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

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mark your progress, both up and down, for the rest of your days. It is traditional, in talking to young people at a ceremony of this kind, to encourage them to think of life as a road that sweeps inevitably onward and upward to some final summit of their aspirations: and indeed at the end of our days, and in retrospect, that is how we may judge it to have been. But I am sure your parents would agree with me that as you ac- tually footslog it through life it seems very much more like a game of snakes and ladders, so that just when we think we climbed to some final rung of knowledge or experience we are bounced down to the bottom to begin the weary ascent all over again. And this prospect, I hope, will not discourage you because struggle, failure alternating with triumph, learning from our mistakes so that we may climb a little higher the next time — these are the conditions that give life its savour, provide the challenge which is the condition of all human progress. As Browning said: We fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, sleep to wake. And so it is that while you and we have every reason to feel proud of your progress to this point, you should now, perhaps, be giving some thought to the proportions of the next and sterner apprenticeship that awaits you in the days ahead. And indeed, knowing you as I do, I am sure you are already doing this because for the first time in your lives the world beyond your families and beyond Brentwood is issuing something more than an academic challenge to you. As a matter of fact essentially what you have won for yourselves this afternoon is the right to exercise a proprietary interest in what happens in that world. It now belongs to you and, more important, you now become in part directly answerable for it. So perhaps it might be helpful if we enquired briefly this afternoon into what you are likely to find out there, and why. Well principally I suggest a very great deal that will arouse not only your deep concern but also I trust your rightful anger. For instance you will discover that many of the values which you have learned from your homes and from your days at this school are often abandoned quite cheerfully in the world outside if they appear to conflict with man ' s short term comfort and convenience. 14

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ADDRESS BY MR. HUGH STEPHEN GUEST SPEAKER GRADUATION DAY AWARDS, JUNE 20, 1970 I am, of course, most honored to have been asked to speak at this Graduation Ceremony which has a rather special meaning for many of you here this afternoon. And while each of you, be it as teacher, parent or boy has played an essential role in the process culminating in this happy day, it is, I am sure, to the graduates themselves that I am expected to address myself. However, in passing, and just to set the record straight, let me make plain at once that, even were the occasion different, I would not have the temerity to address advice to members of the staff. My brief excursion into politics may not have taught me very much. But at least it trained me to recognize fairly instinctively the kind of territory where even angels fear to tread. As for the parents, of whom I am one, I am sure the boys feel we are fairly far beyond the stage where remedial action of any sort can accomplish too much. However, in this connection I might just say this to the boys, that if they will but have faith and hang on with patience for a little while longer, they may be amazed at how well we mature with keeping: coinciden tally, they may also find the rate of the process roughly approximates their own advancing years. And now let me speak directly to the graduating class. Well, I am sure at this very moment all of you feel, and with justification, that at long last a seemingly endless phase of your life has come to its close, a phase which at times, I am sure, has tried your patience and made you anxious to be done with it. And now the big day has arrived, your ap- prenticeship is over and the real thing has begun. From here on the road climbs ever upward and straightforwardly to the top. So in all fairness perhaps my first words to you this af- ternoon should be such as to moderate somewhat your un- derstanding of the status you have achieved on this your day of graduation. Because where in effect you have arrived today is less some great watershed of life than what you will later find to have been but the first of a series of checkpoints which will 13

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The physical environment, which I know you have been taught here to cherish as man ' s faithful and necessary companion in the partnership of existence, you will see more frequently treated as some nondescript serf to be insulted, demeaned and if necessary broken into submission to man ' s immediate profit. Seeing all this and much else besides which will offend the sense of fairness, the compassion and wisdom which you have learned here at school you will, I know, feel not only sudden anger but also I suspect an impulsive desire to shatter the whole sorry scheme of things to bits and then, as old Omar says, Remould it nearer to your heart ' s desire. And let me make plain that this reaction is not confined to young people. There is certainly nobody here this afternoon of whatever age who at times these days is not overcome by a sense of frustrated rage at the sheer massive imbecility of the world and who does sometimes dream of starting the whole experiment over again with a new set of ground rules. One of the many myths popularised today is that discontent is an ache found only in young hearts. So believe me none of us who is older would wish in any way to moderate your determination to put as much right as you possibly can and as much as the world will stand. All, perhaps, that we do ask is that you first give some thought to what it is that has gone wrong so that you will not throw overboard those things that have served mankind pretty well until now and will serve you well also if you will but give them half a chance. Now as we look at this society into which you are about to step and in which so many dreams seem to have gone astray we are struck, I think by a rather curious paradox. Through countless centuries, as your studies will have told you, man has been engaged in a struggle to liberate himself from the oppression and tyranny first of tribal chiefs, then of priests and kings and latterly of dictators of one sort or another. At each new step along this path to freedom man has also learned that as he has gained his liberties he has had to condition them with certain self-imposed limitations. These restrictions have been found necessary not because they are good in themselves but because men and women, being human and therefore frequently selfish, cannot be trusted with absolute freedom. This system of liberty of choice, both in our economic and 15