Torch - Fall/Winter 2019-20

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ANNUAL REPORT

Feeling a Family Connection

she says, adding that plans are already underway for the 20th reunion next year. Cortellucci, who was enrolled from Grade 6 to 13 and was Head of the Art Club (she now works as an interior designer), has found reconnections with other parents. “A number of girls that I had gone to school with are parents and we were students, so we have that common ground. It’s been nice to reconnect with those girls after all these years.” Cortellucci says she’s pleased that her daughters seemed to fit into the school right away. “They love it. It’s been a really smooth transition. The school is very welcoming,” she says, adding that her daughter Allegra came home on day one reporting four new friends and day two added six more. Allegra’s already joined the Basketball team and the Choir. Cortellucci says this comfort level has reaffirmed her decision to enroll her daughters. “They’re teaching my daughters in the way they taught us, which is to be good people above anything else,” she says. Despite leaving in Grade 10, Smulders says that she also had a great experience at Havergal. A teacher herself in her career, she particularly remembers adoring her Grade 4 teacher, Mrs. Love. “I have dyslexia, and she was just so compassionate that it just made the whole experience of school so much better,” recalls Smulders, rhyming off equally fond memories of teachers in other grades. She even had some overlap with her daughters’ teachers!

When she heard that Allegra would be enrolling, Smulders pulled out her photo albums to look over her own Grade 4 pictures with her granddaughter. Her daughters’ reports from reunions have also inspired her to start attending, including a recent Celebration Saturday. “I realized I had been missing out. I had not taken advantage of the reunions. I will be attending them in future.” All family members say it’s interesting and nostalgic to return to school at formal events. While she’s now regularly in the Junior School with her daughters, Cortellucci says that being in the Upper School for Harvest Festival this October felt even more surreal. “Seeing the girls in their blazers, the uniforms that I used to wear that haven’t changed a bit, and hearing them singing the same hymns that we used to, it was very emotional. That totally caught me by surprise,” she says. Smulders says that the Junior School is totally different than it used to be (in her time it was in the basement of the Upper School). Yet, at the same time, she sees the physical changes as evidence that the school is responsive to growth and a changing world. “Havergal is not sitting still, it’s going forward constantly,” she says approvingly of her daughter’s choice. Cortellucci confirms that when choosing a school for her daughters, Havergal was top of mind. “It would feel weird to send my daughters to a different school. It’s like part of the family,” she says.

For the Smulders family, the connection to Havergal is, well, in the family. Alice Smulders (neé Austin) 1973 attended from Grade 4 until the end of Grade 10, when her family moved to Vancouver in 1970. She also sent her daughters Nicole Cortellucci 1997, Robin Richmond 2000 and Mary Smulders MacKinnon 2002 to the school. This year, Cortellucci enrolled her daughters Allegra in Grade 4 and Bianca in Grade 1. Each family member has kept up connections in different ways. Robin, who started in Grade 5 and was very much into sports and co-curriculars, says her main core friend group is still her Havergal classmates. “It’s pretty awesome that I’ve been able to get through different universities, adulthood, parenting trials, career changes, we’ve all been able to stay together as a tight-knit group,” says Richmond, who now works as a real estate agent and has a one-year-old daughter. “They’re all very smart, upstanding women, with great careers and families. I’m lucky to have met such great girls.” Today she sees her closer girlfriends every couple of months and chats weekly online. She also attends more formal reunions and events, and as class rep has set up a Facebook group and Instagram account to help her classmates keep connected. “Social media has really made it easy to stay in touch with people and in tune with everybody’s lives and happenings,”

“It would feel weird to send my daughters to a different school. It’s like part of the family.”

—Nicole Cortellucci

A Havergal Legacy Family: Alice Smulders 1973 (left), Nicole Cortellucci 1997 (right), Bianca and Allegra Cortellucci.

FALL/WINTER 2019–20 • TORCH 19