Victoria High School - Victorian Yearbook (Edmonton, Alberta Canada)

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PRINCIPAL ' S MESSAGE To the majority of you, June 1962 marks the culmination of your high school education. As a member of the graduating class you have reached a crossroad as you bid goodbye to fellow students, the staff and the school. Only a small part of your road lies behind you; the rest is ahead. As you look back over what has seemed to be a somewhat difficult journey, your mem¬ ories will be tinged with regret as well as pleasure. Perhaps you regret not having used full horsepower and your best wheels. However, no doubt Vic will bring happy recollections too of friendships, noisy corridors, busy classrooms, athletic contests, lit assemblies, awards night, graduation exercises, the hush of the examination room, and favourite teachers. When you turn your eyes to peer down the road ahead, you feel a sense of past accom¬ plishment, a realized ambition and a confidence of being prepared to meet new challenges that reach out before you. Your life in the senior high school has developed resources that will for¬ tify and sustain you, habits that will make for happy and successful living, and skills that will enhance your usefulness with the passing miles. May it be so! Your goal may be away in the beyond, but never give up striving to reach it. The hard¬ ships which you endure and overcome en route are character builders which give you strength to forge ahead. Never for a moment lose your highest ideals, for these like road maps are there to guide your progress. If it is your aim to continue your education at the university or to upgrade some skill learned at high school, you can be assured that your opportunities will multiply with each milestone passed. I trust that you will realize your fondest dreams on the highways of the future and have the optimism and determination expressed by these words of Emerson: So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man. When duly whispers low, “Thou must,” The youth replies, “I can.” C. M. Hollingsworth. 2

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•Hi THE DEDICATION — “The old order changeth yielding place to new” —Tennyson It is to the “old and to the new that we dedicate this book. Victorian decorum guided the designers who conceived and built Edmonton ' s proud, new high school, for two handsome entrances were provided; and that there be no misunderstanding, over one entrance was hung a slightly embellished stone plaque with the word GIRLS deeply engraved and over the other, another with BOYS as deeply engraved. And so in September 1911, Principal L. S. Carr and his staff of five welcomed some 75 boys and 75 girls, who with grim propriety entered through their respective doors—Edmonton ' s brand new Victoria High School. Then came the long interim during which our school ' s destiny was guided by a succession of principals; Dr. Carpenter, Mr. Fuller, Mr. Hicks, and Mr. McFarland. By 1930 the school staff num¬ bered twenty, and the school population had increased proportionally. Vic was bursting at sills, joints and rafters. At that time Miss Teskey, a member of the staff, wrote, One suggested solution is that a group of high school buildings be placed on or adjacent to the grounds of the present Victoria High School, this grouping to afford high school students a wide range of choice in he courses offered. However, the dingy years of the depression and a war of vast proportions were to intervene. Not until the second great war was over, did the Edmonton Public School Board and its superintendent of schools, Mr. Ross Sheppard, feel free to promote the construction of Victoria Composite. After travelling widely to study composite schools elsewhere, Mr. Sheppard threw himself into the project with sincere, even excited devotion. Victoria Composite is the Ross Sheppard High School in fact—if not in name. And now ! Now the survivors of the 75 boys and 75 girls are grandfathers and grandmothers. Now the BOYS plaque hangs forlorn, his mate gone. Now again Victoria is bursting at the sills, joints and rafters. A new principal guides us, one as sincere, courageous, and wise as any who went before, a man who is an alumnus of the school he administers. At the moment of writing, the purge of progress is about to remove the once proud Victoria High School; and we see the playground scar¬ red as workmen prepare for the erection of a vast addition to our school. Now another class, the fiftieth to graduate from our school, is soon to leave us, and so again we dedicate your year book to— What is old and what is new. And to you, our class of ’62. 1

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