The original photo is the property of 1948 SHS student Joan (Coones) Horn of Brantford, Brant County, who appears in the picture. Joan lent us her photo to scan. Joan also provided the nucleus of our student identifications. Other identifications, provided by other site visitors, are credited on the appropriate web pages.

We appreciate the efforts of all who have identified students, but identifications should be considered tentative until confirmed.
 
Despite being framed, and kept under glass, the original photo that we scanned showed a few minor signs of age and other imperfections, which are obvious on a few of our enlargements. Other imperfections can be traced to the original picture's shallow depth of field, some people not remaining still for the protracted period of time the camera's shutter was open, and the need to squeeze so many students into the shot. (There are significantly more people in this photo than any of the equivalent photos in this series.)

The original print measures approximately 6 inches by 33 inches. There are 597 people (students and staff) in the picture, which appears to have been taken in the spring of 1948.

The photographer was E. J. Powell of Cayuga, who presumably got the assignment because local photographers did not have a camera capable of panning across such a large group. Panned group pictures of this type remained a photography niche market into the 1960s across much of Ontario. (Although they were discontinued at Simcoe High in the 1950s.)
  
Text written on the face of the print reads: 
"Simcoe High School - 1947-48" then 
"J. S. Jackson, B.A., B. Phed., Principal." then 
"E. J. Powell, Cayuga."
This particular print was framed by E. H. Jackson Co. Ltd., a Simcoe drug store.

Simcoe High, which would later be known as Simcoe District High School, and subsequently  Simcoe Composite School, was at the time, Norfolk's largest high school. While your Norfolk ancestors may have attended high school in Delhi, Port Dover or Waterford, Simcoe High served much of Norfolk's rural population. Students from a distance carpooled or travelled to and from school by trolley train.
 
At the time this photo was taken, Ontario high school education consisted of five grades, 
9 through 13. Typically students would have started high school at approximately age 13 and graduated five years later, age 18, so most of the students in this photo would have been born between approximately 1930 and 1935.