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

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VALEDICTORIAN ' S ADDRESS Honoured guests, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Head- master and staff, fellow students: I would first like to thank the graduating class for my election to perform this most honourable but most for- midable task of saying farewell to Brentwood College. I wish to ask the graduates to bear with me, for I am not speaking to them, but rather, for them. Unfortunately, not all of our graduates could be present - the rowers, the scholarship examination can- didates, stokes - but as absence makes the heart grow fonder, I shall not bemoan their truancy. It is difficult to sum up the past year ' s events for there have been innumerable good and bad times each one of us have experienced, shared and forgotten, and thus I must look at the school and the people who are the un- derpinnings of the school as a diverse yet strangely organic whole. The students and staff proved consistently colourful: indeed, had their cumulative talents meshed as well in the classroom as they did in the Revue, their academic performance would have been more than outstanding! But in both instances the staff and graduates proved equally adept. But most important, it is not what we put into Brent- wood but what we receive from the experience. I speak not of honours received on the playing field or in the classroom, but of subconscious benefits whether they be hypersensitivity to another human being or even a subtle appreciation of human circumstances. When we came to Brentwood we sacrificed freedom for security and now in leaving that security is sacrificed quite readily for freedom. Thus we leave Brentwood not with any great idealistic predications, but with a realism enlivened by the direct boldness of youth. For next year ' s graduates, I can only hope that Bren- twood will have the profound influence on their lives that it had on mine. And so, Ladies and Gentlemen, on behalf of my graduating class of 1978, I wish to you all FAREWELL AND GODSPEED. Michael Martin June23, 1978 9