St Johns Ravenscourt School - Eagle Yearbook (Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada)

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a beautiful bend of the Red River, five miles south of downtown Winnipeg. Here the school developed into a Boys’ Boarding and Country Day School of about 120 boys, of whom roughly one-third were boarders. In 1937 a building program was initiated. Due to the initiative of the late Mr. James A. Richardson and others, the school was presented with its first new building—a gymnasium building which compared ' favourably with that of any school in Canada. Besides an ulta-modern gymnasium the building had locker, shower and drying rooms, two classrooms, a Craft Shop, a complete dormitory wing and a Housemaster’s suite. In 1950 long-standing negotiations for the amalgamation of St. John’s College School and Ravenscourt School for Boys were completed. The new school, St. John’s-Ravenscourt School, chose the Fort Garry site of the former Ravenscourt School as its permanent location. Accordingly, the flood-damaged Administration Building and the Richardson Memorial Building were repaired and became the initial units of a new building program. Amalgamation came as the recognition that the two schools were one in spirit, aim and tradition. Amalgamation was the answer also to the peculiar position of a private school endeavouring to maintain the English tradition of sound learning in the Mid-West. The position of St. John’s College School and Ravenscourt School was rendered more difficult by economic distress, the Western desire not to be different from the neighbors and the competition of excellent public schools. To-day we are better equipped to provide the right type of develop¬ ment situation for mind, body and character. The carefully directed compiunity life, smaller classes, individuality, independence of spirit, flexibility, cosmopolitan enrolment and reverence of time-honored and time-tested traditions of a school such as our own are, indeed, invaluable considerations. Also, the active interest of those who contribute to the independent school support is a beneficient conservative influence in a world rapidly becoming hysterical. Furthermore, we represent not an undemocratic tradition, but rather an individualistic tradition where greater responsibility rests on Board of Governors, staff and prefects. We can defy political, religious and racial discrimination. On the other hand, we can give moral and ethical questions proper emphasis without touching on religious differences. These advantages we must cherish along with an appreciation of our historical development. The future is ours! C. J. J. ST. JOHN’S-RAVENSCOURT GUILD On September 19, 1950, a joint meeting of the Executives of The Ravenscourt Ladies’ Guild and The St. John’s College School Ladies’ Guild was held in order to bring about the amalgamation of the two guilds. The past projects of each guild came under discussion and from these there evolved the basic ideas for the present guild. The officers of the new guild were elected at this meeting of amalga¬ mation. The Standing Committees were enlarged to allow for representa¬ tion of both former guilds on each committee. The residue of funds from both the past guilds had been put into bonds. Both the bonds will eventually be used to purchase suitable memorials, the one to Mr. Walter Burman and his associates, the other to Mr. Norman Young, founder of Ravenscourt School. Eight EAGLE

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In,the fall of 1849, the Right Rev. David Anderson, first Bishop of Rupert’s Land, arrived at the settlement and took charge of the school when MacCallum died. He placed the school under the care of Thomas Cochran and George Pridham, and himself took a share in the teaching. In 1855 Bishop Anderson instituted a new plan for its management and nominated a Collegiate Board giving it the name “St. John’s College”. Unfortunately, the demands on the Bishop by his extensive Diocese pre¬ vented this scheme from coming to fruition and he reluctantly consented to the closing of the school. Nevertheless, this school could not die! A tributary school had been founded a few years before in the parish of St. Paul. The St. Paul school was conducted by Rev. S. Pritchard, a son of Mr. John Pritchard. St. John’s College found lineal succession in this school until 1865. Bishop Anderson’s successor, the Right Rev. Robert Machray, shortly after reaching his new diocese, determined that the school was the key to the future of the settlement. Therefore, he brought out Rev. John McLean, an old college friend from England, to revive St. John’s. On November 1, 1866 a new school was opened and Mr. Pritchard’s school was amal¬ gamated with it, the new institution being called St. John’s College School. Three students registered in the college and nineteen in the high school. The teachers were Bishop Machray himself, Archdeacon McLean and Mr. Pritchard. This was the first amalgamation. The school had not only survived the period of uncertainty and hard¬ ships of a frontier community under Company rule, it had also been as Bishop Machray said, “a backbone to our whole system”. It provided the only sound spiritual, moral and practical teaching to the English-speaking youth of Red River before 1851. Indeed, all the English-language schools of Red River before 1870 were organized along the lines of the British Public Schools. From 1866 to 1950 St. John’s College School showed signs of continu¬ ous progress. Re-organized on the lines of Westminster School, the School largely owed its spirit and its success to the inspiration and foster¬ ing care of Archbishop Machray. In this school Winnipeg possessed a foundation much older than the commercial developments made possible first by wheat of the prairies and later by successful, development of mining and petroleum engineering. By 1885 quarters on the banks of the Red River were outgrown and a new building was erected on Main Street near St. John’s Cathedral. This building stood until the second amalgama¬ tion in 1950. Ravenscourt School for Boys was founded in September, 1929, by the late Captain Norman A. T. Young, a graduate of Oxford and a pioneer of the University of Achimota in the Gold Coast, and a group of public- spirited citizens to provide Winnipeg with a non-denominational school founded on the best traditions of scholarship. Ravenscourt soon acquired its founder’s wider outlook, a horizon stretching beyond the prairies and even beyond the North American continent. Starting with less than thirty boys in the old Bannatyne castle in the Armstrong’s Point district of Winnipeg, the school quickly grew to over seventy boys. This number proved to be too large for existing facilities, and the school was handi¬ capped by the lack of proper games fields. So in 1934 Ravenscourt was moved to the Thompson estate on South Drive in suburban Fort Garry. At the same time the school was in¬ corporated as a non-profit institution under the direction of a Board of Governors. The new site consisted of twenty acres of well-treed land on EAGLE Seven

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From the primary discussions a number of changes were agreed upon. The fees for the present guild are one dollar, payable in September for the ensuing year. The new constitution provides that fifty per cent of the Executive shall be mothers of boys present in the school. It also provides for at least five meetings of the Guild per school year, one of which is to be an evening meeting. There is also a new standing com¬ mittee, The Committee on Education. The activities of the Guild during this school year have been quite numerous but have been limited by insufficient funds to somewhat small projects. The Library Committee has again done faithful and yeoman work. Some seventy-five dollars has been used for renewing subscriptions and for some of the material costs relative to building. It should be realized that this committee is doing the actual rebinding of the books itself. A further one hundred dollar bond has been put aside for the library fund. The Social Committee looked after the “Father and Son” banquet, and it was a success. Refreshments after the Guild meetings have also been arranged by this committee. Work still to be carried out includes refreshments at Prize Giving and after the Cadet Inspection. The con¬ venor of this committee also looked after many arrangements for some of the care and entertainment of the boys of the St. Paul’s Academy Hockey Team when they played at the school this winter. The House Committee are redecorating the Prefects’ and Senior Boys’ common rooms. The Guild has been able to apportion a small amount of money for the costs of this project. The Convenor of the Education Committee arranged for the one even¬ ing meeting of this year. The title for the panel discussion was, “What are boys made of?” The Guild are very grateful to the members of the panel,—Mrs. A. W. Dampsy, Mrs. Alfred Savage, Dr. Gordon M. Stephens, and the Headmaster, for the interesting and instructive papers presented. One of the Guild members designed several crests from which we believe, one has been selected by the Board of Governors for the ’new school. Another member has arranged for the school to be the recipient of shrubs from Holland. The photograph requested from the past Headmaster of Ravenscourt Mr. P. H. A. Wykes, has been received and framed. All the above projects have been carried out as well as possible but many have been very limited in their extent due to the available funds during this rather important year. T vo factors stand out in being the main causes of this situation. The amalgamation of two guilds whose dues were not only of different amounts but also whose fiscal years varied by some six months. The second factor, which rests partially on the first one, is one of more portent. Instead of a larger number of paid up mem¬ bers this year there are actually fewer. A past project which could still be made use of is that of the cook books. We still hold, on hand, nearly a thousand copies which present a potential profit. It will be seen from the above that despite some lack of fusion of ideas and different interests, and lack of more adequate funds, the new Guild has been able to carry out, in a limited way, many projects which have been well worth while. It is hoped that we may be able to materially enlarge the scope of our projects in the coming year. MRS. DUNCAN CROLL, Assistant Secretary. EAGLE Nine