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

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GORDON D. McLEOD, B.A. (TOR.), M.A. (MAN.) At the end of June Mr. McLeod will be leaving St. John’s Ravenscourt to begin a new career at Lakehead University where he has been appointed Director of Residence and an Assistant Professor in the Department of English. Mr. McLeod came to S.J.R. five years ago after having been on the staff of Ridley College in Ontario for fourteen years. When he left Ridley he was Head of English and a Housemaster. Before that he had attended the University of Toronto where he graduated as a Gold Medalist. He also taught in the Collegiate system in Ontario and worked in publishing with Thomas Nelson and Sons. During his five years at S.J.R. Mr. McLeod has played an active part in the life of the school. Most important, of course, has been his contribution as staff advisor to this yearbook, The Eagle. He also produced five school plays: BILLY BUDD, MURDER IN THE CATHEDRAL, A THEATRE HAPPENING, RICHARD II, and THE YEARS OF CHANGE. In the spring of 1965 and 1967 he conducted tours to New York City for a total of seventy boys from the school. For two years Mr. McLeod has been Housemaster of Hamber House and for all five years he has been a Boarding Master in Hamber Hall. He also found time to look after the bookstore and to organize and coach Six-Man Rugby. One of the jobs that he enjoyed most was his connection with chapel services; he co-ordinated the organization of chapel readings and arrangements for daily chapel and Sunday ser¬ vices in the hope that someday there would be a Chapel of the Red River to house these services. During his years in Manitoba Mr. McLeod became involved in research into Canadian Fiction and in Manitoba fiction in particular. At the University of Manitoba he com¬ pleted his M.A. in 1966 with his thesis THE PRIMEVAL ELEMENT IN THE PRAIRIE NOVELS OF F.P. GROVE. He has completed most of the course work for his Ph.D. at the same University. Last summer he was given a Research Grant for work on the papers of Ralph Connor which he had brought to light in Winnipeg. He addressed the Holderlin Society at the University on three different occasions con¬ cerning his work on three Manitoba authors: Grove, Roy and Connor. In the fall of this year Mr. McLeod wrote and produced THE YEARS OF CHANGE, a mosaic of the history of S.J.R., as a tribute to the headmastership of R. L. Gordon. His strong feelings of loyalty to the spirit ofSt.John’s- Ravenscourt were expressed in that production as were his dreams of what this school will someday become. At the end of June Mr. McLeod will have completed twenty-one years in the classroom; during that time he has said many things but none more often than the following: “The truth shall make you free.” “If God were to reveal himself he would be destroyed.” Frederick Philip Grove “Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’ Gleams that untravell’d world, whose margin fades For ever and for ever when I move.” 92

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