By Joel van der Veen

KENASTON — Close to 70 years after dropping out of high school, Ennis Waldner had some unfinished business to take care of.

Having joined the workforce after Grade 11 due to her father’s death in 1941, Waldner had made her way through life — including marriage and raising four children — thinking she had missed out on something.

“I always felt that I had been cheated,” Waldner recalled, speaking at the grand opening of the Distance Learning Centre (DLC) in Kenaston on Feb. 26.

After reading a newspaper ad, Waldner said she called the DLC to inquire about finishing her formal education.

“I got a very encouraging reply: ‘Of course it’s possible’,” she continued, adding she had some doubts after learning she needed seven credits to graduate. “I said, ‘I’ll be dead before I finish taking seven classes.'”

DLC staff checked again and realized she only needed four credits, and Waldner went back to school at age 86.

In June 2013, the octagenarian received her high school diploma, graduating with the rest of Kenaston’s Grade 12 class that year.

Waldner, now 91, had encouraging words of her own for other people in her situation as she spoke to a crowd of hundreds in the Kenaston School gymnasium.

“If you have the desire and you have the will, the centre here will certainly have the way for you,” she said. “It is possible.”

Division officials, staff, students and many others were on hand as the new DLC building was officially opened in late February, eight years after distance learning programs were first offered in Kenaston.

The 15,000-square foot building was completed in December and has been in use since early January, when the centre transitioned from its former home in Kenaston School.

The new facility — functioning as the province’s largest online school — houses 55 teachers, along with 10 administrators and support staff, offering a total of 120 courses.

To learn more, please read the March 7, 2016 print edition of The Davidson Leader. To subscribe email: davidsonleader@sasktel.net