Sarnia woman completes high school at age 76

Lina Philippon has plans for her high school diploma.

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“I’m going to frame it and hang it up,” said the 76-year-old Sarnia resident. “I’m not going to hide it in a drawer.”

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Philippon’s graduation ceremony, and others earning Grade 12 diplomas from the Sarnia Adult and Continuing Education program at the Lambton Kent District school board, is June 14 at Great Lakes secondary school.

Philippon’s children and grandchildren will be there to see her receive her diploma nearly 60 years after she left high school to care for her siblings.

It was 1965, and Philippon had just completed Grade 10 at a Kapuskasing high school. Her family had moved to the northern Ontario town from New Brunswick when she was 10.

French was her first language, and all that was spoken at home, but she learned English at school in Kapuskasing. She enjoyed school and was in a commercial program in high school, where she learned to do payroll, and looked after paying workers at her father’s construction business.

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Philippon and two friends planned to go to Ottawa after high school to become nurses, but her life changed when she was 17.

“My mother was very sick at the time, so my father said, ‘You’re going to have to stay home,’ because I was the oldest of seven,” she recalled. “The baby was two at the time and they needed my help.”

Philippon later worked in a Kapuskasing hospital cafeteria kitchen, married and in 1968, moved with her husband to Sarnia, where she applied at both city hospitals for similar work.

“I was told I needed Grade 12,” she said. “I wasn’t too happy.”

Philippon worked for five years at Sarnia’s Sahara Motel, first as a chambermaid, then in the office, then spent a decade at home raising two children.

Later, though busy with family and work as a housekeeper, finishing high school was always “in the back of my mind,” Philippon said.

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She decided to begin working on that goal in 2020, only to be derailed by COVID-19 pandemic restrictions.

“I had no computer skills, at the time, so I couldn’t go online,” she said. “I had to put this on the backburner,”

In September 2022, she began attending Literacy Lambton at Sarnia’s Lochiel Kiwanis Center to learn computer skills and went on to upgrading and working with the adult and continuing education program at Great Lakes to complete her high school credits.

“And here I am, finished,” she said.

“I feel great,” Philippon said. “I wish I was younger. I’d go to the hospital and show them.

“But I have what I want,” she added.

Philippon said she doesn’t believe she’d have succeeded without weekly one-on-one tutoring sessions at Literacy Lambton.

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“I was kind of worried at first,” she said. “I thought, ‘Oh, I’ll never be able to do this,’ but it was surprisingly easy enough, with help, of course.”

Now retired, Philippon said she spends her time with family, takes tai chi lessons and does a bit of gardening.

“This is for me,” Philippon said of the last two years completing high school. “I can say, ‘I did it.’ ”

Having students at Philippon’s stage of life isn’t as common, said Anselm Miranda, who works in guidance with the adult and continuing education program.

More typically, students are of working age and seeking a diploma for employment or post-secondary education, he said.

“There’s a lot of programs to allow students to use their work. . . (and) life experience. . . to help them catch up on credits that they might have missed in high school,” Miranda said.

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Students of any age need 30 credits to graduate high school in Ontario.

A counselor sits down with students when they arrive to review their education and life experiences and come up with a plan “to get them to their diploma, as well as make sure they have the credits required for their next step,” Miranda said.

Program students use self-study or online e-learning, either at home or at program sites like Great Lakes, to funish their credits, he said.

“There’s a lot of support for students of all skill levels,” Miranda said. “I would encourage them to reach out.”

For details, visit lkdsb.net.

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