The Sense of Entitlement

Abstract

The first time Cameron visited the Toronto Creative and Performing Arts School (CAPA), he fell in love. It was the song ‘Jellicle Cats’ from his favourite musical that enamoured him to the idea of attending a specialised arts high school. Star-struck with the students’ performance, he began to see himself as one of them. ‘They were so amazing! I was in awe’. He thought, ‘to be in that group one day would be incredible’. At that moment, Cameron felt that CAPA ‘was the place for me’. Similarly, after four years as a student at the Weston School, Frank says, ‘I feel like this place was designed for me, … that’s what I feel, I feel like this place was designed for me, custom-built’. He recalls visiting the school as a child for his father’s alumni reunions, and finding the place ‘magical’. ‘There’s something about this place in the spring where just the brick and the grass and the, I don’t know, the way it looks’, he explains. After four years at their respective schools, both Frank and Cameron have developed strong emotional attachments to their high schools. Cameron says that CAPA is ‘just an open place, accepting, loving, beautiful’, while Frank is convinced ‘that there’s not a better place on earth’.