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

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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

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

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sherry with my wife. 1959-60. If there was a year in which it can be said that the School assumed its present shape this is the year. The Lower School now had its own administrative head, Hamber Hall had been finished and opened by Eric Hamber (in memory of his father). During his opening remarks he became so choked with emotion that he never really finished his speech. He was a fine old man and was friendly and cordial with the boys. It is startling tor me to realize that the staff was only half its present size but the enrolment was too large for an annual photograph of everybody grouped on the lawn by Thompson House. This was the year we started the Junior Prefect scheme for boys in Grade 11. Grade 12 standing had now become a compulsory requirement for entrance to University and so all prefects were chosen from that Grade. Prior to this a fair number of boys left after 11 and prefects were chosen from both years. The most important event of this year was perhaps the January Meetings which brought to the School Davidson Dunton (President ofCarleton University), Francis Parkman (then Executive Secretary of the National Council of Independent Schools), Lawrence Terry (then Headmaster of Middlesex School), Moffat Woodside (then Principal of U. of T.’s University College), Ted Davidson (then Chairman of Toronto School Board and a former colleague of my V.C.C. days), Hum Bonnycastle (Headmaster of Rothesay) and some local people including the Chairman of the Winnipeg School Board. The out-of-town visitors lived in dormitories in Hamber Hall. (The boys got up early to clear the washroom.) They met with the boys, with the staff, with the Board on Friday afternoon, all day Saturday and Sunday morning discussing various aspects of the question: what makes a good school? I don’t know that anyone came up with any startling answers but the fact of having all these people here and seeing their friendly interest in our affairs was an encouragement to us all and gave us I think a sort of new belief in our efforts. It was as good for morale as the visit of Vincent Massey had been when he opened the Memorial Wing. The events of the succeeding years are well known to so many members of the present staff and Board that they do not need to be set down in detail here. Of this last half of my time here I should however say a word about one of the most important decisions we made — the decision to double classes from Grades 7 to 12. The decision was a right one I think but a very difficult one. When we made it we knew that it meant more building, more staff, the necessity of finding more boys. It was made partly because it was believed that such increase in numbers would enable the school to break even financially. This belief was unfounded. This decision inevitably made the School a little more impersonal. I began to feel that I knew fewer boys really well, that I was confined to my office for longer each day and that I could no longer have or fcxpect to have quite the same relationship to the life of the School as had been the case when we were smaller. Too many of the dayboys I know only by name and sight. It was however the right decision. It was this decision that enabled us to attract the broad public support we have enjoyed in raising money for buildings. It has given us size and confidence, better teams, a stronger staff and a larger importance than would ever have been possible otherwise. I should like to end these rambling notes with two anecdotes that stick in my mind. Procter Girard, aged 11, had found an old bugle around the School which he asked me if he could have. 1 gave it to him. An hour later he came to my office with a bloody mouth and torn between tears and laughter. His front tooth had been pushed backward. “What happened to you? ” “Well it was like this, sir. I was in command and we were about to attack. I shouted ‘follow me men’ put the bugle to my lips and ran into the side of the gym.” We tried to raise chickens at the school in one of the early years. I had visions of feeding the boys fried chicken every Sunday night. Mary and I were at a formal dance at Balmoral Hall wh ;rc we met a farm wife. We asked her about raising chickens and discovered we weren’t feeding our birds nearly enough. We arrived back at the school and in evening dress, white tie and all went and fed the starving creatures. Later, when it got cold and wet we moved them into the basement of the gym where they smelled the place up to high heaven. This was all during the summer. We went away and left them in charge of Sheila Maurer, Russ Gowing, Walter Hartwig and Tom Bredin. I was in Penticton when I got a letter from Sheila who told me that they had decided to sell the ones that had not already perished to Dunn-Rite broilers. We almost recovered our outlay. There was no talk of raising chickens again. 5