Cheryl Stevenson hugs one of her classmates from 50 years ago to start night two of the 1975 Riverside School Class Reunion. (Nick Nielsen/paNOW Staff)

By Nick Nielsen

Half a century

Riverside School graduating class of 1975 celebrates 50th anniversary

Aug 18, 2025 | 11:00 AM

It’s been 50 years since Riverside School in Prince Albert was a high school, but the graduating Grade 12 class of 1975 still has a special connection.

That graduating class has shared a special bond and has reunited five times since their 10-year anniversary in 1985, including this year, where they gathered in Prince Albert over the weekend once again to celebrate their 50th.

Cheryl Stevenson has been the chair and lead organizer of the reunions over the years, except for this one in 2025. She said that a big part of what made their class so tight-knit was the Riverside Rams football games, battling against the other three high schools in Prince Albert at the time.

“We just gelled in the fact that we were the Riverside Rams. We had kind of a spirit about us that just kept us going. I just get excited when I think about it. Like I really get excited. I just, it’s just so good to see. It’s a good crew of people.”

The class had over 90 graduates back in 1975, and Stevenson believes that she has seen every single one of the graduates attend at least one of the reunions that have been thrown over the years.

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The last class photo of the 1975 Grade 12 class at Riverside School. (Nick Nielsen/paNOW Staff)

This year, to help celebrate, one of the graduates, Bob Montgomery, brought a bottle of Crown Royal that has been sealed since 1974, the year before they graduated, complete with a pump still sealed with the bottle. As a result, you may see some footage of the Riverside class of 1975 in an upcoming ad campaign.

“He got a hold of the company that owns [Crown Royal], Canadian Club, and they said, ‘do you mind taking a video of this? Would you mind that your reunion would be part of a promotion for our company.’ So how cool is that?”

The reunion has taken place at a few different venues around Prince Albert over the years, and this year they settled at Victoria Square. The event usually takes place over two days, the first day having a more formal reunion setting, and the second day typically having some kind of theme, and then there’s typically an afterparty for the people who have helped organize the event.

It’s at the afterparty where a lot of the running jokes that started in high school still get brought up today.

“The afterparty parties tend to be because they’re a little bit smaller and they’re a theme party. One year was a medieval feast and one was a whodunit murder Hawaiian thing, and they’re even better because they’re small enough, we can go to have a hot tub party at somebody’s place. You know, there are maybe 25 people or something like that, but there are some people we never hear or see each other except for our reunions from high school.”

More memorabilia from the graduating class of 1975. Stevenson said that the collection has grown over the years as people have attended the reunions and found some of these in storage. (Nick Nielsen/paNOW Staff)

Over the years, the reunion has made a swing through Riverside School to see how it has changed over the years. The school itself has changed significantly over the years, originally going from a High School to now an elementary school from kindergarten to Grade 8, and it’s become hard to recognize the hallways they used to walk together as kids.

“Actually the principles have been really on board. Even this year, it’s always, ‘do you guys want to do a tour?’, but you know, after you’ve done a couple of tours kind of all the same, you’ve seen everything. It was the hardest, and the funnest, thing after 10 years to go back, because it was a junior high then, and when we were in high school, the pictures from the 1956 graduating classes hung in the hallways. We walked by people who had graduated there.”

Stevenson added that after a fire at Riverside caused it to need repairs, some of those important photos were lost.

“It was like, Oh my God, where are those people that we kind of grew up with from the walls?”

Over the years, it has gotten easier in some ways to track everyone down and invite them to the reunion, and in other ways, it has gotten more difficult. Stevenson said that even with the ease of technology to reach out to people, not everyone can always accommodate, and those physical invitations serve as a memento from those who can’t partake in the fun this year.

“You have to realize that when we started planning this, there were no cell phones. We didn’t even know what emails were, and our registrations were all handwritten, you know, ‘who wants to give their house this year to make the registrations?’ I have all the registrations that were ever sent. I just think, Oh my God, I got a registration from this guy, and he passed away five years ago.”

Overall, the feeling of reconnecting with all of these people again gives Stevenson goosebumps when she thinks about just how close this group has been for so long.

“How many chances do you get in Prince Albert to have a kind of weekend party? It’s like a big family reunion, is how I would describe it. We are that tight. The people that keep coming back, it almost feels like meeting your brothers and sisters, and you can sit down, it doesn’t matter if it’s been 10 or 15 years, and just pick up again.”

While it’s still five years away, Stevenson said there are already talks about having a sixth reunion to celebrate their 55th anniversary.

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nick.nielsen@pattisonmedia.com