What do high school students think of Antigonish?

This episode came about almost by accident. Anuj, recruited by Dr. J’s principal to coach table tennis, found himself at the school’s awards night recently — a four-hour marathon event — watching two grade 11 students hold the room together from start to finish. Those two students, Austin Wabbi and Brooklyn Wasson, are the incoming co-presidents of the class of 2027, and Justin and Anuj invited them on the podcast to find out what high school life in Antigonish actually looks like from the inside.

An Outsider’s Perspective

Part of what makes this conversation interesting is the perspective both guests bring. Austin grew up primarily in Uganda, with stops in Egypt, Scotland, and Tanzania, and has been in Antigonish for a year and a half. Brooklyn was born in New York, then moved through Pittsburgh, Alberta, Ontario, and Newfoundland before landing here for what’s now her third year.

Their first impression of the town is overwhelmingly positive. Austin points to the StFX connection specifically: open gym time and workouts with university basketball players, including informal mentorship from coach Doc Ryan, have meaningfully helped his own development as a player (he was on the U17 Nova Scotia Provincial Team and represented the province at the Canada Summer Games). Austin describes Antigonish as “small but full of life.”

What’s Missing

Asked what the town needs more of, the answer comes fast: a movie theatre. With the bowling alley having recently closed, Brooklyn notes there’s a real gap in things to do outside of school for students who aren’t into sports — something echoed, Justin points out, by university students in past episodes asking for the same kind of third spaces.

Sports, IB, and Staying Busy

Both students describe high school life as genuinely full — sports, in particular, dominate. Both credits the sports teams specifically with making the transition into a new school easy, since teammates become friends quickly. Austin is also in the IB program, which he says adds a real academic load on top of an already busy athletic schedule — but he says he prefers being busy to being idle.

As co-presidents, their platform for next year includes bringing back intramurals (informal lunchtime sports and mini-tournaments that have been absent for a few years), more benches around the school, general cleanup, and — a personal project for the two sports-minded co-presidents — streaming live sports, including the school’s own teams (the girls’ hockey team recently won provincials), on the cafeteria projector during lunch.

On AI: Not the Panic You’d Expect

When asked about their feeling on AI, Brooklyn describes it as a genuinely useful tool — not for writing essays outright, but for generating practice tests, checking homework, and getting unstuck on a concept. Austin, who says English isn’t his strongest subject, uses it for help with sentence-level writing and editing. Neither frames it as something to fear or avoid; both frame it as something to use well.

What Adults Get Wrong

Asked what middle aged folks tend to misunderstand about their generation, Austin pushes back gently but firmly on the stereotype that teenagers are simply phone-obsessed and checked out. The more accurate picture, he suggests, is a generation trying to adapt to tools that didn’t exist for previous generations and use them to their advantage — AI included. On the social media bans for under-16s currently being legislated around the globe, both are skeptical they’ll accomplish much: kids who want access will get it regardless, parents will sign them up anyway, and — as Austin notes — tech-savvy teenagers are pretty good at finding their way around these sorts of bans.

Both also push back, politely, on the idea that there’s a real generational gap in actually talking to older people. Austin says he finds conversations with older generations genuinely interesting — people have stories to tell — and Brooklyn agrees that once a conversation actually starts, people tend to find more common ground than expected.

Looking Ahead

On their post-high-school plans, neither has political ambitions beyond their current role as class co-presidents: Austin hopes to play university basketball while pursuing aerospace engineering, with Carleton as his first choice. Brooklyn hopes to play soccer in university and, beyond that, has one clear long-term goal: to live somewhere warm, ideally after travelling enough to find the right spot. For two globe-trotting young people, the search for the ideal place to live seems like a logical life goal. In the meantime, it’s clear that both are quite happy to live and study in Antigonish.

Thanks to Whidden Park Campground, a Community Sponsor of the Let’s Talk Antigonish Podcast.

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