Pelham Continuation School - Pelham Pnyx (Fenwick, Ontario Canada)

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E i '- X ,J 49' Q . 9 u 5 V, nu- -55111- ie? 5 NP? im - if , h X n ew ga-A Hu. ,S A . li :S -kv is-:Tv r - -I 1 -. , M A DESPERATE SITUATION Tl-IE SITUATION was desperate, to put it mildly. The business manager with his competent assistants had amassed a quantity of ads sufhcient to war- rant the publication of the eighth annual PELHAM PNYX. Hundreds of ads compiled with difiiculty, just waiting to be printed! And to what end? A few musty jokes, a stray pun, and an enigmatic paragraph were all the material that the editor had received. The editor hinted for, essayed for and finally demanded material. Better I should publish an almanacf' fumed the editor who could be seen tearing his hair. But all was not yet lost. Through the medium of auditorium assemblies, teachers and finally the radio, school-wide appeals were made for magazine material. Indolent English classes were exhorted. Teachers threatened to use extreme measures. Not even the lowly pun deemed it worth while to wend its way to the office. An ultimatum was reached, a special assembly called, the result . . . either . . . or else. Upper School determined to turn out some masterpieces. A barrel churn was set up in 3rd formg similes, metaphors, oxymorons, metonymys, hyper- boles, cute and quaint sayings, anything and everything was dumped in, The other forms followed upper school's lead and for one whole week short stories, essays, jokes and even the ubiquitous pun were churned up until it appeared that Ye Olde Pelham Pnyx would most assuredly be bigger and better than ever. What part is P. C. S. playing in this war? As soon as Canada declared war on Germany the boys of P. C. S. began to agitate for a Cadet Corps. After the authorities had granted permission to organize the corps almost every boy in the school voluntarily enrolled without hesitation. The students and the teachers have given generously to swell P. C. S.'s contribution to the Red Cross and the Salvation Army. This article could not be com lete without worthy mention of those graduates of P. C. S. who have enlisted in our armed forces. The students of this school are solidly behind the men who are carrying Can- ada's war effort to the Western Front, and this patriotic spirit helps rank the Niagara Peninsula among the most loyal districts of the Dominion.

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I 2 THE PELHAM PNYX IN MEMORIAM BY BTARGARET Tuck THE HAND that has penned many of the finer contributions to Canadian Literature was stilled on March 1oth, 1940, when Agnes Ethelwvn Wetherald, renowned authoress and poetess, passed a- '4 wav at her home in Fenwick, in A her Sgrd year. Miss Wetherald was born at Rockwood, Ontario, on April 16, 1857, one of a family of eleven children, of Irish and English parentage. Mr. Wetherald was the founder of Rockwood Acad- emv. The familv moved to Fen- wick after Mr. XYetherald resign- ed his position as superintendent of Havergal College. Philadel- phia, to become an ordained min- ister of the Society of Friends. Their home came to be known as A'The Tall Evergreens, ' because of the spruces and hrs around it. lt was under her fathers tutelage that Miss Wetherald received much of her earlv education. Later she attended the Friends' Board- ing School at Union Springs, N.Y. and Pickering College, Ontario. ETHELWYN WETHERALD -Courtesy M'cCleIIanc1 and Stewart During her school davs she excelled in English but she has confessed that she was a hopeless problem in Mathematics and spoke French with a marked British accent. Ethelxvvn Wetherald began to write verse in her early teens and at the age of seventeen received her first cheque to the open astonishment of her schoolmates who thought it absurd that anyone should receive money for writing a string of verses. She has written for a number of magazines and other publications during her long career. Readers of the old Globe will re- member her articles, written under the nom de plume of Bel Thistlethwaite. These contributions in 1387-SS led to her appointment in 1889 as womar1's ed- itor of that paper. In 1S9O,tIOl'l1'1 Cameron resigned his position as editor of the Globe and became the editor of the magazine Wives and Daughters, which was published in London, Ontario. Miss XVetherald became his assist- and and it was during these years in London that she started writing lyrics and sonnets. In 1895 she finished her first book of poetry, The House of the Trees and other poems. Since then she has written, Tangled in the Stars, The Radiant Road, and The Last Robin, Lyrics and Sonnets. Earl Grey, Governor General of Canada at the time, found the poems in this latter col- lection so appealing that he ordered twenty-five more copies for friends. In I9II, Canada's silver-tongued orator, Sir Wilfred Laurier, quoted a poem from this book entitled Orders in the House of Commons. Miss Wetherald also has the distinction of being the first Canadian writer to have a poem appear in a Canadian school reader. It was her beautiful descriptive poem Red-Winged