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

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Also our thanks are due to those who have contributed to our daily needs — the Matrons, the Cooks, Mr. Morgan, Miss Chinas, the Engineers and others. To them all I express my sincere thanks not only for their contribution this year, but throughout my six years at Shawnigan Lake School. I am confident that those who are carrying on in the future, and that applies to all but a very few, will give the same measure of support to Mr. Larsen and I wish him and them every success. It is indeed a pleasure and a crowning achievement of the School year to have Dr. A. E. Grauer, the Chancellor of the University of British Columbia, with us today to give the address to the graduating students and to present the prizes. Dr. Grauer is an outstanding citizen of this province and nation. He is a scholar, a teacher, an authority on economic affairs, the leader of one of the great industries of this province, and a public-spirited man in many phases of our society. These wide interests and accomplishments make him not only well known to you, but an extremely busy and hard- working man. That he should find time to come to this gathering today is a great honour to us all, and I now ask him to address you. DOCTOR GRAUER ' S ADDRESS Mr. Headmaster, members of the faculty, parents and guests; and young men of the graduating class of Shawnigan Lake School. My remarks today will be directed primarily to the members of the g raduating class, although I hope that they will be of some interest to everyone who is here. But first, I know you will all join with me in expressing our deep appreciation of the splendid work that Mr. Peter Kaye has done for the School as Headmaster during the last six years. We all regret his leaving but we respect his reasons for it. We know that he has the great personal satisfaction of turning the School over to his successor in first- class shape. One of the trials of graduation time is that advice is poured into you. You are almost in the position of the two hobos in conversation on Skid Row. One asked, How did you get here, chum? The second said, I wouldn ' t take anybody ' s advice. What was your trouble? Replied the first hobo, I took everybody ' s. However, as you grow older, you will begin to understand how tempting it is when you are ASKED to give advice, to GIVE it. And you even get to the point where you think your advice is good! My advice will take the form of some stock-taking for you. Those of you who will be going into business will learn that any successful business must periodically take stock in order to establish what it has sold, what it has on hand, what it needs; in short, to find out where it stands. The concluding of your preparatory education is a good time to take personal stock. This is quite a major transition point in your lives. Many of you will go on to University where you will be much more on your own responsibility. Others will go directly into work of one sort or another. But from here on, whatever you do, you will be entering into the grown-up world. You are going to have to behave awfully well, ALL THE TIME, and never, never make a mistake — because of course grown-ups never do! Seriously, though, by this point in your lives, you should have developed certain valuable habits which have become second nature to you and which will form the basis of constructive achievement throughout your adult lives. For purposes of our personal stock-taking, you must ask yourselves, Have I formed or am I forming such habits? If the answer is not Yes, my first piece of advice to you is that you should bend every effort to do so as soon as possible, because without these habits a successful and happy life is hard to achieve. Perhaps the basic good habit is the habit of work. We humans like kidding ourselves, but the fact is that we are all born lazy. It is only by constant effort during our school days and later that we finally establish — if we are lucky — the habit of work. What do I mean by the habit of work? I mean the ability to use your time to do those things that should be done; the doing of first things first. This doesn ' t mean that you simply make a work-horse of yourself. It is true that people with some time to spare, usually spend it with somebody who hasn ' t. Thus, by Page Ten

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THE HEADMASTER ' S ADDRESS Dr. Grauer, Ladies and Gentlemen: This is the Seventh Prize Distribution over which I have presided at Shawnigan Lake School, and once again it is my pleasure and privilege to welcome you on behalf of the Governors and Staff of the School. We are completing another successful year which has seen many activities, and it is impossible for me to cover them all in the course of a few minutes review. We have gone through the School year with an enrolment touching the 150 mark, which is the highest point it has reached since 1931. At the beginning of the year it was possible to restore Copeman House to full status with the other three Houses and you will see, when we come to present the trophies, that that House has given a good account of itself throughout the year. It now seems evident that Mr. Larsen will be able to add to the enrolment in the coming School year, since there are over thirty applications on file, which is more than sufficient to cover those known to be leaving. While we honour the Graduating Class of eleven boys in Grade 12 at this occasion, we can do no more than wish them well in the matriculation exams that begin on Monday next. Three of these boys, Malkin, Kemble and Wilson, intend to go on to L ' Ecole Superieure at Neuchatel, Switzerland; others hope to enter U.B.C. and Victoria College, and one boy expects to enter College in the United States. In the last two years we have had only one failure in the matriculation class out of 28 entries and the marks have been around the 65 per cent level on average. We hope that this year ' s class will at least equal that record or improve upon it. Malkin and Kemble have entered the Provincial Scholarships for U.B.C. and we wish them success. In Grade 11, there are 23 boys writing Government exams next week in the terminal courses at that level. Lower down the School you will hear the results in the various forms when we come to award the prizes. On the whole, standards have not been up to last year ' s level, although there are a few boys who have done very well, and others will have to write supplemental exams if they are to gain promotion to a higher grade in September. I would like to see a greater number of boys striving to gain as much knowledge as possible for its own sake instead of doing no more work than is required to gain a pass mark. Turning to another phase of school life, I continue to deplore the attitude which shows disregard for property, whether one ' s own or someone else ' s. This attitude is not peculiar to Shawnigan Lake School, but here it starts with taking perhaps someone else ' s tie, T-shirt or footwear, be cause of carelessness or forgetfulness with regard to one ' s own. This can, and does at times, lead to more serious offences. Measures that have been taken in the past to correct these habits have been only partially successful. I mention this at this time in the hope that parents will join with the School in an all-out effort to correct it. In other phases of school activities there have been some outstanding achievements. A successful Rugger season was crowned by participation in the Rugger Tour to the United Kingdom, so ably organized by Mr. J. J. Timmis of University School. Those who participated deserve a word at this time in appreciation of the contribution they made to our Centenary Celebrations and the credit they brought to themselves and this province in the United Kingdom. In Track and Field Sports there has been much enthusiasm, and through sound training and natural ability we have had an unbeaten record in five separate meetings this term. Other achievements that deserve mention include another noteworthy display of natural history specimens and hobbies and crafts in the Duncan Show; the construction and erection of a cairn on Eagle Heights hill above the School by the Scouts to mark this Centenary Year; and the success of Jeremy Long and Murray McAlpine in the Duncan and Victoria Music Festivals. Time does not permit me to dwell on the activities of the Cadets, the rowers, the cricketers, the actors who were responsible, with their hard-working producers, for two outstanding dramatic performances — The Gondoliers in November and The Miser by Moliere in March. Then there is that group of public-spirited Grovesites who organized the School Tuck Shop — The Ritz — and have been able to turn a profit to the benefit of the School and provide a service for the convenience of their fellows. In all these manifold interests and others, I and the student body are indebted to all the staff members who have contributed loyally and capably to these achievements. The organiza- tion and supervision necessary for their success has involved much time and considerable patience. Page Nine

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