Reflections of Havergal: 1994-2019

Junior School Grandpals Day

The Havergal Community Committee is now the Havergal College Parent Association (HCPA), but whatever the organization is called, it is obvious that Havergal appreciates its prodigious efforts: its “members … embody the school’s values of integrity, inquiry, compassion and courage. They are excellent ambassadors and are key to community building” ( Torch , Fall 2015). Fortunately, from what Havergal volunteers say, it appears that the appreciation works both ways! As Dr. Winn Barlow observed in the 1995 Chronicle , the parent community is crucial to the welfare of students and the college as a whole: Somehow schools and parents must help and support each other, and we need to ask each other: what kind of person would we like our children to come? And then work together to encourage the outcome. Are such values as getting good grades, being liked by others, being assertive, being successful, more important than such values of integrity, respect [for] others, responsibility and developing a caring attitude? The decision is ours to make. Together we can prepare our young women to make a difference. Parent Volunteers Pinky Franklin, parent volunteer

Old Girls basketball game at an Old Girls Reunion.

Havergal Old Girls

Each of Ellen Knox’s yearly letters in Ludemus provide ample evidence of the responsibility she felt for her students: it extended far beyond their graduation. In her 1904 entry, addressing those who had left the school, she conveys a deep concern for their welfare and a certain wistfulness. How, she wonders, are her girls faring as they live their lives beyond the ivy? As in fancy I see you gathered together, I cannot help thinking how varied the interests in your lives and how different the problems that you have to meet in them. It seems hard to realize that the girls who sat side by side in the class rooms doing the same lessons and leading the same general life, joining in the same fun after lessons, are now so far away from each other, scattered from one end of Canada to the other, and even farther away still in the circumstances and difficulties of their lives. As I think of you, I wonder how and in what spirit you are each one of you taking your lives; whether you are occupied with the details of them, with the little things that come and go, or whether you are taking them on broad big lines, able to give a reason for what you are doing and seeing the problems as they come up on general principles that you have thought out, instead of acting on the humour of the moment.

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