Northern Secondary School Class of '99: The 25th Anniversary Reunion

Mike Smith slappin da bass.

(The Ageless) Richard Oki: “Congratulations to Northern’s Class of 1999!! I still remember so much about so many of you. I am so happy that you are doing well and so grateful to have taught or known so many wonderful people. Northern Secondary School means everything to me. This year marks my 31st year at NSS!! I love this school with all my heart and every Red Knight who has attended this amazing place. Thank you so much for coming today and I truly wish all of you the very best.”

THIS IS NOT A DRILL!!

The good old days

Signing yearbooks at the south doors in May, 1999.

John Jossifakis: John Jossifakis attended NSS from 94 -98 and was an active part of the NSS Stage Crew and Set Crew. His passion for Events led him to various tours with Metallica, Britney Spears, Ricky Martin, Enrique Inglesias and shows with Aerosmith, Janet Jackson, Backstreet Boys and Rolling Stones. He attained his Fireworks and Pyrotechnics license in 1999 and has since worked on over 2,000 events globally.

He has worked on the Athens 2004 and Beijing 2008 Olympic Opening and Closing ceremonies as the Technical Director and Project Manager.

He currently lives in Dubai, with a residence in Greece and Saudi Arabia

On his Free Time he is a competitive air pistol shooter and part of the Canadian National Shooting Team. He has represented Canada in various international events in Europe and Asia.

John has also created the NSS Scholarship Grant for one student every year that will follow a career path in Events or Radio Television Arts.

Jodi Spivak: “After Northern, I went to University of Waterloo to study science. Somehow through a random chain of events, I ended up working in Marketing and Event Management and am currently a corporate event manager. My career has given me amazing opportunities to travel the world and have some incredible experiences but I am currently enjoying sticking close to home while on parental leave. I live in Toronto with my husband (who happens to also be a Northern Alum, but not from ‘99!) and we just had our son at the beginning of this year. In that elusive free time, I love cycling, gardening, and exploring the city.”

Jennifer Palmer: “After Northern I went to McGill with lots of fun NSSers (Danielle Anicef, Kate Innis, Will Sacks, Mike Caie) to study microbiology. Then I headed to the UK for a Masters in disease control which blew my mind. At the end of the year, I had the chance to go to medical school or continue immediately in global health and instinctually chose the latter.

I spent the next several years in South Sudan, working first on primary healthcare in the mountains and then a PhD studying experiences of sleeping sickness at a hospital on the Nile. Since then, I’ve continued working on global disease elimination and took over directing the Masters I originally came here for.

Having two little boys with my husband on either side of the COVID-19 pandemic has slowed my travel but I love London and I still come back to Ontario every summer to be with my wonderful family and life-long friends (Gillian Shadlyn!)”

2!

Jeff Mitz: “Greetings NSS class of 1999 and all of my Northern friends and colleagues.

I am currently living in Santa Fe NM where my family and I have spent 32 summers.

My memories of my Northern days are vivid and uplifting and constantly remind me how lucky I was to be on staff from 1977 until 2000.

I was a young 25 year old in 1977 and Northern was considered a dumping ground for students from Lawrence Park, North Toronto and Forest Hill who were too academically weak to handle work at the Collegiate level.
At the time, Northern had a visionary principal, Walter Cebrynsky, who saw a great need for change in the Northern culture and community image. He invited a few of us on staff to brainstorm ideas about this which led to creating a comprehensive enrichment program which later evolved into the largest program for identified Gifted students in Canada.

How lucky for me that I was invited to come along for the ride and together with Glenn Way and numerous other creative and wonderful colleagues, saw Northern emerge as such a popular neighbourhood school that parents sometimes began lying about their home addresses just to gain access for their children.

These were the best years of my teaching career bringing me together with amazing students and colleagues and making us all so proud of public education.

I left Northern in 2000 to become Head of Guidance and University Counselling at Crescent School where I stayed until 2013. I then went on to Crestwood to work with and train younger counsellors and remained there in 2022.

I am ‘theoretically’ retired now, but have been doing private counselling for students who were lacking help during the Covid era and I continue to offer help and have even worked with several children of my former Northern students. Lucky me!

Have an amazing reunion and please feel free to reach out to me via my Linkedin page or email [email protected]

I’d love to hear from you.

Thanks for the memories.”

Danika, Norman, Jonathan, Jonas, Tulsan, Kenny, Shirley and Adam

Chris O’keefe: After graduating from NSS, Chris attended Trent University where he was promptly asked to leave after 8 months of study due to a disagreement on what legally constituted a canvas. Following that, Chris enrolled in the 3-year graphic design program at George Brown College, and a mere 6 months later he had run out of tuition money and was set to take on the world!

Later, after nearly 20 years of decaying in myriad cubicles while freelancing creative work at night and on weekends, Chris made the move to art full-time, into the field of film and television, joining the Director’s Guild of Canada; he now happily finds himself creating graphics as a 1st Assistant Art Director, with a recent Art Director credit for a Crave miniseries that is coming soon.

His upcoming releases include the Spielberg (no, not that one) post-apocalyptic pandemic horror film Please Don’t Feed The Children, season 4 of CTV’s Children Ruin Everything, My Dead Mom (miniseries), an independent feature Plan C, and the recent SXSW darling, A Nice Indian Boy. Past projects include work for Disney+, Netflix, Sony Pictures Animation, HBO Max and Sarah Polley’s Oscar-winning feature Women Talking.

Today, Chris lives alone with an undisclosed number of cats and a working parking meter in an overpriced one-bedroom apartment located barely three blocks from Dear Old Northern—a short distance that might be somewhat indicative of his personal growth since graduating from said high school so many years ago.

Oh yeah, and this one time he made his dead cat a graffiti writer in the Spider-Verse movies which was pretty neat.