by CCW | 21 May 2016 21:02
The year 2016 is the year of Edgehill! Girls Rock! This year marks the 125th anniversary of the founding of The Church School for Girls, later known as Edgehill, here in Windsor on June 23rd, 1891. Just up the hill from here at Christ Church, “the School was founded for the purpose of giving a high-class education in all subjects of School study”. Edgehill was located on the hill neighbouring King’s. The year 2016 also marks the 40th anniversary of the amalgamation of Edgehill and King’s that brought into being King’s-Edgehill School. Guys and Gals. We all rock!
But in this special year of Edgehill, we celebrate what Edgehill brought to King’s and which contributes so greatly and wonderfully to King’s-Edgehill.
Edgehill, quite simply, brought grace and class, a certain kind of elegance and dignity. That is no mean feat; certainly, no small matter. Edgehill contributed greatly to the ideals of gentleness and learning and manhood or humanitas. The coming together of King’s and Edgehill has contributed to an educational programme which endeavours to make us all better men and women committed to leadership and service. We have much to be thankful to Edgehill.
Edgehill’s motto, fideliter, meaning faithfulness, brought a renewed sense of commitment and meaning to the King’s motto – Deo Legi Regi Gregi, which means for God, for the Law, for the King and for the People. It is easy to lose sight of the power of these words even though they are emblazoned on our uniforms and present everywhere in the School, on the walls and even on the floors. The two mottoes symbolize the ideals of dedicated service that are impossible to envision, let alone attain, apart from an education that focuses on the formation of character. That requires a constant emphasis upon dignity and respect, gentleness and learning.
This year also marks the retirement after thirty-six years at King’s-Edgehill of Mr. Darcy Walsh, teacher and master and deputy head-master, an old boy of King’s Collegiate School before it became King’s-Edgehill. He has been here for most of these forty years. Mr. Walsh graduated from King’s Collegiate in 1976, its last year as a school for boys, or should we say ‘young gentlemen’? Or was that, perhaps, what came more into prominence simply by virtue of the presence of the ladies of Edgehill? In 1980, Mr. Walsh returned to Windsor and became a master of the School and a member of the faculty where he has remained ever since.
In many ways, his career exemplifies the character of the School over this period and beyond. Every year, after all, he has simply gotten classier and classier, gentler and gentler, and, no doubt, wiser and wiser! Hasn’t he? His commitment to the founding ideals of King’s and Edgehill is outstanding as well as his deep concern for the education of young men and women. Few have understood better the importance of the foundational principles that guide institutions through the tough times. And tough times there were and have been and, no doubt, there will be. The master of imaginative and creative punishments for wayward students – life lessons, we might say – Mr. Walsh has contributed greatly to the character and formation of hundreds and hundreds of students and to their betterment in almost immeasurable ways. A competitive athlete and coach, Mr. Walsh has led school teams, boys and girls, to many, many a championship particularly in hockey and soccer. His commitment to the School has simply been outstanding. We are grateful for his years of service and wish him all the best in his retirement. No doubt, we shall see him again when it is time for Finn and Sawyer to continue the ‘Walsh’ tradition at King’s-Edgehill.
Sprezzatura. It is a wonderful Italian word that Castiglione uses in his book on courtesy, The Book of the Courtier, a book which is really about courtly behaviour, about what it means to be a gentleman. Sprezzatura is about doing difficult things with consummate grace and ease; in other words, making the difficult look easy. Such is one of the contributions of Edgehill to King’s and something which is seen in athletics, in academics, in the arts, and in many of the social and community activities of our School every year whether it is in the muck of the ruck in rugby, in the fast break on the basketball court, in the rush up the ice in hockey, and in a perfect cross on the soccer pitch, or in the intensity of IB classes and exams and a multitude of math competitions, or on the stage in Legally Blonde and Fiddler on the Roof, or reading in Chapel or marching through the streets of Windsor on Remembrance Day and on a lovely Friday afternoon in May. All with consummate grace and ease. Sprezzatura ‘r us! It all has to do with the School as a whole.
“Nemo me impune lacessit” is the national motto of the Kingdom of Scotland, the motto of the Order of the Thistle, and the motto of King James the 1st of England. It is, of course, the motto of the Black Watch with which our Cadet Corps is associated. You can see it embossed on the service bulletin. It can be translated as “no one can harm me unpunished” or, as Mr. Kennedy might say in a Scots burr, “Wha duar meddle wi me” which is, I suppose, “Who dares meddle with me!” For our Cadet Corps, it obviously means “Don’t mess with Captain Hynes”!
The motto is used to literary purposes in Edgar Allan Poe’s famous short story, The Cask of Amontillado. A friend, insulted during Carnival time in Venice, gets revenge by luring the one who insulted him into the wine cellar of his aristocratic palazzio and getting him drunk. “I must”, he says, “not only punish, but punish with impunity.” The motto of the family home is Nemo me impune lacessit. He then locks the door and erects a wall in front of it. That will teach you not to mess around! Gated!
But in a far more positive manner, the motto of the Black Watch is about standing firm on matters of principle. That requires discipline and commitment to the Corps and to the School as a Corps, a body that has a unity and a purpose and that deserves respect. You have to love it. King’s-Edgehill. The School were the guys wear skirts and the girls rule – with rifles!
This year marks as well the centenary of a number of significant battles of the First World War. 1916 at King’s and Edgehill was one of the war years and both schools were greatly affected by the monumental events of that year. 1916 was one of the darkest years of World War I, a war which in some sense changed everything. It shook the European confidence or over-confidence in its civilisation and turned the civilised world into a wasteland. T. S. Eliot’s famous poem, The Waste Land, reflects on the death and uncertainty that the war caused, captured, as he puts it, as “fear in a handful of dust”.
The Edgehill Magazine bears modest but eloquent testimony to the effects of the war on the lives of those associated with King’s and with Edgehill. Letters from the former headmistress, Blanche Lefroy, and from the Lady President, Gena Smith, reveal something of the sombre realities of the war. A number of Edgehill graduates served in military hospitals throughout the war years, perhaps, most notably, Clare Gass, whose war diary from 1915-1918 contains an early copy of John McCrae’s “In Flanders Field”, some six weeks before it was published in England. Other Edgehill Old Girls served in education and business and in other hospitals in North America and in England and abroad.
Where there once seemed order and progress, there was only chaos and destruction as the world stumbled along in the muck and the mire of a senseless and meaningless war, the scars of which remain with us, symbolized in the Cenotaphs in our communities and at our School. Let us hope that the greater lessons remain as well. Lady Principal Gena Smith in 1915 refers to two watchwords that, as she puts it, “resound from the trenches on land, and from the decks at sea, Discipline and Duty”, hoping that “these watch-words may strike the same chord in us” as those in the theatres of war. At the very least, one of the lessons of the bloody, bloody 20th century is that it takes real work and understanding to uphold the principles that properly dignify and define our humanity. No one is entitled. Life is about more than rights. Sacrifice and service are essential parts of our life together in the body of King’s-Edgehill School. It takes leadership and commitment. Such are the things that belong to the School as a whole, to its unity, and its life.
The first lesson from The Book of Genesis tells the story of the Tower of Babel. It is a story about human pride and presumption that leads to the scattering of the peoples of the world into the different languages and cultures that divide the human community. Babel is about the confusion and chaos of our humanity. Like our remembrances of the First World War and other conflicts, such a story illustrates a powerful spiritual point. The human community has no unity in itself especially in the ambitions to dominate and control nature and nations.
The second lesson from The Book of the Acts of the Apostles shows us something of the grace of God in the descent of the Holy Spirit, the spirit of unity and order, to establish the Church as a spiritual community of love. Out of the confusion and chaos of many tongues and many cultures come praise and prayer, unity and peace, goodness and love. It is the complete reverse of Babel. The human community finds its true peace and unity in God.
There has always been an international aspect to King’s and Edgehill. At one time it was about graduates going out to various parts of the world and taking part in the defining events of the world – from Waterloo to Vietnam in terms of things military but in other ways, too, such as education and politics, business and medicine. King’s-Edgehill maintains its international aspect now with students who come from a great number of different cultures and languages. There are over twenty nationalities represented at the School. And yet there is a unity in and through such diversities of language and culture. It is found in the commitment to the foundational principles of the School, to truths held sacred without which we are nothing.
2016 also marks the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare. “All the world’s a stage”, as Jacques says in As You Like It, “and all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances”, he says, and, like so many of us, “one man in his time plays many parts”. We have many different roles and responsibilities in and for our School. It is all part of learning and leadership, all part of our comings and goings together.
For many years, students from King’s Collegiate School and from Edgehill School for Girls used to march down to this Church in rows of two-by-two for Sunday morning service. The girls would sit on one side of the nave; the boys on the other, separate from one another. Yet no doubt, as in The Merchant of Venice, there were many “fair speechless messages” that passed from one pair of eyes to another, fair speechless messages that perhaps at times blossomed into romance and more. The Schools were in many ways connected with one another long before they were formally joined. She looked at him; he looked at her. There was magic in those eyes!
Sprezzatura! We give thanks to the Edgehill ladies for the grace and class which they have brought to our corporate life together at King’s-Edgehill School. May we be worthy of their sacrifice and example.
2016 is the year of Edgehill. Celebrate it!
(Rev’d) David Curry
Chaplain, English & TOK teacher
Readers: Nandini Mishra; Michael Hilborn; Charlotte Hache; Krishshain Nathan; Ella Jollymore; Tony Mei; Liam Bonnor; and Kaileigh Hiltz.
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2016/05/21/reflections-for-kings-edgehill-school-cadet-church-parade-2016/
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