Torch - Spring 2016

Traditions

First Principal Ellen Knox A Woman of Rigorous Standards and Genuine Empathy

Trilby Kent, Class of 2001

A mong the assorted memorabilia of Havergal’s archives are two century-old lace collars—perhaps the most tangible connections we have to the school’s First Principal. For archivist Debra Latcham, however, it is Ellen Knox’s letters and Ludemus editorials that most vividly conjure the woman who helped found the school’s rich history and traditions. “When I started organizing her archives, I just sat and read,” Latcham says. “Her letters are wonderful—you can really sense her personality and what she expected of the girls, that somehow they would better the world.” Ellen Mary Knox arrived in Toronto on August 25, 1894, with just two weeks to prepare a new school at 350 Jarvis St. for the arrival of seven Boarders and 31 Day girls. The Board of Governors’ search for a “lady principal” had led them to the 36-year-old student teacher at Cheltenham Ladies’ College—a vicar’s daughter who had earned second-class honours in History and first-class honours in English in the Oxford exams. Within days of receiving their offer, she had cabled her reply: “Knox accepts.” Contemporary accounts reveal an enlightened and ambitious young educator with a lively sense of humour, an indomitable spirit and an unwavering dedication to women’s education. She doubled Havergal’s enrolment within her first year and soon after appointed a new generation of staff, including Edith Nainby and Marian Wood. The school’s early years were, in Knox’s own words, “a perilous undertaking.” Her first sight of the school was inauspicious: “The one spot of cheerfulness was a loaded crabapple tree under the staircase window, making a splash of brightness in otherwise dispiriting surroundings.” She adapted that tree into an outdoor classroom, revealing the can-do spirit that would see her through the setback of a devastating fire a few years later. One young male student, embarrassed by being

Knox with Archdeacon Dr. Henry John Cody, Rector of St. Paul’s Anglican Church.

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