When I was a junior in high school, we read and discussed the novel “Lives of the Saints” by Canadian author Nino Ricci in my English class.

It was September 2002 and right before the last bell rang on Thursday afternoon, we were asked to pair up and choose a theme from the book and link it to the outside world for the next day’s lecture.

Luckily for me, I had one of my best friends in the class and therefore an instant mate for the project. Now all we needed was something like a newspaper clipping or magazine article and we would be one step closer to finishing our homework for the night.

However, being two 16-year-old girls, we mostly watched MuchMusic all evening and didn’t get any work done. By the next morning, I knew that we had until after lunch to get this project together or risk getting an incomplete. Then, like a red velvet curtain rising on opening night, an idea was revealed.

I had previously recorded lots of music videos on VHS (YouTube wouldn’t be created until February 14, 2005 and tape was the best way to save videos for repeat viewing) and we had access to a television and a VCR in our classroom.

One of the themes we had discussed from “Lives of the Saints” was the loss of innocence in children as they grow up and at the time, one of the biggest songs was Our Lady Peace’s “Innocent.” I quickly looked up the lyrics online, printed them out, shared them with my best friend at out lockers before class and we were ready to present after lunch.

Here is a sample of the lyrics that we presented our class with:

“Innocent” Our Lady Peace
Written by: Raine Maida

One day
You’ll have to let it go,
Oh
One day
You’ll stand up on your own, you’ll stand up on your own
Yeah
Remember losing hope,
Remember feeling low,
Remember all the feelings and the day they stopped

We are,
We are all innocent, we are all innocent
We are, we are, we are,
We are all innocent, we are all innocent
We are, we are

I remember being thankful to my teacher because this project connected us as students to a Canadian author who wrote about an Italian child growing up and learning how to see the world in new lights. We were also allowed to use media that was new, cool and made us want to dissect the lyrics further to see how we could apply them to the book.

During our class discussion, the phrase, “thus, the loss of innocence,” was said so often that it became an inside joke that echoed the halls even after class was over and today, my best friend and I still say it every time we listen to Our Lady Peace.

In 2003, the band would go on to perform “Innocent” at the MuchMusic Video Awards and Maida climbed the stage in epic fashion.

#begracieful

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Read my interview with Our Lady Peace here.