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Nearly half a century ago, when a group of Penticton teenagers were celebrating their final week of high school, a documentary crew came to town to capture that special chapter of their lives.

It was the Class of 1974 that got to be featured in Sandra Wilson’s Pen-Hi Grad.

Pen-Hi Grad, Sandra Wilson, provided by the National Film Board of Canada

Wilson graduated from Penticton Secondary School before embarking on her career as a filmmaker, and convinced the National Film Board of Canada that grad week in the South Okanagan city was worthy of a documentary. She later went on to write and direct the full length feature film My American Cousin, which was also shot and set in Penticton.

Norm Yates was part of the class of 1974, and he remembers it felt exciting to have a film crew in town to document that period of life.

“What they created is sort of what reality TV has turned into,” Yates said.

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Pen-Hi Grad can be watched free online nowadays. But before the internet, audiences would watch it on CBC – sometimes it was scheduled in the TV guide, and other times it was also used to fill gaps in the day.

“Sometimes if a hockey game ended early, or programming was disrupted – all of a sudden you’d see this documentary about the Pen Hi Grad,” Yates recalls.

Filming took place from June 1 to 8, 1974.

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Half of the documentary is of the grad ceremony itself, and it's full of comments from teenagers who realize they’re coming of age. Most of the thoughts shared in the movie could apply to a graduating high school student today.

“Everyone wants to leave Penticton after they graduate … but everybody wants to come back,” one girl says. “It’s so sad, just because you know, you’re sitting around all these friends you’ve know for 10, 12 years, and it’s the last time you’re going to see them … you just know your social life is going to completely change."

But lots of the film captures a different era – the hairdos, the denim jackets, flared jeans and oldschool automobiles.

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The documentary begins with a warning to teens about the dangers of drinking and driving. However it mostly glorifies underage drinking, focusing heavily on “the unofficial celebration events which have become a tradition over the years,” as the narrator says.

Bob Denesiuk, another Pen Hi grad of 1974, appreciates how well the film captured the way students dressed and behaved back then. However he does not remember the drinking culture fondly. There was a “progressive drunk” game that involved 12 cases of beers at 12 different homes, and participants would drink one beer at each property before riding their bikes to the next.

“Drinking age was still 21 back then but kids were able to get alcohol,” he said. “Think about having 12 beers on a bike, no helmets.”

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Denesiuk remembers one participant passed out at a red light in the middle of the game and had to get taken home by the police.

“The concept of teens riding around Penticton in groups of dozens – actively and openly underage drinking – is, shall we say, not as well accepted as it used to be,” said Kyle Anderson, who graduated a year later in 1975, but managed to make an appearance in the documentary.

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