Balmoral Hall School - Optima Anni Yearbook (Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada)

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CUNTENTS Magazine Executive ,.... Opening of Dalton House .... Editorial ..... The Prefects. . . Letter From the Literary Section. Dalton House. . . Our Juniors .... Activities ...... Library Reports. Exchanges ..... The Houses .,.. Class Notes .... Residence Notes Sports ..... . . . Initiation ..... Valedictory .... Graduate Notes. Headmistress. . . Calendar ........ School Directory ..., Autographs ....

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5 IEDITIIHI L The hand that signed the paper felled a city. -Dylan Thomas. The power and importance of a hand came to me so clearly one day in class as I read this line of poetry that these thoughts developed in my mind :- We take the words we read before us for granted. We do not realize how they have been set before us. What do we owe to the hand, the tool of the brain? What has been given to us by the hands of yesterday? They have given us laws, scientific facts, historical data, literature, and music. Consider civilization without these things. Without a hand to write these down we would not have the laws of our society, Arrhenius' theory, the story of Napoleon, the plays of Shakespeare, or the music of Bach. My second thought stems from the theme of the poem, a hand without a heart is power without mercy. So is it true that a hand without intelligence and learning is power which can be used wrongly, and learning and intelligence which does not make use of the hand, is waste. Thoughts and ideas originate from the brain. If in communion with the brain man has a hand to executive its impulses, he probes, uncovers, and discovers the world before him, around him and beyond him. The electric bell interrupts my thoughts and forces me back to reality. I am practical. I think not of man without a hand but with one. I think of our schoolg I think of the many hands that are concerned with it, of those that built it, those that organize it, those that teach in it, and those that learn in it. Are we using our hands to give to it what it gives to each of us? Are we hiding our talents or using them to the best of our abilities? I ponder on our youth counselled here at school where the uncontrolled scribblings of our hand are molded into the expression of thought. Here too our hand has learned if it has not the skill to win the game it must show good sportsmanship by shaking the hand of the winner. The hand in the frontispiece, is the hand of state. Here it is opening our new building by cutting the ribbon so that we might pass through new doors to better things . Finally I think of the hand that waves farewell to our school-after one year or many years. What is this hand taking into the world with it? It has the opportunity to do good or evil. It takes with it a training, if the brain is a good brain, that will make its signature a worthy signature. The little hand today, may tomorrow be the hand of the nurse who soothes, the hand of the bride given in marriage or the hand of the teacher who educates. Be it one or all of these let us discipline our minds today that it may be a useful hand tomorrow and that it may do good as it reaches out to meet the challenge of life. BETTY NICHOL, Editor