Selwyn House School - Yearbook (Montreal, Quebec Canada)

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Foreword When the Headmaster very graciously asked me to distribute the prizes at the Selwyn House Annual Sports Day, last year, I said that the way in which the Sports had been conducted was very characteristic of the School. I said that the Sports had begun on time, that they had done what they set out to do, and had done it with precision and without fuss, and that to do this sort of thing was very like Selwyn House itself. You have a very good School and I hope that you are proud of it. For one thing, it is in a good tradition. We frequently meet the silly notion that tradition is a bad thing, that it means living in blinkers and clinging to old and outworn ideas. In truth, paying respect to tradition is a kind of democracy. The man who reiects tradition is saying that only those of us who happen to be alive to-day have opinions which matter. The man who respects tradition is a great deal more humble and, therefore, a great deal more democratic. Democracy says that we should pay attention to the opinions of good men even though they happen to be lowly. Tradition says that we should pay attention to the opinion of good men even though they happen to be our fathers and grandfathers. The tradition of Selwyn House is to believe that a boy can learn to do some things carefully and thoroughly: and it is a good tradition. I never visit the School and see you all gathered together but I think of that other silly notion that to have special and distinctive School insignia is to cultivate snobbery. The man who holds this notion is completely mistaken about the nature of uniforms and about the nature of ritual. The purpose of such uniform-whether for a priest or for a soldier or for a schoolboy-is not to set the wearer apart from, and above, his fellows, but to support and strengthen him. The Christian tradition knows that, to the best of men, there come hours when the flesh or the will is weak, and that, in such an hour, a man may do things which are weak or shameful unless he can find help from outside himself: and it is this help which tradition and ritual and training are meant to provide. The soldier who would flinch is lifted through his first experience of fear by the tradition of his regiment, by his training and by the need not to dishonour the uniform which he wears. And there are things-small failures of honesty or of chivalry or of conduct-which a boy might well do but which he cannot do while he wears the cap or the colours of a proud School. The black and gold of Selwyn House and its motto of 'Veritas' are not decorations. They represent standards of work and of conduct which the School maintains, and they help to lift every boy who wears them as near to those standards as he can get. lt is a good thing for Montreal that it has Selwyn House, and I know that l speak for the parents of its boys, past and present, when I express the hope that it may long continue in its high tradition. H. NOEL FIELDHOUSE, Dean of McGill College.

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SPORTS PRIZE-GIVING GUEST OF HONOUR 16 DEAN H. NOEL FIELDHOUSE

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SELWYN HOUSE SCHOOL MAGAZINE Board of Governors Chairman Gordon H. MacDougall, Esq. Immediate Past-Chairman Hon. Mr. Justice G. Miller Hyde Vice-Chairman Daniel Doheny, Esq. Honorary Secretary A. V. Lennox Mills, Esq. Honorary Treasurer H. J. Ross Newman, Esq. A. Drummond Birks, Esq. Mrs. Stuart A. Cobbett Peter M. Laing, Esq. Mrs. H. A. R. Martin H. Stirling Maxwell, Esq. J. Bartlett Morgan, Esq. Robert W. Wakefield, Esq. Staff HEADMASTER Robert A. Speirs, M.A. lEdinburgh and Columbia Universitiesl SENIOR MASTER F. Gordon Phillips, M.A. lOxtord Universityl SENIOR MISTRESS OF JUNIOR SCHOOL lMrs.l Christian I. Markland lLiverpool Universityl J. xou las .Sc. lMissl Helen D. Locke ill Universityl lOuebec Teaching Diplomal E. Geoffrey Dayies, B.A. Edgar C. Moodey lManchester Universityl lLondon Universityl lMrs,l Etanda Farquhor, Frederick A. Tees, B.Com. lBritish Columbia Teaching Diplomal lMcGiIl Universityl fi e WA, lMrs.l Dorothy M. Tester I3 its IJ lBrevet Superieur, Parisl . E ' lMrs.l arren l5ir George Williams Collegel lLibrarianl ' James E. Iversen, M.A. lMcGiII Universityl OFFICE STAFF lMissl Frances H. Gault IMrs.l Constance E. Howis