Ashbury College - Ashburian Yearbook (Ottawa, Ontario Canada)

Page 11 text:

THE ASH BU Rl AN [9] iiagazte Staff H. M. Porritt, Esq. A. C. Dunning G. E. Brown J. C. Tvrer Spurts liters D. M. Lawson W- A. Grant Exrljanric iEiiitnr H. D. L. Snelling 01|c Ashburtan Shutter E. D. Wilgress A. B. R. Lawrence rrrctaru uJrrasnrcr attft Hkx xxu B iKanagrr W. H. Hewitt, Esq.

Page 13 text:

THE ASHBURIAN [11] EDITORIAL ON June 20th. term closes, and another school year is ended. Another school year: hut this year, surely, is distinguished by something that lifts it out of the category of just another school year, distinguished by something that in itself will remain a school memory as long as we live. There are few memories of our school days which time and tricks of memory will not distort somewhat as we grow older. As the affairs of the world, business and family life play an ever increasing part in our lives it will not be easy to recall all the things we would like to, those many incidents we thought so all-important while we were at school. Sometimes we shall experience difficulty in remembering the names of those boys who were our friends in the different forms. We may for- get who captained the hockey team that year we were in the Fifth, who won all the cups on our last Sports Day ; we may forget too who taught such and such subjects, but looking back we will recall that 1936 was the year in which a very kindly gentleman, our King, died. To us in Canada the memory of King George will always be associated with the radio. It was over the radio that we listened to his Christmas broadcasts ; it was by means of the radio that we were able, in a way, to share in the Jubilee celebrations, and it was over the radio that we heard those last bulletins and the simple announcement of his death, and the memory of that broadcast will re- main in our minds when the Italian conquest of Ethiopia and Germany ' s re- occupation of the Rhineland have long been forgotten. There was something particularly moving about that broadcast. There was nothing cheap about it, nothing sentimental. Official bulletins were read as soon as they were received, and between these announcements there was to be heard only the sound of Bow Bells ringing in the distance, calling, as it were, to the Empire to come and watch by the bed of its king. The thoughts of all those thousands of people listening to those bells, wait- ing, must have been very diverse. Some recalled, no doubt, the occasions when they had seen the King, riding in the Row, at Cowes, on one of the Jubilee drives ; others called to mind the King at the Front in those strenuous years from 1914 to 1918 ; others still, who had never seen the King, probably remem- bered the sound of his voice, and pictured to themselves his smile, so familiar from his photographs. A host of memories those bells called up. But our own thoughts that night in January were not so much of the life which, we were told, was moving peacefully towards its close, nor of the Queen, for whom one experienced an instinctive sympathy, but rather our mind seemed to centre on the Throne itself and on the man who would soon be called to carry on the traditions and uphold the ideals of a nation, of a people, of a