St Johns Ravenscourt School - Eagle Yearbook (Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada)

Page 52 text:

tml Sw ' tM The choir put in many hours of work practising for the choral concert at Christmas, and their work was well rewarded. Under the direction of Mr. Shepherd, the choir produced a very good performance and the members of the audience expressed the point of view that the performance was one of the best put on by the school choir. There were many personal congratula¬ tions on the performance by members of the audience, and Mr. Shepherd himself seemed quite pleased at the outcome. Over the years that I have been here, I have noticed a distinct improvement in the quality of the music of the school choir each succeeding year. If this continues, and there is no reason why it should not, we will soon have one of the best choirs in the city. Chow Last year, S.J.R. added a choir to its many other activities. This year, it continued under the careful guidance of Mr. Shepherd. A new member was added to the choir in the form of Mrs. Barret who plays the piano and thus complicated the situation with irrevelant matters such as the meter of certain hymns. However, with big booming basses such as Peter Fahlgren and famous tenors such as Angus Campbell, the choir made great progress, making their first appearance in the Carol Service which proved to be quite successful. Mr. Shepherd introduced many new songs to the choir, among which were This Land is My Land” and Chim-Chim- Cheree.” Both were readily accepted by almost all the members of the choir. The only disapproval came from the tenors who complained of the high notes in This Land is My Land.” A trip was planned to Breck School in Minneapolis this year, as a return trip from last year’s appearance of the Breck Choir. However, this was soon called off because of the lack of attendance of certain Upper School members of the choir. Hardly a week went by when somebody did not come. Because of this, Mr. Shepherd had to teach the parts of various songs over again. Due to this slackness on the choir’s part, the choir never did make it to Breck. However, there is always next year and let’s hope that the boys are a little more enthusiastic about it then. The members of the choir would like to express their thanks to Mr. Shepherd and Mrs. Barret who give so much of their time and effort into the making of the choir.

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tUfd Swim In the spring of the last school year, a chapel service was held at the end of the Grade eight’s, nine’s, and Ten’s school year. Another chapel service was held during the Red River Scholarship weekend. This term, as in previous years, chapel was held at the school on some Sundays. Due to the intense winter cold, it was sometimes held at the school for as long as four weeks in a row. Sunday service was an ideal opportunity for closing the gap between the boarders and dayboys. With more than half of the year left to go, it is hoped that more dayboys will be coming to chapel. Sometimes, the staff invited the Grade Twelves to have coffee with them after the service, and everybody hopes it will become a tradi¬ tion. Sermons were given by Mr. Gordon, Mr. McLeod and Mr. Kiddell, Mr. Gordon gave the major part of them. They had to do with the virtues in oneself, and how one should cultivate them to bring more happiness to himself and others. On the Father and Son weekend, a service was held with the boys reading the prayers and the lessons. As usual, there was a minister from anearby church, the Reverend Ray, of the Fort Garry United Church, who gave the sermon. During the week, chapel was also held, but it was different from last year in that it was only held on Mon¬ day’s, Wednesday’s, and Friday’s. The reason for this was that the form master could have twenty minutes to talk to his class, and to help them in anything they wanted answered. On Fridays, Lower and Upper School came together for the service in Hamber Hall, with an Upper School boy reading the lesson one week, and a Lower School boy reading on the following week. SlcctiofU Let me tell you a story CUcdtmi ' 7 ' itmU At Christmas this year, it was decided that the school would send old clothes and toys to the Indian reserva¬ tions in Northern Manitoba and in the Northwest Territories. A group was formed to take charge of the project, and boys in the Upper and Lower School were asked to bring as much as they could. One Saturday morning, the group under John Kiddell met to pack the clothes and toys and send them to Pelican Rapids. So great was the success from the Lower School that the Upper School sent off another load early in December. This time the organization was taken care of by Bill Gray. We have since then received a warm letter of thanks from Mrs. R. Philipp, Fort Providence, to whom the packages were sent. It is hoped that similar projects will be undertaken in the future. This year the school, as the rest of Canada, experi¬ enced a federal election campaign. We had candidates representing the four political parties: Bill Gray, Social Credit; Muir Meredith, Liberal; Errol Naiman, Con¬ servative; and Richard Woodhead, N.D.P. The campaigning was somewhat exciting and for the most part, serious. The Liberals had signs M.M. (pussy cat) for P.M. while the Conservatives retorted with E.N. for P.M. In the final stages of the campaign, the four supporters of the candidates nominated their man and extolled his virtues. These speaches were most throughly prepared by Peter Fahlgren, Conservative; Peter Hammond, Liberal; Kerry Magnus, Social Credit; and Douglas Kiddell, N.D.P. At last the campaigning was finished and Monday, November first, was the day the winner would be de¬ clared. Mr. B redin was the official returning officer and after the speeches were given by the candidates, he su¬ pervised the balloting and made sure, along with the party scrutineers that everything was done fairly. As the various polls came in, the tension built up be¬ cause a close fight was developing between the Con¬ servatives and the Liberals which was not decided until the final poll. I am sure that all those who participated had fun, but I also think they received an insight into the national political scene. The results were: Conserva¬ tive — 82, Liberal — 79, N.D.P. — 21, and Social Credit — 7. VINfOls L 1 J The Great Care Package Heist

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Never have so many people got out of S.J.R. in so little time. By 4:00, Friday, January 22, the two buses were loaded with their 80 occupants and on their ten hour trip to Fort William, Ontario. After a hardy, if somewhat late meal at Dryden, the senior bus settled down to the serious task of raising a storm. You haven’t lived till you’ve ridden in a bus at 1 o’clock when half the people want to sleep and half want to sing. We arrived at Prince Arthur Hotel at 3:30, Fort William time relatively sleepless. However, thanks to the masters’ tender care, we hit the slopes of Loch Lomond’s at 10:00 A.M. It wasn’t long before Ravens were hitting the slopes quite literally. Fortunately, lessons were given by Meredith, Malcolmson, Shandro, Gardner and Gray to the rank novices. However, this didn’t prevent the tenderfoot class from showing the rest of the group how to ski, and following McGoey’s example of taking full advantage of the powder snow. By noon, it became very easy to recognize a skier from St. John’s Ravenscourt. However, they stuck at it gamely, and by the end of the day, were greatly improved. Meanwhile, the other skiers took full advantage of Loch Lomond’s excellent range of ski runs, from expert to novice. Buses were scheduled to leave at 9:00 and after a slight delay for an overeager skier, we headed back to the Prince Arthur. At dinner, we were joined by Peter Schuldermann, and Bob Colquhoun who raced a downhill at Mt. Baldy that day, Cooney placed third and Schludermann came tenth. That night, most of the seniors went to the Forth Dimension for a dance, where everybody proved that dancing was much harder then skiing, except for Schmidt and Meredith, who played it safe, and got home early. As the 12:00 deadline approached, boys were stuck with the sobering problem of how to cover the five miles to the hotel in time. Various means of transportation were used, from taxi-cabs to G.T.O.’s. Sunday morning, after a good night’s sleep everybody was fresh and eager to get out on the slopes. Skiing was just as good as on Saturday, and S.J.R. somewhat regained status, by reinforcements in the persons of Calquhoun and Schludermann. Fortunately, casualties were light, with only one novice (Woodhead) and one intermediate (Magnus) sustaining injuries. After dinner and thanks to Mr. Weir, the buses headed back for Winnipeg. The trip home was somewhat more uneventful then the trip there and we arrived more or less intact at 3:00 A.M. The day was unanimously declared a ski Monday and so most people managed to get a full night’s sleep; although some felt that wasn’t enough and slept Tuesday also. However, except for Mr. Bredin, who lost a hockey player, everybody enjoyed the trip, which was very suc¬ cessful. Thanks gjo especially to Mr. Wellard, who worked very hard to make the trip a success, to Mr. Weir who so generously provided the skiers with free rooms, and to Mr. Leonard, Mr. MacKenzie, Mr. Geith, and the prefects, who so capably helped to manage the trip.