Like most yearbooks, the one from Oakville Trafalgar High School leaves space beneath the photos of graduating students for them to acknowledge the friends, teachers and events that made their high school years memorable.
But this past spring, the message from Grade 12 valedictorian Andrew Ironside was anything but cryptic.

I am not the most popular person, not even close
A lot of you were jerks ... Andrew Ironside, now a student at Brock University, was elected valedictorian at his Oakville, Ont., high school as a joke, but made the most of the opportunity.
A lot of people in our grade, the grade that elected me, do not know my name. They just know me as that blond kid with the freaky eyes.
Mr. Ironside, who had his own page in the yearbook, had been elected valedictorian in a vote carefully orchestrated by his peers and designed to embarrass him.
But when graduation night arrived, he gave a speech that transformed a malicious high school joke into an ad libbed sequel to Revenge of the Nerds.
· If I can be elected valedictorian, anything is possible [ courtesy of Reflection and soul searching: Ordinary Canadians who showed extraordinary courage.]
· If I can be published, anything is possible :=) [blatantly pinched from Canadian Dragon]