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

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RICHARD L. GORDON HEADMASTER ST. JOHN’S - RAVENSCOURT SCHOOL 1952 - 1968 3

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THE YEAR OF CHANGE During the lifetime of the school there are always changes as the school evolves from one stage to the next, but some years are more significant than others in this evolution. This year is one of those years: Richard L. Gordon who has been Headmaster of St. John’s-Ravenscourt School for sixteen years is leaving to become Executive Director of the Glenbow-Alberta Institute in Calgary. This issue of The Eagle is respectfully dedicated to his headmastership. As we live through this year of change we are reminded of Mr. Gordon’s talk at chapel on Red River Scholarship Weekend in 1967 when he referred to a visit paid to this school by Charles Camsell when he was quite old and when the masters and boys he had known were gone; at that time Charles Camsell said: “My school is the boys and the men I lived with and came to know almost as I knew my family. The boys and the men are still here and they are still my family.”

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THE GORDONS AT S.J.R. These will be random notes about my sixteen years as Headmaster of the School. If ever the history of the School should be written they may offer the writer a footnote or two and some anecdotes of this period. I arrived at the school at the age of 32 in July 1952. The next morning I went out to see the Blue Bombers practicing on our field. I went out to ask them if they had permission and was told by George Trafton, the Coach, to mind my own “bloody business”. That was the start of my first day as Headmaster. I lived in what is now the School Captain’s room that month and in August, when my wife joined me, we moved into a small suite in the gymnasium building — which is now the Lower School boarders’ common room. My office, now a dormitory, was the room on the right as you came in the front door of Thompson House. I remember the first day of term very clearly. One bus drove up to disgorge some 30 or 40 dayboys to be met by about an equal number of boarders. E.B. Osier, whose son Cameron was the first son of a Ravenscourt old boy to come to the School, had driven Cam out and he watched and waited with me. We had, however, had an interesting year. Speakers had in¬ cluded Mr. Justice Freedman, Jim Richardson, Eliot Rodger and the Dean of St. Pauls. We beat a Kelvin team in football, tied Dauphin at Dauphin and then trounced them at home. There was, I felt and hoped, a growing feeling that we could make a go of it. It is perhaps worth mentioning the arrangement of classes this first year. The Lower School — Grades 1 to 6 — were taught in two “classrooms” in the basement of the gym. Grades 7 and 8 were taught in the second floor south east dormitory of Thompson House, Grades 9 and 10 in the south west dormitory on the same floor, Grade 11 in what is now the living room of the master’s suite and Grade 12 in the dormitory at the top of the stairs. Some other notes on building and grounds.Dormitories were on the third floor of Thompson House and in the gym. The present library was the dining room and the present laundry was the kitchen. Thompson House and the gym were the only two buildings. The main playing field was only half of its present size — the other half being in trees. The field was supposed to be cut once a summer by arrangement with some farmer but he took his responsibilities very lightly and it used to grow knee high in grass, weeds and thistles and we had many complaints from householders across the way. The present river field did not exist. It was carved out of the wilderness much later. The driveway, which was the old South Drive, re-routed after the flood of 1950, went through what is now the dining hall. We built an outdoor chapel near Thompson House and held our end-of-term chapel service in it, carrying out a piano for the occasion. The chapel was where the basement canteen and common room is. There was a great big portrait of Archbishop Macray — a very bad painting and the boys poked holes in the eyes and shone flash lights through them at night. I finally had the portrait removed and the eyes patched but where it is now I don’t know. The garbage cans were on a lattice enclosed stand behind Thompson House and rats were plentiful. I remember a Saturday morning when we removed the cans and the fence and upended the platform. The boys rushed around clubbing the vermin. We employed some pest exterminators after that. There was more swimming in the river then — legal and semi-legal. I think the river is more polluted now perhaps or boys have become more fastidious or more sensible. We had great Saturday morning brush cutting efforts and the boys did vertually all the marking of the fields (under Tom Bredin’s direction) and all the flooding of the outdoor rink — working all night shifts sometimes when it was very cold. Some masters thought this was a bad thing and would ruin them academically. I don’t think it did. The most important event of 1954-55 was the visit of Vincent Massey, the Governor General to open the Memorial Wing — now, fallen in fortune a mere projection of the Lower School Building containing a couple of classrooms, the Alumni Office and a common room. It was a great event. When the building was being built I remember Jim Richardson, Chairman of the Board, climbing up with me to the peak of the roof and both of us exclaiming on the size and splendour of the whole project. This was also the year the Hamber Hall was started and there was of course much enthusiasm for this project. Apart from the need for a larger dining hall and more classrooms there was by this time urgent need for more boarding space. Boarders in Thompson House were eight and ten to a room. They were all very good sports about it though. Living conditions were very far from ideal. By 1955-56 the teaching staff numbered 14. We had a total enrolment of about 140. I remember the year before when we “broke a hundred”. I rushed home on the Saturday morning, when I received the hundredth application and had a glass of