Brentwood College School - Brentonian Yearbook (Mill Bay, British Columbia Canada)

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ELLIS HOUSE, 1968-69 The year began with a lecture and ended with a beach party. Nothing very remarkable here — the lecture was the Housemaster laying down the law, the beach party was a spontaneous ' House happening, ' and yet in a nutshell, it sums up Ellis House, 1968-69 — a small group of 39 boys and one teacher which, due to e xpansion, will never be quite the same again. In between the lecture and the happening there were happy moments, sad moments, traumatic ones and amusing ones, laughter and enjoy- ment, complaining and occasionally, because we are human, bitterness also. But what emerged after the lecture was a unit, a responsible, adventurous, thinking unit. It was this that made the ' House happening ' possible. At the beginning of the year, the ground rules were laid down — we all had moments when they irked — moments when we wanted to linger just those few moments longer in the pool, moments when we forgot it was our turn to clean the Common Room, moments when creating a disturbance at midnight, to 25

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usual plethora of picture s ranging from Lenin (!) (who, some students believe, was ' an honourable man ' ) to exhortations to ' draft beer, not students. ' The TV Room had its usual square -eyed habites, who scam- pered out at .02 seconds before bed time to ask if they could stay up late to watch an extremely interesting, educational movie of world shattering importance, etc. etc. etc. I am heartened by the apparent new interest that the TV networks are taking in the education of the leaders of tomorrow, but would recom- mend that they programme their iconoclastic programmes at a less disruptive time. The House Library was well frequented and here too tastes covered a wide range, from, ' How to utilise hot houses to their best advantage, ' to, ' Hara Kiri as the zenith of modern political thought. ' It was necessary this year, again, to stress the important differ- ence between mine and thine, the climax of which came in the Case of the Missing Easter Bunny. Despite these isolated inci- dents of confused thinking the House has been composed, for the most part, of happy boys who are prepared to face up to difficulties rather than look for the ' easy ' way out and for this I am grateful. I am grateful also to a very able Head of House, who has served in this capacity for the last two years and has provided an example that will be an inspiration to future Prefects for some time to come. He was ably assisted by a group of Prefects and Monitors who tried, each in his own way, to provide that link between the Housemaster and his charges, a link which is often felt to be tenuous, but which is an important factor for the successful running of the House. Next year we welcome the arrival of a House Tutor, Mr. Georges Bombazin, who will assist me in House matters. I wish him well in his new post and trust that he will experience the satisfaction to be obtained from the daily challenge offered by the interplay of so many different personalities. I am looking forward to next year with interest and with the hope that with fewer residents and more relaxed surroundings for the boys I will be able to get to know them even better than was possible so far. q Housemaster 24

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quote Steve McQueen in The Magnificent Seven, seemed like; a good idea at the time. We accepted our punishments and learnt in the process something about responsibility, not only to ourselves but, more important, to others as well. And so we finally came to the end of the year and our midnight beach party. It was fun, it was nostalgic, it was a time for reflection — and, on reflection, in spite of the moment of truth we had all faced at some time during the year, it had been fun. I enjoyed the year enormously because it was a happy, relaxed one and I must emphasise that it was so because of the attitude of the boys. They accepted the rules, learnt the meaning of responsibility and yet still enjoyed themselves and for this reason, I enjoyed being with them as part of the House. As usual, the House would have been nothing without the characters and personalities in it. Unfortunately, I only have enough space to mention a few, like the local Casanova who was constantly having to chose between the moment of magic with his girl friend and the moment of truth with his Housemaster, or our local resident Adolf (guess who?) who told everyone he kept a cross above his bed which sounded very commendable until you saw its shape! Then there was our down east character who actually tried to tell everybody that they have a good climate in Toronto. I ' ll say one thing for him — it added variety to the usual Alberta BS. Meanwhile, Brian Thorne used to pay us brief visits in between Sea Cadet inspections. Other happenings of note were Scotty Cooke never once being late for bed after evening rowing, George finally having to admit that he had failed to convert his Housemaster, Wes pretending to be a tractor, Larry watching his roommates dismantle their beds, Charlie and Bob imitating Gordon and Glen, and Kent sleeping with a rabbit. It was a great year. Th anks to you all for making it so, especially to Smiley, Bill, Tom and Herbie. They did a wonderful job running the House and were largely responsible for the fine atmosphere that was apparent to all. -N.R.B.P. 26