Seventy-years after dropping out of high school an Edmonton man has received his high school diploma.
Walter Ross left school when he was 16-years-old after his father had a heart attack.
“My father said ‘you're going to have to stay home’ so I stayed home to run the family business,” he explained.
Ross worked in the family’s general store in Duffield during the day and continued to study at night.
“Usually I'd start studying at 9 o'clock at night.”
For three years, Ross worked on correspondence courses but put his education on hold to start a business shipping fence posts to the prairies.
When he was 20-years-old he asked the deputy education minister if he could write the high school diploma exam.
“So he set me up with three tutors and so I embarked on doing my Grade 12 in six weeks,” Ross explained.
However, Ross failed the French portion of the exam, which was required at the time.
He went on to a career in life insurance and raised seven children.
“I hadn't given it much thought for all those years but when I turned 90 I thought geez wouldn't it be neat to graduate from high school at age 90,” he laughed.
On April 9th, Ross received his high school transcript and diploma after contacting the Ministry of Education.
Despite obtaining the long-awaited certificate, Ross said he still plans to study and aims to learn French.
With files from Amanda Anderson
