Galt Collegiate Institute and Vocational School - Specula Galtonia Yearbook (Galt, Ontario Canada)

Page 17 text:

ilu illirmnmun HARRIS SHELDUN He shall grou not old as ue that are le t grou old Age shall not weary hzm, nor the years condemn. At the gomg down of the sun and m the mornmg We wzll remember hzm

Page 16 text:

. . . W . ,, ,, STAFF OF SPECULA GALTONIA Standing-F. A. MacLennan, B.A.g Clifford Burnet, Harold Walker, Mayme Rowe, Duncan Mclntosh, Albert Brown, Douglas McCormick. Seated-Marion Tait, Prior Philip, Margaret Davidson, Ash Lorriman, Betty VVoo1ner, James Davison, Miss C. R. McLachlan, M.A.

Page 18 text:

SPECULA GALTONIA 15 YQESQIIEDITORI 11453, Gt , was P- 2- L i' i c, J: 1 A W N J- If Q9 Q9 Q7 ei-Y' W A When, during the storm of April 5th, lightning left a 9 Ccept jagged trail in the shingles of the North Tower, which is the 011'l67'l- the traditional vantage-point of this magazine, fearful Be It So! of what the portent boded, we consulted our Sibylline Books-in this case, Frazer's Golden Bough. To our relief we found that, so far from such visitations having been regarded as signs of divine displeasure, our rude forefathers held the oak in especial veneration, seemingly because it was more often struck by lightning than any other tree of European forests: They might naturally account for it fthis peculiarity of the oakl in their simple religious way by supposing that the great sky-god, whom they worshipped and whose awful voice they heard in the roll of thunder, loved the oak above all the trees of the wood and often descended into it from the murky cloud in a flash of lightning, leaving a token of his presence or of his passage in the riven and blackened trunk and the blasted foliage. Such trees would thenceforth be encircled by a nimbus of glory as the visible seats of the thundering sky-god. Certain it is that, like some savages, both Greeks and Romans identified their great god of the sky and of the oak with the light- ning ilash which struck the ground, and they regularly enclosed such a stricken spot and treated it thereafter as sacred. Let us, of a so-called modern and sceptical generation, brush away for a time the restraining bonds of the tangible and give sway to the fanci- ful, the illusive, which, veiled in the mist of centuries, has surely once more rent the shroud of reality and chosen as the sacred place of revelation, not as of yore the sturdy oak, proud sentinel of a mighty forest, but our own SPECULA GALTONIA, equally proud sentinel of a mighty youth. Truly, the visiting of Galt's watch-tower by the bolt must be an auspicious omeng the sky-god has thundered his sonorous approval of a watch well kept, scowling profound commendation, and has sent his fleet emissary to set his sign upon the favoured one and seal his covenant of requital. Every student of the Collegiate has witnessed the evidence of his passing-this mighty god who has deigned to observe and honour our poor efforts. If we have read the omen aright, after the fashion of our ancestors who saw in the mystery of the bolt a weapon in the hand of Zeus himself-