Elmwood School - Samara Yearbook (Ottawa, Ontario Canada)

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Mrs. Blyth, our headmistress for seven years, will be leaving this year with Col. Blyth for Birmingham, England. We are proud of our school, we are proud of its scholastic standing, we are proud of its graduates and we will be proud when, we too, become the old-girls of Elmwood. The scholastic standing of Elmwood has risen tremen- dously each year because of Mrs. Blyth ' s ability to choose and direct a competent staff. Together, they have intro- duced a pattern of discipline, which although, perhaps, difficult to accept at the time, has helped many of us to discipline ourselves. As graduation day approaches, we, the graduating stu- dents, realize how we have been inspired by Mrs. Blyth. This day will be the end only of one phase of our education. It will also be the beginning of another. The graduates be- fore us, obviously, had the same feelings, since a large per- centage of them went on to further study. The day Mrs. Blyth leaves for England, she will be missed by many. Only with the shock of her departure, do we really stop and think about the contributions she has made to our school. On behalf of all the students, 1 would like to thank Mrs. Blyth for her enthusiasm, spontenaity, and concern for each and everyone of us. All of our love and good wishes will be with you while you are away Mrs. Blyth. by Margaret Armitage 7

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VALEDICTORY Mrs. Blyth, Members of the Board, Parents and Honoured Guests. Today it ' s our turn; after years of watching other classes leave, and hearing other val- edictories, the honour and duty has fallen to us. At times the year Tias seemed hard and never ending, but now that our term is finished, the year in retrospect holds nothing but happy memories; our first prayers as heads of the school, the initial eagerness and the eagerness and the good resolutions that accompany the fall term, and the joy of a Christmas at Elmwood, with its turkey dinners and candv canes. It always seems that the first soft breath of spring is felt in the school grounds, and the shade trees in the back provide a welcome relief from the heat and humidity of June; even the dull, frustrating months of winter are buried in the blithe spirit of the spring term. I ' ve enjoyed this year with its innovations and experiments, its failures and its success- es, and I ' ve shared all the trials with my class, and with my fellow prefects whose cheerful outlook on the gloomiest of days has helped so much to make the year fly by. At the be- ginning of the school year, Mrs. Blyth warned me that I would probably be in floods of tears before her, regretting my position, sometime during the winter term, but I have managed to come through the year with few wounds thanks to the help and encouragement that my headmistress has given me, for which I am very grateful. And I know that I speak for all those who are graduating this year, when I thank our teachers for being wonderful to us, especially our form mistress Mrs. Whitwill, and I would like to say that their teach- ing has been invaluable both this year and in the past. Academically, Grade Thirteen has had a successful year, although there were moments of despair in those final days of the school before exams, but we all came through un- scathed. I had a thought put to me by our chapel monitor the other day, a quotation from Frances Bacon: Studies serve for delight, for ornament and for ability, but to spend too much time in studies is sloth. I rather wish I had heard that a month ago. The most enjoyable part of being head of a school of this kind is working with the people in it. In all fairness I must say that the prefects did have a few hair-tearing mo- ments of annoyance, but a perfectly disciplined school is no fun at all to run, and so I would like to thank the girls who gave us those moments of excitement. But I am not forgetting that each and every girl in this school has made this year what it was, and I would like to ask them all to remember that this school is, above all, a school for people. One of my cohorts told me something that every Elmwood girl should think about, whether she be graduate or student. It ' s not the little idiosyncracies or seemingly odd rules that make up Elmwood, it ' s the people. Everyone in this school has her or his own special beauty - a beauty that the owner rarely sees, but one that can be seen by anyone else if she looks. If you aren ' t in at least one of the extracuricular activities put on by the people of Elmwood, you miss half of Elmwood ' s charm and pleasure. As Dawn said, it ' s the people who make up Elmwood, and it ' s the people we ' re going to miss in the years to come. Our class will be breaking up now, each girl to go to a new field of endeavour, and we leave behind a whole school of old and new friends whom we will always remember wherever we go. But leaving Elmwood is not all sadness; there are new joys and worries to look forward to, new challenges to meet, new friends to make and new worlds to discover with the knowledge we have gained here. My Head Prefect has expressed it exactly: End of a golden era — not the end of time — a new beginning. 6

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CONTINUITY KEPT FLOWING AT ELMWOOD GIRLS SCHOOL MRS. JOHN WHITWILL and MRS. DAVID BLYTH Continuity is the traditional aim of educational institu- tions and the Elmwood Girls School is no exception. When the reins of command pass from headmistress, Mrs. David Blyth to senior academic teacher, Mrs. Jolin Whitwill in early July, they will pass between school chums, war buddies and teaching associates. The two women agree their careers have been remarka- bly similar, right from their student days together at Ox- ford University, England. They read English in the same faculty at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford and graduated in the same year with honours masters ' degrees. She was smarter than I, Mrs. Blyth smilingly adds, - remarking that Mrs. Whitwill was the senior scholar for her year at Lady Margaret Hall. The two young women then became involved in the Second World War. Living together, they worked in a Med- ical Capacity - Mrs. Whitwill as an ambulance driver, Mrs. Blyth as a nurse. Mrs. Blyth had by this time met a Canadian soldier who would become her husband, David. She recalls with glee asking Mrs. Whitwill to accompany David, herself and another Canadian soldier on a date. The soldier, John, soon married Mrs. Whitwill. At the war ' s end, the two friends parted. The Whitwills came to Brantford in 1945 and raised a family of seven children. The Blyths returned to Canada in 1946. They have six children. During the family stage of their careers, the two women kept in touch through letters and visits. They are mutual godparents to a number of each other ' s children. However, when you have children by the half dozen, you don ' t get to travel much, says Mrs. Whitwill. Mrs. Blyth began her teaching career nine years ago at Elmwood. Two years later she became headmistress. Mrs. Whitwill, following in her friend ' s footsteps, took iip teaching six years ago and came to Elmwood after a year ' s experience. We both waited until our families grew up before be- ginning teaching, commented Mrs. Whitwill. Now, following the years they have been together at th e same school, the two women will part company. Mrs. Blyth ' s husband is to become the Canadian Immi- gration Officer in the Midlands of England and they expect to be there at least three years. With them will be a son and two daughters. Mrs. Blyth intends to take it easy in England and not work. This will be quite a change from her normal routine, she says. In addition to the administrative duties she has had, she teaches 20 class periods a week plus confirmation classes. Deliberately, though, she stresses. It is my philoso- phy that one must teach to know one ' s students. Mrs. Whitwill, whose husband is also a private school teacher, will carry on her teaching duties in her capacity as headmistress. Because of her teaching load and the increased enrol- ment at Elmwood, Mrs. Whitwill will have a deputy head- mistress, Mrs. George Aldous, to handle administrative details. 8