Elmwood School - Samara Yearbook (Ottawa, Ontario Canada)

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Brigid Martland, Head Girl, Phyllis Burk, Head Boarder, Sheila MacTavish, Head Girl. Mrs. John Stephen — Senior Mistress. Sonnet to Elm wood With apologies to Michael Drayton Since there ' s no help, come let us kiss and part. Our parents say we ' ve had enough of thee, But we are sad, yea, sad with all our heart To say goodbye and leave thy company. It ' s been a year we never shall forget— Our debut on TV, the formal ' s fun. And Bishop Reindorp ' s visit; we regret We shed the green and wish we ' d just begun. Goodbye to Mrs. Bruce and many thanks To her and all her staff; to prefects too And monitors and girls in all the ranks We sing our grateful and our sad Adieu . The ties of Elmwood nobody can sever For they are ties we know will last for ever, „ ■ ' bHEILA AND BrIGII)

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SAMARA 3 May 7, 1962 Dear Elmwoodians, In this last letter I shall write to you as your Headmistress, there is so much I should like to leave with you. Words, however, cannot express all that is in my heart. Life is a school and, if we want to be truly great, we must learn the lessons it has to teach us. Unfortunately we grow old too soon and wise too late . Perhaps we are wisest when we are very young. All the poets seem to think that childhood possesses a special significance, a special nearness to heaven. Heaven lies about us in our infancy . Perhaps it is because in childhood we find it more natural to love, and more unnatural to hate, than at any other period of our lives. Was that why Christ gave us the mysterious warning Except ye become as little children, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of heaven ? Must we regain the sense of wonder, the sense of reverence, the sense of beauty, the perpetual novelty of everyday things that is common to the humble outlook of the child upon the earth? I think so. We must learn to see all life of eternity, sub specie aeternitatis . The way to w in earth is to seek heaven. seek ye first the Kingdom of God , Christ promised us, and all these things shall be added unto you. We are apt in this modern age to set so much store by the mind and so little by the spirit, to want to be considered original, unusual, clever, rather than to merge ourselves into the great tide of common humanity and to become wise because we have become humble. The world of today has become self-sufficient, independent and proud. It has lost the childlike qualities— trustfulness, dependence, simplicity and aflPection. Consequently, it has lost its vision. We are warned where there is no vision, the people perish . And there can be no vision without reverence and no reverence without humility. It is one thing to be intelligent. It is a greater thing to be virtuous. That is why Elmwood puts character above ability and ability above culture. In an age when education is inevitably humanist, Elmwood has tried to carry out a system of education where every subject is taught against the background of eternity, knowing full well that, as Walter Lippman says, education founded on the secular image of man must at last destroy knowledge itself. Man ' s chief end, according to the Westminster Con- fession of Faith, is to glorify God and praise Him forever . To walk this world directly aware of Him, is to have found true wisdom and the true self. To value people for what they are rather than for what they have, deliberately to recapture the essence of childhood, deepened and enriched by the struggle of life, is to have learnt that unselfishness and sacrifice are the keys to what Traherne calls the gates which were at first the end of the world and which, pray God, may again be so for all of us. May I recommend to your reading, at some future time in your life, a book, The Road- maker , M ritten by Margaret Fairless Baker one who had not only eyes to see but true wisdom and understanding and leave as my final thought for you her great text, To have faith is to create; To have hope is to call down blessing; To have love is to work miracles. Affectionately, Your Headmistress and friend.

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