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

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sity of any other secondary institution that you may go to, like B.C.I.T. for instance, which, incidentally, is a very good place indeed. You can get good money from the government for not working and your range of options and choices about places to go, places to work, places to do things is almost unlimited, but don ' t be a drag on society. There is nothing worse than, a complete dropout; a guy who cuts loose from everything; totally irresponsible. If you are going to sit around on your butt be honest about it and do it on your own time and money and forget about handouts. There is an old phrase that is appropriate here: the cultivation of the intellect . Whatever you work at or do, whether you go to university of not, cultivate your intellect, and one of the best tools for doing so is what I may term a decent irreverence, or a healthy disrespect. I do not mean that you should be cynical but rather that you try to acquire a habit of mind and thought by which you will demand intelligent and reasonable persuasion before you accept a point of view or reach a conclusion. So how do you make a sensible decision about what to do now? Well, don ' t ask me, I don ' t know. I do know that in my day, which really wasn ' t so awfully long ago, choices were easier. You starved or were on relief, or if your parents had a bit of money or you worked, you could go to college and study from a relatively limited curriculum. You could go to vocational or technical school, and if you didn ' t do those things you went and got the first available job. You are living in a time of unusual contradictions which create their own tensions. We say the world is shrinking which it is, figuratively speaking; instant com- munication by satellite but peoples, nations, are becoming more and more insular and withdrawn and prepared to fight for it. Nations good old-fashioned nationalism has never been stronger, yet the world has never been smaller. You live in an age when the demand for food increases because of population growth, yet available land to produce it is diminishing. Not only that, the technology which might allow the demand to be satisfied brings in its train dangers to the environment, or to the ecosphere. Some few nations, Canada among them are very rich in supplies of food and resources, yet as you well know, many other nations are impoverished, famine-struck, lack food and resources, or one or the other, or both. Some people are so insensitive to this situation that even the leader of the N.D.P. party, whom one would expect to take an idealistic point of view, seriously advocates selling Canadian products cheap to us rich folks at home and expensive to the poor folks abroad. People talk incessantly of peace — peace at home, peace for everybody, peace in the world, and so on. Various sects, politicians, churches, all talking of it. Nothing wrong with talking of it, certainly, but society is still violent, men are still doing dreadful things to other people in the name of peace and brotherhood, and nations who call themselves peaceloving are still ex- ploding nuclear devices and bombs; even so eminent a person as Dr. Edward Teller recently advocated making nuclear bomb information freely available to anyone who wants it. Even if that doesn ' t happen it is almost inevit- able that somebody like the I.R.A. or the Palestinian guerillas will get hold of a nuclear bomb and blackmail the world. You live in an age of serious inflation and yet suffer equally serious unemployment. It was always thought unemployment was a deflationary factor but this is no longer valid. Mind you, many of the unemployed choose not to work at all rather than hold jobs they consider unpleasant or degrading. At Prince Rupert recently, I think it was, they had to shut down a sawmill because they couldn ' t find anyone to work in it. Increasingly Canadian employers are finding it hard to find workers in some categories. There is an increasing tendency by people to work only in the more settled areas of Canada and if they can ' t work there, not to work at all. The northern areas of Canada and of this province have largely no unemployment. Many people, including the Prime Minister, have questioned whether working in general is all that it is cracked up to be, and suggest that certain forms of inactivity are better for some people than activity. Perhaps the oddest contradiction in modern society is this: we want to do our own thing and be our own man, lead our own life, be independent and yet, increasingly, we decline to accept personal responsibility. We so often want to shift responsibility somewhere else — let someone else do it, I don ' t want to become involved, let the government do it - you know the sort of attitude I mean. We are increasingly letting government, particularly in this province, take away our power to make decisions and yet we say we want to be free. Free to be what, I might ask. Automatons? All these things I have mentioned are phenomena of the last 25 years or less. They are going to make life tough for you, maybe not next year but before too long. They are going to make it tough for you to keep your bearings and tough to make career decisions and personal choices. But I don ' t want to finish on a gloomy note. Frankly, I envy you, not only because you ' re young and I ' m old — or older — but because life in the next decades has to be exciting and challenging. The consequences of your failure to rise to these challenges may well be disastrous, but marvellous opportunities lie ahead of you. All I can say to you is good luck . 7

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HEADMASTER ' S ADDRESS D. D. MacKenzie, M.A., F.R.S.A. In these days when standards generally are disappear- ing, when Provincial Government has given up responsi- bility for Provincial Examinations, and the Universities have not yet felt moved to fill the void, it is difficult for a high school to say how much or how little its students have achieved, or even to define the standards to which it aspires. The only possible remaining yardstick is the Provincial Scholarship Competition, in which 15 of our students competed. 14 won scholarships. Again, it is extremely difficult to give comparable Provincial statistics but, so far as I can ascertain, this is regarded as a commendable performance. This year Sarah Scott was awarded a Freshman Scholarship to Queens University, and other members of the graduating class have been accepted by Queens, by Western, by the University of Toronto, and by McGill. If one judges a school by the universities which its graduates attend, then I should state that we have Old Brentonians at Oxford, at Harvard, at Stanford, at Berkeley, and University of Washington, at Reed, and at Guelph, as well as at the three afore- mentioned Ontario universities. Though the majority of our senior classes will usually proceed to local universities, students with special talents and interests should be en- couraged to have at least a look at tertiary institutions with whom we have communications farther afield. I would like to take a minute now to talk about extra curricular activities. In such centres as Vancouver, Edmonton, Victoria and the Lower Mainland of B.C. generally, most people seem to know about the school and what we are striving for. Unfortunately, our image in other parts of B.C. is very vague, so the accomplishments of the school this year should be listed in brief, but clear statistical fashion - not in either vanity or arrogance, but just to put the record straight: In February, our school Band, under the direction of Mr. R. Cooper, won the local music festival and, in addition, three individual instrumentalists won their categories, one of them, Bridget Trousdell, being nominated as the most outstanding brass player in the Festival. At the same festival Mr. Johnson ' s Choir, who had entered in a non-competitive category, were invited to the Honor Performance. Also in February our Drama Club, under the inspred if occasionally volatile and sometimes even choleric, direction of Mr. T. G. Bunch, presented a completely outstanding performance of DAMN YANKEES. In May Sam Jackson was runner up in an Art contest open to all high school students in the Victoria area. In Sports, our Rugby Team did not enter the British Columbia Public Schools Tournament, but twice during the season beat the team who did. They were clear winners of the Independent Schools competition. More- over, they enjoyed a highly successful tour of England during the Easter holidays. The Tennis Team continued to perform with distinc- tion, and once again finished the season unbeaten, and finally, earlier this month — for the second time in three years - our rowing VIII, having won all there was to win in the West, went to St. Catharines, Ontario, and brought home the Canadian High School title - a just reward for the remarkable dedication they and their distinguished coach have displayed for months. One sometimes wonders nowadays whether presenting one school to the general public has become just merely an exercise in public relations. I have always believed that the main function of the academic staff, including the Headmaster, is to stay at the school and run it, and I have therefore neglected to spend time whistle-stopping all around the continent from Alaska to Mexico City. I am told that I must get more involved in this aspect and I already hear thankful sighs of relief from the staff at the prospect of my impending absences. However, before creating for myself the image of an educational Messiah working among the unbelievers in the darkest reaches of this province, may I just briefly and quietly whisper to those who live there that a school should be judged on its results. Moreover, it is vastly to be preferred if these results can be circulated quietly by parental word of mouth rather than by flambuoyant vulgarity in newspaper fliers and advertisements. I hope that your satisfaction and that of the students involved will serve as our best references. All these accomplishments have been possible only because of the dedication and the competence of the colleagues with whom I am privileged to work. In this regard I should mention that Mr. F. Martin, who has been with us since 1961, is leaving to take up a position as a counsellor with Cedar Lodge School in Cobble Hill, and with him go our warmest wishes. Mr. Bell-Irving, who came to us just this year, and who has made such a deep impact on the school in such a short time, is leaving us to count fish. We hope his absence will be a brief one and that we will be fortunate enough to have him as a colleague again in the not too distant future. Mr. Johnson does not leave us — he just moves position a trifle. His talents are to be available to the whole school district next year, but happily he will continue to conduct our Choir, no doubt with the same vivacity, enthusiasm and success which he has displayed for the last six years. Now it has been customary for me at this stage to address a message to the Graduating Class. This I shall not do this year. I would instead, express some gratitude. Thank you, graduates, for your spirit. Thank you for your energy and your dedication to any task which you have undertaken. Thank you for your co-operation and, most important of all, thank you for your humour and your cheerfulness. If a message is in order, then all I would say is that if you display in the future these qualities which you have displayed this year, then you will help to bring to the organization of which you are or will be a part, the same esprit that you have so happily created here this year.