Head of School’s 2024 Closing Day Address

At the simple mention of the Rev’s Peek-a-Boo in Chapel, my nose begins to twitch, my eyes begin to water, my throat constricts.

 

I wonder, and sometimes wake up in the middle of the night thinking, does Peek-a-Boo exist?

Is she simply a mythical vehicle for the Rev’s gentle wisdom and guidance in Chapel?

 

Imagine my horror earlier this month when he told us in Chapel that Peek-a-Boo is now chasing heavenly mice and has been replaced by another household cat, Marmalade!

 

Having grown up with terriers, whippets and an Irish wolfhound, I prefer the legend of Gelert the Dog often told in Chapel by Mr. Samuel – a bloody folktale of loyalty, rashness and remorse in a Welsh castle.

 

My favourite moment in the literature I have read comes in Homer’s Odyssey.

 

The warrior Odysseus is returning to his home of Ithaca, a Greek island, after 20 years of war and adventures around the Mediterranean. 

 

His kingdom of Ithaca is overrun by scoundrels, and his wife, Penelope, still clings onto the hope that her husband will return one day.

 

Odysseus, aware of the dangers of his return, disguises himself as a beggar and walks from his ship towards the palace. As he nears the palace, he walks past an abandoned, tick-ridden, toothless old dog on a pile of manure at the front of the palace gates.

 

It is, in fact, Odysseus’ old hunting dog, Argos, which he trained and left behind when he set off for the Trojan War.

 

Despite the disguise and 20 years of separation, Argos immediately smells and recognizes his master. He lifts his head, flattens his ears, wags his tail but lacks the strength to go to his master. Odysseus subtly wipes away a tear, and turns away for fear the dog betrays who he really is. 

 

As Odysseus heads into the palace to wreak a mighty vengeance on his enemies within, Argos wags his tail one last time and, after 20 years of waiting, dies content that he has seen his master home, safe and sound.

 

In the Greek storyteller Homer’s words: 

 

“And just then death came and darkened the eyes of Argos.”

 

When drafting this Closing Day address, I asked my daughter, Poppy, what she thought the message of this episode was – and she rather unexpectedly pointed out that, “Clearly Mrs. Odysseus hadn’t been taking care of the family dog and she should have been reported to the Ithacan SPCA for negligence and cruelty.”

 

Poppy’s astute critique aside, for me it is a tale of friendship and enduring loyalty.

 

More than anything, this final address to you all is about friendship and loyalty.

 

During Spring Break, Kathini and I met up in a pub in London with a group of school and university friends – over 30 years on from our first adventures together. Instantly, we return to old stories and, although separated by time and continents, we find each other’s frequency so swiftly. One of our friends (and the opening bowler in our university cricket team) sent me a text afterwards that read, “None of us have changed really. All still naive 18-year-olds, finding our way in the world.”

           

Picking up my Class of 2024 kaleidoscope, there have been moments of playfulness, pure laughter, occasional madness, delight, tears and heartfelt pride when I remember the time we have spent together. 

 

For some of us it has been five years together. A few of you started bravely in the Prep School, stepping courageously into a different language and different culture.

 

These have been your “Wonder Years.”

 

It is hard to isolate and capture the most memorable moments of this Grade 12 year for me. Perhaps it was being plunged first shot in the dunk tank at the annual Hoedown? Or was it the fun and mischief last night? I intentionally haven’t yet read the security report to find out what else happened after I went to bed!

 

As the Class of 2024, you have brought a distinctive sense of belonging, community, laughter and in particular, appreciation, to the campus – the perfect antidote to some of the challenges we face in the annual cycle of a school year. 

 

I hope that, during the course of today, you find a moment to think of your loved ones unable to be here whose unstinting support, daily sacrifices, and dreams for your futures have guided you to this point. It is your achievement; it is their achievement.

 

They are with us in spirit today.

 

Some of you stand at this threshold of graduation without direct families at your side:

 

Marina from Afghanistan, Yangchen from Nepal, and Anastasiia from Ukraine. Your courageous stories will continue to make an impact here at Shawnigan for many years to come.

 

It is also a very special moment for eight families here today – from BC to Bellingham, from Ottawa to Mexico – whose children are “legacy” students. In other words, one of their parents, aunts or uncles or grandparents graduated from Shawnigan back in the mists of time.

 

There are also four sets of twins and one set of cousins in the graduating class.

 

I would now like to invite our students to show their appreciation to their families, to the staff and to the wider Shawnigan community for the unstinting support they have received on their journey so far.

 

On this note, I would like to turn to our departing staff members, for whom this also is an emotionally charged day – and to take a moment to thank them for their outstanding contributions to Shawnigan.

 

All our departing staff – however long you have been here – have individually enriched our world, and the School will miss you. We wish you the very best for the adventures ahead.

 

As T.S. Eliot wrote, “To make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.”

 

And back to our Grads.

 

Your “Grad Packs,” full of letters, photos and cards, stand as testament to the affection and regard you are held in.

 

Part of my delight is helping students achieve their university dreams. From being a Head of an English Faculty to Head of School, it brings me great joy to help students with applications and references – and to learn of your university choices. I was deeply touched when one student dropped off a T-shirt at the Head’s Office with the name of her US university splashed across the front with a little note about Shawnigan helping her to “realize her dream.”

 

Earlier in the term, I was down at the docks watching our rowers head out onto the lake in Saturday sunshine. As I returned to campus across Renfrew Road, I spotted the plaques on the stone pillar at the front gates and re-read them.

 

One is from 1928 and the other from 1988. Both speak to the privilege and purpose of Shawnigan Lake School:

 

One reads, “‘The Founder’s mission to educate young people in mind, body and spirit endures… seeking to prepare young men and women to contribute positively to society, thereby building a better Canada and a better world.”

 

Our hope at Shawnigan is to “Inspire the best in each to create the best for all.”

 

In your time here together, you have become the “few,” you “happy few,” you “band of brothers” and sisters that Shakespeare wrote about in Henry V.

 

The best people I have met over the last half a century understand and model friendship, a fierce and unquestionable loyalty, a generosity of spirit, a deep humility and they tread softly around other peoples’ dreams.

 

It’s the best advice I can give you: learn to be careful of others in action and in word and be a tremendous friend through thick and thin.

 

Be there – shoulder to shoulder – with your friend in a crisis

 

We are defined by each other and our relationships, our friendships.

 

As I explained on Thursday evening at our Major Awards Ceremony, it is, after all, to quote Nelson Mandela, “The difference we have made to the lives of others that determines the significance of the life we each lead.”

 

Perhaps the most enduring image, seared into my memory, is from the rugby provincials last month. In the girls’ final, an unstoppable, rampaging player on the DW Poppy team trampled underfoot a couple of our players – reminiscent of Jonah Lomu thundering over some England players in the 1995 World Cup.

 

You may not have seen from the grandstand one of our towering Iron Women captains picking up the flattened girls from lower grades, putting one under each arm, and walking back to the halfway line – and encouraging them to hold their heads high, turn and face the opposition once again.

 

Inspiring stuff. Leadership, teamwork and friendship caught in that flicker of a moment. 

 

For, we “Get by with a little help from [our] friends.”

 

And I wonder, Class of 2024, what type of dog you would be reincarnated as – or which dog your friends most think you are like? A faithful and scavenging Labrador, an untrustworthy and super speedy sighthound, a well-groomed poodle, a yapping terrier, a mischievous spaniel with unnaturally large ears, a drooling boxer, a slightly clumsy and larger-than-life mountain dog, an intelligent and playful border collie, a combative  bulldog with a big heart, a pointer that urinates on every garbage bin, a chihuahua with a size complex, or a labradoodle (a breed which seems to have overtaken our campus) with a loveable lick but chronic halitosis?!

 

There is some truth that an owner looks – and behaves – like their dog.

 

And you understand that Shawnigan is as Shawnigan is, and it always seeks to be a better place. This is a great and unique school; it is not, of course, without its faults and failures but it is exhilarating and unstuffy in the way in which it fosters a deep sense of belonging and encourages its students to discover friendship, to appreciate the gifts and needs of others – and to be careful of those around you – and to develop a deep sense of loyalty (as captured in the tale of Odysseus and his faithful hound, Argos).

 

We “Get by with a little help from [our] friends,” – and their “little, unremembered acts of kindness,” as Wordsworth put it.

 

And so the sun sets on the British Columbia flag and now sets on your time at Shawnigan.

 

Odysseus set out from Ithaca and finally returned to it. You too set out from Shawnigan, your own British Columbian version of Ithaca – and one day you will return full of adventures and stories.

 

The Greek poet Cavafy wrote,

 

“As you set out for Ithaka

hope your road is a long one,

full of adventure, full of discovery.

 

“Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.

Without her you wouldn’t have set out.

She has nothing left to give you now.’”

 

The Shawnigan Journey has been exciting, challenging and exhilarating – but, in truth, we have “nothing left to give you now.”

 

And it’s time for you to go – and this ceremony serves as final celebration of our partnership but also the final act of separation of School and the Class of 2024.

 

In the spirit of the Founder’s Prayer, which I read earlier in Chapel, all of you graduates sitting in front of me have “thoroughly finished” your Shawnigan Journey today and this moment “yieldeth the true glory,” as Sir Francis Drake said.

 

This afternoon, there will undoubtedly be tears of sadness, of relief, of exhaustion and of happiness – and you will have that sense of “half turn[ing] to go yet turning stay” in the words of writer Christina Rossetti, as you draw strength for the next step on your journey, for a new beginning.

 

And as the coach or car you find yourself in this midsummer’s evening bumps over the familiar road toward the gates of campus, please take a moment to reflect on the magic of this place, this home away from home.

 

And the plaques at the front gate that guide and encourage you to make a difference to the lives of others and to contribute positively to societies beyond our gates, thereby building “a better Canada and a better world.”

 

We are going to miss you.

 

To quote the Primo Levi, “Each of [you] bears the imprint / Of a friend met along the way; / In each the trace of each.”

 

It has been a great privilege to be your Head.

 

Palmam qui Meruit Ferat

 

Richard D A Lamont

Head of School

June 22, 2024