Trafalgar School - Echoes Yearbook (Montreal, Quebec Canada)

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Dr. Joan M. V. Foster

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IRAFALGAR has always been looked upon as a school of knowledge, 1 wisdom, and a very particvilar sense of honour. These attributes have been derived from not only the excellent administration and teaching staff, but also the students and graduates of the school, for it is the students themselves who endow the school with its spirit and its very heart. It is by their actions that the character of Trafalgar is formed. Since 1888 the traditions of wisdom and honour have been successfully retained and upheld by the many graduates who have left the school to begin their lives as adults. They have been retained because these graduates have profited by the teachings obtained at Trafalgar, and through these teachings they have become solid citizens and outstanding women in various fields of endeavour. It is this tradition behind us that we, the graduating class of 1965, must strive to equal and uphold. Whether we maintain the principles of the old Trafalgar or not depends greatly on the way we have conducted ourselves in our school years here. If we have striven to learn, if we have honoured the rules and respected those charged with their enforcement, if we have learned to get along with our classmates, then we have grasped the meaning of the Trafalgar tradition, and we are ready to go out into the world with the knowledge and satisfaction of having done our very best at school, confident of continuing to do so in the future. We, the graduating class, regret that the time has come to leave Trafalgar, our Traditional Mother , and to go our separate ways. While we shall be carrying our motto, Spem Successus Alit, not on ovir tunic crests but engraved on our hearts, we shall be proud to know that we leave behind us a worthy generation of successors to carry on that same tradition for as long as the name of Trafalgar exists. [11]

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EHEU FUGACES LABUNTUR ANNI TN ITS seventy-seven years of existence, Trafalgar School has been blessed with three distinguished Principals — Miss Fairley, Miss Gumming and Dr. Foster — each of whom guided its destiny for a quarter of a century, and each of whom had the same high ideals of character-building and intellectual achieve- ment. Now, with the announcement of Dr. Foster ' s resignation after twenty-five years of devoted service, we regretfully come to the end of Trafalgar ' s third great era: an era in which the traditions of the school have been strongly upheld, and yet one which has seen many changes. When Dr. Foster came to Trafalgar in 1940, she came well-equipped to assume the onerous duties of Principal, with her great ability as historian, teacher and administrator. After receiving B.A. and M.A. degrees from McGill, where she specialized in eighteenth century English history, she was awarded a Moyse Travelling Scholarship and went to Oxford, where she read Honours History, again gaining B.A. and M.A. degrees. She then taught at McGill for some time, and was Headmistress of Riverbend School in Winnipeg for several years, until she returned to research and went to Bryn Mawr, where she received her Ph.D., her major field being Canadian and American history. During Dr. Foster ' s regime, the school has celebrated its Sixtieth and Seventy-Fifth Anniversaries, and, in the years between, many changes have taken place. The most notable was the demolition of our 1914 wing, in 1955, when McGregor Street came through , and the building of our new wing, which was officially opened on February 10, 1956, by the Governor General, the Rt. Hon. Vincent Massey; this occasion was certainly one of the happiest and most impressive in all Trafalgar ' s history. With the new building came the Projector Room , and the presentation to the school of the movie projector, and the institution of ballet, skiing and skating lessons, by the Old Girls ' Association. School events begun by Dr. Foster, which have by now become traditions, are the Sixth Form Graduation Dance, the Boarders ' Dances, the Spring Concert, and the Open House for parents. In 1957 the constitution of the school was changed so that the Old Girls ' Association should have two representatives on the Board of Governors; in 1958 the Junior Library was established; and in 1960, as the school had grown in numbers, a fifth House was added, called Donald after [13]