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

Page 28 text:

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

Page 27 text:

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

Page 29 text:

HOPE HOUSE This year began with a number of inner changes in the appearance of the House, with renovations to bathrooms and carpeting for the dorms for the elite on the first floor. Needless to say the battles as to which dormitory was to use the carpet-sweeper were Homeric and the first casualty, not unex- pectedly, was the implement under discussion. It speedily dis- integrated and the combatants fell back on the old stand-by of the broom. After many arguments we finally saw the light of reason but the number of fractured brooms nearly gave the Bursar a nervous breakdown when he saw the bill for replace- ments, (you cannot play hockey in the halls with brooms). Of the previous members of the House, age and attrition reduced the ' old-timers ' to ten, and they had to bear the burden of helping the new bods find their feet. This they did with zest, but I must say that this year was the best that I have encountered for some time insofar as the settling-in process was concerned. For this I must give credit to the House Prefects who went all-out to help the new lads settle in. 27