, that’s something we were very quick to seize and to try and create that celebration for all these students.

Current COVID-19 restrictions allow places of worship to have a capacity of 15 per cent of fire code occupancy, which allows Holy Family Parish 200 people inside.

“That would allow us to have our entire grad group together to have that celebration. So, once that idea formulated, we found that to be our best plan in this situation we are currently in,” said Bauche. “Having all our grads together is our plan A and that’s what we’re going to try and achieve.”

Holy Family Parish enforces all COVID-19 restrictions and will continue to do so if a grad ceremony is able to take place, says Sandra Richard, the Catholic Board of Education’s religious education co-ordinator.

“We follow Alberta Health Services’ guidelines, so we can’t go past that 200 mark. We have contact tracing and all the students will give their phone number and name, all of the students will sanitize before they come in, all of them will have to be wearing masks,” said Richard.

Richard adds she will be using the church’s map of pews and assign the grads spots to sit six feet apart from each other.

The school will also be providing masks to students in its school colours that say “McCoy Grad 2021,” said Bauche, adding it was the parents’ ideas to have a uniform mask to go with their children’s cap and gown.

“Although there are obviously significant restrictions in society right now, we think this grad plan will be not only a good one in the circumstance of COVID, but I think it will be a really good grad opportunity for grads, their family and the community,” said Bauche.

Parents will not be able to attend the ceremony in person, but the mass and cap and gown ceremony would be livestreamed for family and friends to watch from home using Holy Family Parish’s livestreaming equipment.

“There’s a whole community that’s going to be connected to these kids and then of course there are going to be other family members, aunts and uncles, that are in other cities in Canada or elsewhere in the world. So, now all those people are able to watch the grad … for a lot of people they wouldn’t able to otherwise be connected and see the grad live like that,” said Bauche.

“Even though some things are less, I think with what we got planned there will be some things that will be enhancements to what they usually experience.”

Richard says this is “plan A” but she also states restrictions can change, which means the in-person ceremony is not yet a guarantee.