Pickering College - Voyageur Yearbook (Newmarket, Ontario Canada)

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A MEMORIAL MINUTE - HARRY MCWATERS BEER APRIL IS, I9l3 to MARCH 23, l987 I have so much yet to learn and understand in the realm of the spirit. With these words, Harry McWaters Beer submitted his letter of application for membership in Yonge Street Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends to Elmer Starr, Clerk, May 2 I, l956. Harry was forty-three years old and had been attending Yonge Street Meeting since l946. Harry's spirit reached out to friends for the next thirty years as he practised his religious convictions in his vocational life as Headmaster of Pickering College. Over the years, Harry's attendance and presence with the Yonge Street Meeting enabled him to listen and give caring support and guidance to those who came his way. He served the Monthly Meeting as Clerk and as an Elder, providing nurture and sen- sitive encouragement. Harry derived spiritual strength and serenity from the Meeting. Harry Beer was born in Brandon, Manitoba, then moved to the Beaches area of Toronto in I9 I 5. with his elder sisters, Eleanore and Marjorie, his brother Charles. and his parents. In l927, Dr. Edwin Charles Beer and his wife, Eleanore McWaters Beer, sent their son to Pickering College, where he came under the influence of the young Headmaster, Joe McCulley. Harry flourished under the guidance of the Pickering College faculty graduating with distinction and a love for History, English, French and German languages and literature. Harry returned to Pickering for a post-graduate year as a tutor before he completed his formal education at Vic- toria College at the University of Toronto in History and Modern Languages. When his father died during Harry's final year of university, Joe McCulley assumed the responsibility of an adult counsellor and friend to the impressionable and idealistic young man. After a sojourn in Europe as a private tutor and companion to one of the Eaton children, Harry Beer applied to his former Headmaster for a teaching post. The rest of the story is legend. Harry returned to his beloved Hilltop to work, to marry Elizabeth Holmes, to raise their three sons. David, Charles and Jim, and to direct the destiny of this Quaker-founded school for over a quarter of a century. He had the pleasure of seeing his grandson, John, enter and graduate, and to watch his wider family grow and develop through the myriad challenges of day-to-day living. Harry Beer truly strove to fulfil John Cairds definition of religion: Religion is the art of being, and of doing, good: to be an adept in it, is to become just, truthful, sincere, self-denied, gentle, forbearing, pure in word and deed and thought. And the school for learning this art is not the closet, but the world - not some hallowed spot where religion is taught, and proficients, when duly trained are sent forth into the world - but the world itself - the coarse, profane, common world with its cares and tempta- tions its rivalries and competitions, its hourly ever-recurring trials of temper and character. This is. therefore, an art which all can practise, and for which every profession and calling, the busiest and most absorbing, afford scope and discipline. At Yonge Street Monthly Meeting from the mid-5O's to the 7O's Harry and Elma and Elmer Starr often met together keeping the Meeting alive until other friends began to loin. Harry's willingness to reach out to others to be involved with all ages, and quite recently, to teach First Day School, revealed the blending of faith and practice in his life. Harry Beer leaves to his many friends around the world the wonderful memory of a firm, friendly companion and a profound legacy summarized in his own words: When our love of good survives the challenge of the world. then we reflect the spirit of God.

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HARRY M. BEER II9 I 3- I 9875 Student I927- I 93 I Master I93 I- I 953 Headmaster Pickering College I 9 5 3 - I 978

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