News Archive

“Take some more tea,” the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.
“I’ve had nothing yet,” Alice replied in an offended tone: “so I can’t take more.”
“You mean you can’t take less,” said the Hatter: “It’s very easy to take more than nothing.”

 

The discourse was certainly more civil than it was at the Mad Hatter’s tea party, but the ambience was no less wonderful at the Alice in Wonderland-themed Down the Rabbit Hole fundraising dinner last Saturday evening.

 

Following in the tradition of 2023’s Secret Garden dinner and 2024’s Great Gatsby dinner, the latest event took inspiration from another classic book that provided a wide range of ideas to work with.

 

For 10 minutes at a time, Comparative Government students at Shawnigan got to see what it’s like to be a world leader, a press secretary, or a member of the press corps covering national and international issues.

 

During the last week before Spring Break, Mr. Paul Klassen and Mr. Remi Anctil’s Comp Gov classes held 10-minute press conferences in Mitchell Hall. Students were selected to represent either executive leaders, press secretaries, or members of the media from six different countries: Russia, Iran, the UK, Nigeria, Mexico and China.

 

Each of the 10-minute conferences was opened with a two-minute statement from the press secretary, followed by eight minutes of questions from the reporters to the leader. Media members prepared specific questions for the leader from their assigned country, then afterward wrote newspaper headlines or a political cartoon based on the press conferences

 

Shawnigan’s long-standing relationship with Rowing Canada Aviron is paying dividends for both organizations on and off the water.

 

National team rowers regularly train out of the Shawnigan boathouse, where our student athletes get to work and learn alongside the best rowers in Canada. Those national team rowers can often be seen in Duke’s Café after their morning sessions, sipping coffee alongside Shawnigan students. Rowers also take part in workout sessions in the mezzanine, where they get exposure to high-end physical training.

 

While students were away last November Break, Shawnigan and Rowing Canada furnished part of the Sportsplex with equipment for national team members and School athletes. The room gives all Shawnigan athletes access to the fitness equipment, which includes high-end gear for rowing training, such as rowing ergs and specialized bikes. The equipment is owned by Rowing Canada, and the space is owned by Shawnigan, and athletes from both organizations have access. During academic hours, Rowing Canada has priority, but after academic hours, or on weekends and holidays, it’s Shawnigan’s to use, with proper supervision.

Grade 8 students in Samuel House showed their gratitude to the Grade 11 mentors who have been living in the House with them, and to other students and staff members, with a special evening of appreciation on Tuesday.

 

A select group of Grade 11 students is given the opportunity to live in Samuel House with the Grade 8s, providing guidance and helping them get used to the School. The Grade 11s rotate through Samuel House, spending a few weeks there before returning to their regular Houses.

Although the annual celebration goes back many years, this was just the second one held in Samuel House since its opening last February. Last year’s appreciation night was held less than two months after Samuel House opened.

 

Shawnigan took the Cowichan Valley visual arts community by storm in March.

 

Six students took part in the Cowichan Valley Art Council’s Youth Arts Showcase last month, titled “Unfiltered: Unleash Your Authenticity,” with three of those students getting special recognition for their work.

 

Luona Y. (Grade 11) received an Award of Excellence for “The Highchair,” and Scarlett S. (Grade 12) received a Juror’s Choice Award for “I Said Stop.” Sharon X. (Grade 11) was given an honourable mention. Both Luona and Scarlett took home gift certificates for their achievements, and Scarlett also received a small glass sculpture. Olive S., Yumi L. and Vivi M. also submitted pieces to the show, which featured a total of 89 entries from 77 young artists across the Cowichan Valley.

 

Our students fanned out all over the globe over Spring Break, many returning home for time with their families, but others taking advantage of School trips and tours to expand their horizons academically and athletically as well as seeing new parts of the world.

 

Ten Model UN students travelled to Belgium with teachers Mr. Paul Klassen and Mrs. Andrea Carballo as Shawnigan’s first-ever delegation to the Harvard Model Congress Europe in Brussels. Founded in 1987, HMC Europe is an annual event that looks at institutions of international governance.

 

Shawnigan’s first foray to HMC Europe was exceptional, with six students receiving awards. Ugo W. and Steven D. received the Presidential Cabinet Award, while honourable mentions went to Alan A. (NATO Committee), Shannon C. (Senate Judiciary Committee), Valentina H. (Senate Foreign Relations Committee), Markellan K. (Historical Committee – Cuban Missile Crisis).

 

Shawnigan’s robotics program narrowly missed qualifying a team for the VEX World Championships, but still collected some impressive awards at the Regional Championships hosted by Brentwood College School last weekend. The School sent two teams to the event, and both posted what robotics instructor Dr. Ed Taylor called “amazing results” and brought home trophies.

 

The team of Kaho H., Eric H., Zoe C., Christian W., and John P. won a Judges Award, which recognizes attributes judges feel are deserving of special recognition. The judges commented that the team members were "very organized with their time management and had a clear understanding of the Engineering Design Process." The team made it to the quarter finals of the main competition.

 

The team of Tony Z., Justin T., Bella Z., and Aaron N. won the Create Award, which recognizes “a creative engineering design solution to one or more of the challenges of the competition." The team made it to the semifinals of the main competition. 

 

Shawnigan students enjoyed a joyous and colourful sendoff before Spring Break with a celebration of the Holi festival on Wednesday evening.

 

Celebrated throughout India and around the world by members of the Indian diaspora, Holi has multiple meanings within the Hindu culture, including rejuvenation and the arrival of spring. Part of the celebration includes the tossing of coloured powder, and this was central to the event at Shawnigan on Wednesday, as hundreds of students gathered in the Quad to throw coloured powder at each other, creating a chaotic and exuberant rainbow.

 

That was followed by a delectable Spirit Meal in Marion Hall, as the kitchen team treated students to an Indian feast including butter chicken, palak paneer curry, naan, papadum, rice, onion pakora, lentil daal, roasted cauliflower and green beans, and gujiya for dessert.

Students learned valuable lessons and skills and came away with hand-crafted footwear following a weeks-long moccasin-making workshop run by Outdoor Education Instructor and Teacher Mr. Devin Ryan.

 

Mr. Ryan has received direct instruction in leatherwork from an accomplished Annishnaabe artisan, and wanted to share those skills, and the appreciation that comes from learning them, with Shawnigan students.

 

While Mr. Ryan was studying Outdoor Recreation, Parks and Tourism at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario, the university’s Indigenous student centre had an open-door policy and offered moccasin-making workshops with Helen Pelletier of the nearby Fort William First Nation. Through those workshops, Mr. Ryan learned leatherwork and how to bead, and most importantly, patience.

 

“There are lots of lessons to be learned from perseverance,” he said.

 

Spanish 12 students capped off a chapter about recipes by preparing several food items from Spain and Latin America in a special event hosted by Señora Andrea Carballo last Friday.

 

After studying several recipes from Spanish-speaking countries, the students chose four to make, then used their lunch break and Spanish class period to travel to Señora Carballo’s home off campus to create the foods.

 

The selections included pupusas, a Salvadoran tortilla filled with beans and cheese (and meat, for the non-vegetarians); guacamole, a popular avocado-based dip that originated in Mexico; and tortillas españolas, a Spanish omelette made with eggs and potatoes. For dessert, the students made plátanos en tentación – plantains caramelized with cinnamon and sugar.

 

A longstanding tradition at Shawnigan, Deans' Dinner returned to the School on Tuesday, celebrating some of our top students with a special evening in the Hyde-Lay Pavilion.

 

Historically, Deans' Dinner has been held after each assessment period to recognize students who received the top scores in terms of effort. Over the years, so many students became eligible for the criteria that the event became less extraordinary. The last time it was held, two years ago, more students attended the dinner than didn’t. Mrs. Kirsi Lupton, Academic Dean (Junior Years) noted that the dinner “fizzled out.”

 

Recalling how special Deans' Dinner has been in the past, students pushed for its return. Earlier this year, Academic Prefect Olivia C. and the Academic Captains came forward with a proposal to bring back the event.

 

Students in Law 12 went to court this week in a series of mock trials designed to give them something close to first-hand experience of the legal system.

 

Four different classes all tried the same made-up case involving multiple faculty members: the attempted murder of Mr. Galen Loiselle by Mr. Tom Lupton, with several other teachers (played by students) called as witnesses. The real Mr. Loiselle teaches the Law 12 course and has been using the same case for a few years, providing a unique way for the students to engage with the course work.

 

“It’s fun for the students to play as their teachers,” noted Celeste C., who served on the jury for one of the mock trials.

 

Although the case was entirely fictional and the students took some dramatic liberties in the portrayals of faculty members, the mock trial was taken seriously and served as an excellent learning opportunity.

 

An outstanding cast and crew, and support from some excellent staff members, helped make a dream come true for Mr. Sal Interlandi with the staging of this year’s School musical: Chicago (Teen Edition) with a three-night and one-afternoon run at Victoria’s McPherson Playhouse.

 

“It’s such a great show,” said Mr. Interlandi, theatre teacher and director of the musical. “When I interviewed for the job here and they asked me what shows I wanted to do, I said it was one of my favourite shows. It’s always been a show I wanted to do.”

 

Written in 1975, Chicago was based on a stage play from 1926. It has become a staple on Broadway and is the longest running current show there. It also became a movie in 2002 that won Best Picture at the 2003 Academy Awards.

 

Shawnigan’s 52nd Ski Week was the biggest ever, and featured the return of one of the most exciting traditions – after a year’s absence – in the annual excursion.

 

The 515 students who made the trip to Manning Park were 35 more than the previous record, Student Life Coordinator Ms. Katrina Cholack noted. Some students who may have opted out in the past – like Grade 12s with academic or university application responsibilities, or injured students who wouldn’t be able to fully participate – still chose to join the festivities this year.

 

“Everyone wanted to come,” she said. “When you have buy-in from everyone, the feeling is different.”

 

It didn’t hurt that the weather was perfect; skies were blue all week, and although it was cold, no one suffered from it.

 

From Shawnigan Lake to Vancouver, Ottawa and Portland, Shawnigan’s athletes have been storming across the continent in recent months, with great results to report, while also preparing for some big upcoming championships.

 

For a long time this season, Shawnigan’s U18 Prep girls’ ice hockey team was hanging around the middle of the CSSHL standings. For the most part, though, that was because the team had played significantly fewer games than most of their rivals. After a busy January, Shawnigan has caught up to the rest of the league, and now sits third in the standings with a strong record of 16 wins and nine losses.

 

In early January, Shawnigan attended the University of Ottawa Gee-Gees Showcase Tournament, where they faced off against top U22 teams from across Canada. The team went 3-0 in pool play before bowing out in the playoffs.

 

Mitchell Hall was transformed into a courtroom last week as Ms. Jennifer Manuel’s AP Literature 12 class held a landmark mock trial for one of literature’s most famous and controversial figures: Dr. Victor Frankenstein. But justice was not satisfied with just one case – his infamous Creature also stood trial in what became a riveting legal showdown filled with moral debate, philosophical wrestling, and dramatic oratory worthy of any real-world court.

 

The Frankenstein Trial was the culmination of weeks of preparation. Over the Christmas holidays, students read Frankenstein knowing in advance which legal team they would join – either prosecution or defence – for one of two trials:

 

Shawnigan observed International Holocaust Remembrance Day with a Chapel service last Saturday, centred around a moving message from the daughter of two members of the Dutch Resistance during the Second World War.

 

International Holocaust Remembrance Day is marked each year on January 27, the date of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, where more than 1.1 million people were murdered by the Nazis, including approximately 960,000 Jews. Around 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, along with several million other victims. This year’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day marked 80 years since Auschwitz was liberated in January 1945.

 

“The Holocaust was a time when millions of Jews, and other groups, were murdered just because of who they were,” Shawnigan Chaplain Rev. Ruth Dantzer told the students. “The Nazis tried to eliminate those they deemed as ‘inferior.’

The age-old question – DC or Marvel? – has been answered, and there’s a surprise winner.

 

Introducing Shawmics, Shawnigan’s entry into the culture of comic books, and the brainchild of JEDI Prefect Ivana W. Ivana was trying to come up with ways to make the graphics the School uses for cultural and education purposes more creative and relevant to the Shawnigan experience.

 

“We wanted to make something funny and educational that also promotes issues and diversity while showcasing student artists,” Ivana explained.

 

Two teams from Shawnigan’s robotics program have qualified for the provincial championships this March with a chance to earn berths at the 2025 world championships in May.

 

The teams earned their provincials berths in different fashions last weekend at an event hosted by Claremont Secondary School in Victoria. The team of Tony Z., Justin T., Bella Z. and Aaron N. qualified by winning the skills championship, while the team of Kaho H., Zoe C., Eric H., John P. and Christian W. qualified by making the tournament final, although they ultimately lost and finished as runners-up.

 

In the skills championship, robots work alone for two separate two-minute slots: the first is autonomous and the second is driver-controlled. The team of Tony, Justin, Bella and Aaron had the highest combined score over their two slots. That team also won the “Amaze” award presented by the judges for their innovative design and engineering process. The team of Kaho, Zoe, Eric, John and Christian also had an impressive showing in skills, placing third overall.

 

The Beyond the Gates program is designed to take students out of the classroom and beyond campus to experience places they have never been before and activities they have never tried before. This past Monday, the Grade 9s in the program travelled north to Mount Washington to try biathlon – a combination of cross-country skiing and rifle shooting – and for the vast majority of students, it fit the bill ideally.

 

According to Shawnigan intern Ms. Kelsey McGaw, who led the trip, some of the students didn’t even know biathlon existed and were thrilled to discover a new sport. Virtually everyone had cross-country skied previously – many at Ski Week when they were in Grade 8 – but few had tried the skate-skiing style they employed at Mount Washington, instead being more familiar with the classic style.

 

Although Maya B. had tried biathlon while growing up in the Yukon, she had never attempted skate skiing until Monday. “I really enjoyed the experience, and it was nice to talk to people I hadn’t gotten the chance to interact with before. I think it was very successful. Everyone had a lot of fun, and even though we weren’t the best at every aspect of it, everyone did their best.”

 

Campus tours are a highlight of the admissions process at Shawnigan; not just for the prospective students and families who take part, but for the current students who conduct the tours and cherish the opportunity to share their love of the School with visitors.

 

Hazel P. has been part of the tour guide program for three years, and calls it “one of the most rewarding and fulfilling experiences of my time here.”

 

“The campus tours program has given me the opportunity to connect with prospective students and their families, share my love for the School, and give them a glimpse into what makes Shawnigan such a special place to be,” she said.

 

Improvements over the last two years to the Hugh Wilkinson Theatre funded by C.A.S.E. (Communications, Arts, Sciences and Entrepreneurship) and the Bradley Family Foundation are helping Shawnigan take this year’s school musical – Chicago (Teen Edition) – to the McPherson Playhouse stage.

 

Two years ago, C.A.S.E. funded the purchase of 16 state-of-the-art wireless microphone sets, the same model used by the professionals at the McPherson Playhouse. The mics, which were also used during last year’s musical, Grease, allow the students to sing at the same levels they will be singing in the final production.

 

Last summer, C.A.S.E. provided funding for a renovation of the production booth at the back of the Wilkinson Theatre. Until last summer, all the equipment was in one end of the booth, and the students working there were virtually on top of one another. Now they can work in a more professional environment, similar to that of the McPherson Playhouse.

 

What happens when you combine the wild imaginations of kindergarten and Grade 1 students with the nascent sculpting skills of Grade 11 art students?

 

The answer: a bunch of little monsters.

 

In fall 2024, right around Halloween, Ms. Annilee Guy’s Grade 11 art students collaborated with the kindergarten/Grade 1 class at nearby École Cobble Hill Elementary – which includes Ms. Guy’s son, Callum – on a fun project. The elementary students all drew monsters, then passed their drawings on to the Shawnigan students, who re-created those monsters in clay and painted them, then gave the final products back to the kids who drew them.

 

The Bruce-Lockhart Fellowship for Academic Excellence was launched in 2021 with the intention of shedding light on aspects of academics that Shawnigan may not have previously explored, creating opportunities for students, teachers, and the rest of the Shawnigan community.

 

The current Bruce-Lockhart fellow, Mr. Mark Henry, is focusing his efforts on increasing awareness and incorporation of the Harkness learning method first in the social studies department and then in Shawnigan’s broader academic structure as a way to adapt to the rise of artificial intelligence.

 

Related to the Socratic method – which has stood the test of time for nearly 2,500 years – the Harkness method is discussion-based, and encourages critical thinking, empathy and collaboration. It has been adopted by many private schools, where its effectiveness is increased by smaller class sizes. In the age of AI, says Mr. Henry, it helps preserve a “truly human education, which aligns with the goals of the School and the social studies department.”