Pickering College - Voyageur Yearbook (Newmarket, Ontario Canada)

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This edition of our Voyageur is affectionately dedicated to Henry Jackman, who served Pickering College with devotion from 7947 to 7969, beloved by his students and their parents. We wish him well in his retiremen t. V6

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A Personal Word From The Headmaster What kind of a year are you having? is one of the most common questions we are asked during any school year. I know that you students often hear these words from your family and friends. I suppose that our answer is usually of a light and non-committal nature. In serious moments, however, you probably ask yourself this same question. What standards do you use in your answer to yourself? I want to tell you what criterion I use. The following pages describe a full and rich year at Pickering, so that in retrospect my answer to that question is that we had a very good year. But how does one judge this? In a sense there is a separate judgment for each individual, student or adult. It cannot be based solely on academic marks, athletic achievement, or social relations. Surely, it is determined for each individual by the quality of his growth during the year and this growth is measured by the kind of judgment he uses in facing the challenge and demands life makes on all of us. Growth is the thing, then, growth towards maturity, and this can be measured by the way in which we handle ourselves under academic or athletic pressure and by the way in which we conduct our relations with others. I label this past year a good year, not because it was without its problems, mistakes, and headaches-for we always have our fair share of these-but because the evidence of growth in so many individuals was so marked. Of course, I have to think in terms of a hundred and fifty students as well as of the adults in our community, but I would ask you in this exercise to judge only one individual, yourself. Did you grow in the many and varied relationships and activities that made up your life this past year? If you did, I hope you know why. In my judgment, growth towards maturity stems from two elements. The first is inspiration, the spirit that makes you give your best, the belief that you have the potential within you to do better in your life than you have done in the past. And the second is the discipline which you bring into both your job and your dealings with people, a discipline which makes you want to reach for what is excellent. With that kind of a goal in mind, a goal of excellence, you can resist the temptations of discouragement and defeat, of giving up when the odds against you seem too great. Discipline may sound to you to be a cold word and yet, when it is applied to something we want or love, its coldness disappears. It then becomes a kind of enthusiasm which brings forth our greatest skill, effort, and intelligence. Then we see the beauty of discipline. For example, take Man's landing on the moon. Think of the great discipline needed to reach it, a discipline made up of technological ingenuity and precision as well as human courage and will. The same spirit is seen in the lives of men, both great and small. The same spirit must be engendered to an even greater degree to help solve our problems of war, hatred, and hunger on earth. 3611671