Shawnigan Lake School - Yearbook (Shawnigan Lake, British Columbia Canada)

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Into whatever shape we have been moulded we thank P.T.S. for his fine craftsmanship, and long after his passing, we will remember him. ' — P.C.L. ' SKRIMMY ' How can one sum up, or pay fitting tribute to twenty-five years ' devoted service to the School, in a few paragraphs? How can one express the sense of loss of some five hundred Old Boys who passed through Skrimmy ' s classes? Impossible: and all one can offer him is a few inadequate lines, a quick sketch from a particular time, in place of the larger canvas that would alone do justice to his memory. In December, 1926, the Old School burned down, all buildings being destroyed except the Gym and the Hill House, a residence with three dormitories which stood on the knoll behind the present Hobby Shop. Previously ' Skrimmy ' had been specializing in Mathematics and History for several forms. He now took on the entire instruction for Forms V and VI. Working conditions were primitive: wooden partitions had been erected in the Gym so as to make a classroom in the northwest corner and a dining-room in the southeast corner, and one ' s way between these two apartments had to be threaded between piles of lumber and building materials. Heating was provided by two old wood stoves which plumbed rare depths of incapacity to fulfil their task in a severe Island winter. Yet despite these unpromising circumstances, in June 1927 all Form VI passed the Junior Matriculation exams, and all members of Form V passed into Form VI. In the following year (when the whole School was reunited in the present buildings) the same group of bovs all passed their respective Senior and Junior Matriculation exams. The 1927 results and the momentum of ' Skrimmy ' s ' instruction which undoubtedly carried through to 1928 represented a tour de force on his part, and are remembered with deep appreciation by the Old Boys of that generation. His teaching methods were quiet and persuasive; the class work proceeded steadily, and each period accomplished the objective set for the time. We learned to recognize the slight quivering of the lips and twinkle of the eyes that, minutes ahead, presaged one of ' Skrimmy ' s ' good jokes; by contrast we respected the gentle sarcasm — disciplinary but never sharp or unkind — that marked someone ' s fall from grace. Once we discovered that the classroom stove, when stoked with green wood and a generous helping of wet leaves, smoked abominably. This trick was essayed one February, 1927, afternoon when an arduous session of higher mathematics was scheduled. The smoke necessitated a safari to the dining-room, and the resultant coming and going, relighting of the dining- room stove, and requests for permission to return to the classroom for forgotten books, made mincemeat of the afternoon period. But ' Skrimmy, ' like Bates Sahib before him, had seen all — even to the utmost farthing — and when books were slammed hopefully shut at 3:30 a quiet voice reminded us, in a tone almost of apology, that the Math, timetable was such as to admit of no deviation. The sun sparkled on the snow outside, sleighs were drawn up ready at the top of Hartle ' s Hill, but we toiled painfully with quadratic equations until dark had fallen. Thereafter loving care was lavished on the classroom stove, that it might burn always cleanly with a bright fire. ' Suaviter in modo, fortiter in re ' — gentle in method, firm in action; the old Latin tag which comes to mind may not be an unfitting epitaph, and perhaps one which ' Skrimmy ' himself would not have scorned. — O.S.L.S. ZJhe lA ar VUlemorial Society. On the occasion of his visit to the School in March, 1953, the Lieutenant-Governor of British Columbia, The Honourable Clarence Wallace, C.B.E., generously offered to donate a War Memorial plaque to the School in honour of Old Boys who gave their lives in the World War 1939-1945. The plaque, designed in bronze by Mr. John Wade, A.R.I.B.A., containing the names of 41 Old Boys, has now been completed and stands in the School Chapel. A service of dedication will be held in the Chapel in the coming School Year. Coincident with the completion of this Memorial plaque an appeal was made by the Committee of the War Memorial Society for the establishment of a permanent War Memorial fund. The objects of this fund are to provide for various renovations and improvements to the School buildings and to initiate scholarships to assist Old Boys and others in maintaining sons at the School. The Treasurer of the Society, and the Headmaster, have already received generous contributions to the fund, and it is hoped that Old Boys, and parents, will see fit to maintain and build up the fund on to a permanent basis. Page Eight

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-?n [- raise of r eadina Speech Day Address, June, 1954 by Roderick L. Haig-Brown, LL.D. It has been suggested to me that I might talk to you today about the advantages of reading good literature. It has even been suggested to me that not all of you absorb, willingly and happily, regular doses of the stuff. This, of course, is a hideous libel. I am sure all of you are planning summers of steady and profitable reading, fitted neatly in between those unavoidable interruptions when you are called upon to go sailing or fishing or swimming, or perform some other tiresome activity of this general nature. But in spite of this conviction of mine, I am going to talk to you about books and reading. It is, after all, too good a chance for me to miss. Books are my business, and you can hardly expect me not to put in a plug for them. I can think of only two good reasons to read — one is for pleasure and the other is to learn something. These may or may not be the same thing, but they nearly always can be if you get any kind of a kick out of having a mind as well as a body. Reading for pleasure is the important thing. Reading is not a natural pleasure, like fighting and eating and making love; the chances are most of our ancestors five or ten generations back couldn ' t read or, if they could, didn ' t read very much. Good literature is not a natural taste, it is an acquired taste, like good whiskey and fly fishing and modern art and most other worthwhile things. You have to develop certain standards and go to a little effort to acquire it. But it is a taste you had better acquire if you are going to get the most out of your lives, because the meaning of man and the meaning of civilization is written in good literature. You will not find it so easily or so fully, if you find it at all, anywhere else. The printed page and the spoken word are the onlv real means of communicating ideas. You can skirt around ideas, play with them, point them up a little, emphasize them, perhaps even clarify them, with such means as painting and music, radio, film and television. But from none of these will you get the precision and thoroughness you can expect from the printed page, or the words spoken in discussion. And the spoken word is ephemeral unless someone writes it down; the discussion is limited and impermanent unless it is recorded and spread beyond its group by some means. You will find the world ' s wisdom, the only possible means you can ever have of beginning to understand yourselves and your time and your world, waiting quietly for you between the covers of a great many rather dull-looking books. And there is no other place you can find it. The books only wait. Except in school, and not very much even there, they won ' t run after you and try to bite. You have to go to them and bring something with you — an intention to read well and a willingness to make a little effort about it. Perhaps this sounds like rather formidable and forbidding pleasure. But I doubt if you have any real pleasures now except those you have learned, with some little output of effort, to enjoy — you did not come naturally to the full pleasures of swimming or sailing or skiing, cricket or football or baseball or anything else you enjoy. To read well, you need a skeleton framework of knowledge, which you constantly reshape by fitting other knowledge into it. Some of this you learn at home, some in school, some in university, more by living, and more again by reading more, as the whole develops and expands. You know far more than you think already. You know, for instance, that North American civilization is not an isolated thing, but a part of western civilization. You know that western civilization has followed a direct line from the Mediterranean civilizations of Egypt and Syria, Greece and Rome, through Spain and France and Britain to the present. You know that it has been powerfully influenced through 2,000 years by Christianity. You know, perhaps less certainly, how its flame was hidden in the dark ages that preceded mediaeval civilization, then burst out in glory with the Renaissance. This is one aspect of the framework. On it hang the developments of morality, philosophy, science, the arts, law and government. Into it, or into a frame of your own something like it, can be fitted everything you know or will learn of life and of wisdom. And so you become educated; you become civilized men instead of merely two-legged creatures with a power of reasoning. Perhaps this has suggested to you one of the keenest pleasures of reading — the pleasure of pursuit, of hunting something down to its sources until you understand just Page Ten