Trinity College School - Record Yearbook (Port Hope, Ontario Canada)

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TRINITY COLLEGE SCHOOL RECORD 9 great assets: anti Geldard has these qualities in generous measure. Yct others have had them and failed to be- come anything more than ordinary schoolmastersg Geldard is much more than that. A man of marked individuality and strength of char- acter, with an abundance of sound common sense and good judgment, he has been a wise counsellor to his colleagues, a kindly guide and firm friend to the prefect body, and a housemaster with a keen and helpful interest in the boys of his house. With the firmness of the disciplinarian who knows what is good for those under his care and means them to have it, he combines a personality which has won the respect and affection of a host of friends, both young and old. Popularity he never sought, and yet popularity and affection came to him in a larger measure than is the lot of most. As the writer thinks of the last score of years at T.C.S., there are many memories of Geldard which come to his mind. Not in order of time, nor yet of importance, he puts them down on paper, all too conscious of the fact that they give only a poor picture of their subject. There was the Lower Flat of the old building, and there, as preparation was made for bed, and the usual sky- larking, mild or otherwise, went on, wandered S. G.-a stern word here, a smiling remark there, and sometimes the short deep laugh, and finally, the familiar La . . . st Lights . His bookshelves were full of good things and many of them were freely lent to boys who appreciated them. Then, too, the hospital knew him-slipping in quietly in the evenings with kindly chaff and news of the day. How well, too, we knew that long figure bent attentively over the lawn mower on his beloved tennis- courts-reclined easily, as he knew how, in a deck-chair at the side of the cricket field-clad in a brown raincoat, shivering uncomfortably in the autumn cold, yet keenly

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8 TRINITY COLLEGE SCHOOL RECORD I- I S. Geldard, Esq. f-s. G. It was in September, 1913, that S. G. first came to the School, and for the intervening twenty-one years he has been so much a part of T.C.S. that it is hard to think of the place without him. It is impossible to say exactly what it is that makes a man a good schoolmaster. Teaching ability-interest and skill in games-kindly affection for the boys-a sense of humour-and willingness to devote self wholeheartedly to the School and its best objects-these are certainly

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TRINITY COLLEGE SCHOOL RECORD interested in School or house match-thoroughly himself on tennis or squash courts-a keen spectator at an Oxford Cup race. Few were the events of School interest at which S. G. was not to be found. No one can look back over those years in the life of the School without remembering the winter of 1920, when S. G. lay in the hospital so ill that little hope was held out for his recovery. The illness was the result of his anxiety to get the rink into shapeg he had flooded it three times late one night and in the early morning, and the weather was bitter. The expressions of anxiety during the time he was laid up and the sincere rejoicing on his recovery were a marvellous testimony to the high regard in which he was held. To many of us who have been members of the Com- mon Room during S. G.'s time, the force of his personality and the extent of his influence have always been remark- able. Quick, often impatient with those from whom he differed,-incisive, at times caustic, in the expression of his opinions,-without intending to do so, he became the standard by which members of the staff patterned their acts and even their thought. It would have been hard to convince him that this was the case, and he would have laughed at the hint that a Geldard cult existed. Yet it seemed to others a fact needing no proof. There are those of us to Whom it has been given to know him intimately and to share a measure of his con- fidence and contidences. To us, the generosity, the kind- liness and the thoughtfulness of his nature have always been the main features of his personality, together with that bedrock of sound judgment and well-balanced common sense. That he has sometimes allowed these things, which were his real self, to be covered over with a brusqueness of manner, and at times of word, has given us cause for regret, because they have not only hid the real man from