Ivor Boyagoda

Ivor Boyagoda was a fixture at OCHS. Not only did he have the smelliest classroom, but he had a total aura of cool about him. He was a crack badminton player. Everyone learned a lot about chemistry in his classes, which were fairly tough, and there are legions of stories of things gone wrong in his chemistry demonstrations. There are anecdotes about exploding sodium bits, acrid white smoke and an almostly monthly demonstration of the law of unintended consequences.

To contribute to the total cool, he was cool about most things. For a parent-teacher interactive demonstration, he let my brother distill a bottle of wine into almost pure alcohol in a Leibieg condenser. It perfumed the air beautifully that night.

Another secret about Ivor was that he rarely changed the curriculum and tests. My brother was a year ahead of me in school, and he gave the same tests and exams year after year. Most people did not know this.

I have a soft spot for Ivor for two reasons. The first is that both he and I went to the same university -- The University of Ottawa. The second reason is that when I arrived at U of O, I found that Ivor had cribbed first year chemistry and taught it in Grade 13 at OCHS. One of the coolest things that we did in Ivor's class was to make synthetic rubber. That same lab was in my first lab with Dr. Keith Laidler at the University of Ottawa.

I'm not sure that Ivor would think about me posting this picture of his shagadelic haircut from the 1970's.

Below: A group of students watches a chemistry experiment gone wrong that was rushed out to the football field to die away harmlessly.