Branksome Hall - Slogan Yearbook (Toronto, Ontario Canada)

Page 8 text:

HEAD GIRL ' S MESSAGE During this past year I have been asked several times what it feels like to be head girl. I contemplated this question and after much travail came up with no simple answer. One answer is not sufficient to describe a year, which for me has been a conglomeration of numerous weird and wonderful feelings. There was that feeling of exhilaration when Branksome was awarded one half of the basketball trophy, of anxiety when I wondered how many more times our poor Grinch would be obliged to stuff the tree up the chimney, of pride in our school when the last skinny Branksomite squeezed into the chancel and of mortification when found guilty in the kidnapping and wounding of our beloved Ribbit was none other than our seemingly virtuous staff. In all these endeavours, we worked (used as a non-academic term) together and, in my opinion, that is what Branksome is all about. After all, any school offers a basic education. Branksome gives us an extra, something just as basic and equally important— an opportunity to involve ourselves in school life to the depth that we desire. This is where the key word, enthusiasm, our own willingness to participate, takes over. A graduate may walk away from Branksome with one or two hands full; one, clutching a diploma and hopefully the second, hiding a rich cache of school memories. A basketball team fights equally for victory and for the satisfaction of playing a good game. Branksome is in essence a huge team, working together to fulfil any endeavour put before us. This year, in my estimation, you played a great game. The sports program, under the cheerful leadership of Miss Perry-Gore and Jane was exciting and rewarding; the various school committees excelled themselves and the Junior School, as ever, made its valuable contribution. I have decided what it feels like to be head girl — it ' s in feeling the tremendous support that the staff, the prefect body and you, the students have put behind me and I thank you for it. Affectionately, Cathy Page 6 The Branksome Slogan

Page 7 text:

PRINCIPAL ' S LETTER My dear Girls, As I write this we have just entered a new year and a new decade and all the pundits are busy with prognostications of what the Seventies will bring. I have no crystal ball but I am sure that we must all be prepared for changes and some of those changes may not be altogether what we might expect or desire. The frightening Brave New World which Aldous Huxley foresaw in the Thirties would seem to be drawing uncomfortably close. Nevertheless, it is my contention that older writers reached more nearly the heart of the truth: John Stuart Mill when he said The worth of a state in the long run is the worth of the individuals composing it and Nathaniel Hawthorne when he said Every individual has a place to fill in the world and is important in some respect whether he chooses to be or not . Since the days of Christ, who taught that God sees the sparrow fall, man has been trying to establish the worth of the individual. Who will deny that we have made but slow progress, yet who can deny that the past decade has produced a gathering momentum? If we dare to accept the responsibility of our right to individual importance and are prepared to grant to every other man that same right, we may perhaps find our salvation from the evils of autocracy, technocracy and computerization by which, it is said, we are threatened and reap only the benefits of the great scientific and technical advances of our century. Sincerely, Year Book, 1970 Page 5

Page 9 text:

MARGARET E. DOWIE Principal. Junior School Year Book, 1970 Page 7