Ashbury College - Ashburian Yearbook (Ottawa, Ontario Canada)

Page 13 text:

THE ASHBURI.-IN ll EDITQRIAL DNTRARY to the impressions of many people, the history of the boarding school in its present form is relatively brief. The system began in England and derived from nothing more glorious than the business acumen of a set of gentlemanly hotel keepers. At a time when commuting was difiicult and slow, they saw the possibilities of profit in providing living quarters close to established schools. The original housemaster was little more than the operator of a boarding house for school boys, he made his own rules for conduct in boarding house, set whatever fees he felt the traliic would bear and supplied food and comforts within his calculated scheme of profit. Gradually, this simple design was whirled centrifugally into the larger orbit and more complicated pattern of what became known as the English Public School System. This pattern involved more than a syllabus of academic training, it formed a humanistic mould of nation wide infiuence, it built a code which gradually assumed the proportions and importance of a philosophy comparable to those of the Golden Age of Greece. In an emulative age, this system was transplanted, bolus bolus, to Canada. The latter quarter of the eighteenth century in Canada, its muscles surfeited with the hewing down of forests and of Redskins, was apt soil for a transplanting of culture, and from this seed-time was reaped the exotic harvest of the boarding school-a harvest which, as it seems to this writer, has supplied a certain dehnite need of our continent as well as has any other import, and perhaps better than have most. The first school of the sort in Canada was Kings College School. at VVindsor, Ontario, founded in 1788, to be followed in the next hundred odd years by many others across the continent. Ashbury itself was founded in the year 1891. Antiquity, limiting the terms to those years which lie behind contemporary experience, appeals to the imagination. In thinking back on the sixty-one years of Ashbury history, one's imagination is stimulated by the sketchy records of the past. You scan the old photographs, study the faces of the boys and staff, depicted there. and try to probe behind the faces. Often you have known some of the boys in their later lives. Sometimes you have read of them though you have never met them. Always it is those whom you have neither known nor heard of that stir the imagination I1lOSt.

Page 12 text:

10 THE ASHBURIAN SCHOOL OFFICERS Captain of the Scbool A. MCCULLOCH Captain of the Day Boys Captain of the Boarders P. FOIJLKES D. BROWN Prefects H. COTTINGHANI j. FRASER J. GILL G. JACKSON P. LEBOUTILLIER I. NIACLAREN P. SALONI HOUSE CAPTAINS IVoollcon1be C onnazt gbt D. BROXVN A. MCCULLOCH VICE-CAPTAINS IVoollcon1be C onnauglat P. FOULKES I. AIACLAREN GAMES CAPTAINS Football Hockey Cricket D. BROXVN j. DODGE D. BROYVN Skiing Soccer j. GILL E. CLARK VICE-CAPTAINS Football Hockey Cricket L. CAROINAL NV. LEE H. COTTINGHAINI Skiing Soccer L. CARDINAL G. CARNE CADET CORPS O jficer C onznzandin g AIAJ. G. WHARTON Second in C onznzand CART. P. FOULKRS Adjutant CART. -I. Glu. Platoon C onmtanders LT. G. CARN1-1 LT. R. Kmw LT. P. GILBERT A Company Sergeant .1 Iajor Cadet Quartermaster Sergeant C.S..Xl. A. NIcCL'L1.OcH Q.M.S. G. NL'PfNI.AN

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12 THE ASHBURIAN lfach one of these has added or subtracted something to or from the structure. and for each there has been justihcation, admiration or condemnation in the eyes of his fellows. U'hat were they truly like? What were their aspirations, and to what degree were they fulfilled? Nhat were their triumphs, problems, frustrations, devious schemes for defeating constituted authority, ambitions, frivolities, joys and griefs? Interesting indeed are these old photographs-even more for what they conceal than for what they reveal. For so often the interesting things, the important things, the things that are tinged with the true glory are the things which are never blazoned or even privily known. llowever, interesting as may be these reflections upon the past, the present and, above all, the future have also their fascinations. Ashbury continues to prosper and to serve the growing and changing requirements for this type of school, and we have every confidence that it will continue to do so for manv, many years to come. CGRRFCTION The HL'i1Li7lli73'TL'l' has pointed out 1111 irliieetllutey in the Editorial of lint -VUi'Il'i.Y issue. IVe stated that .llr. Perry, before eomiizg to Ashbury, had .vetted with the R.C.A.F. in North Africa. 111 this we 'were in error, as Efiglnmi, not North Afrifii, exits the theatre of illr. Perryfs R.C.A.F. sertiee. 'Iiheir lfxeelleneies, l.ord and l.ady i-Xlexander, with Nlr. Rhodes and Xlr. Perry.