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Commandant's
Notes
Queen Victoria School is 75 years old this year. On a cold grey day in September 1908 King Edward VII came from Balmoral by train and carriage to perform the Opening Ceremony. The first boys entered the School in 1909. In September 1983 School Number 3964 will be allocated to the newest joined boy. How different is he and how different is the life he will lead at Queen Victoria School compared with those far off days at the beginning of the 20th Century?
Elsewhere in the pages will be found a selection of reminiscences of former Victorians, mostly written in their later years and often from far away places, but always recalling in amazingly vivid detail their lives and experiences here. It is clear that the place made a tremendous impact upon them and in many cases it shaped their lives. This is, first of all, surprising because usually it takes a long time for a new foundation to achieve a charisma of its own and to exert an influence. More than that, this characteristic of Queen Victoria School has endured. Old Boys still return, apparently just to be here again and to relive some of their past. People do not do that unless their emotions are involved. "I hope I never see the place again" is not a sentiment I have often heard expressed here; more usually it is to note in tones of approval that "things don't seem to have changed much".
Of course things have changed, outwardly. Most
obviously it is now first and foremost an academic establishment. In the Golden Jubilee number of The Victorian, in July 1958, it was observed that "When the School was founded fifty years ago the aim of the founders was not only educational but social and philanthropic also; the two latter considerations probably carried more weight than the former.
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In those days, poverty, hardship and misery were too often the lot of the bereaved and the orphan and indeed of many dependants of the serving sailor or soldier". In those days the emphasis was social rather than educational:
to provide care and shelter as a prime need. By 1958 grinding poverty had disappeared; sickness, unemployment and old age were not the spectres they had formerly been for the great mass of the population. The concept of the function of the School had changed and there was less emphasis on maintenance and shelter.
"The prime function of the School is educational" it was stated. The process continues twenty-five years later. The harshness of existence in the early days, and it was harsh in spite of the gruff kindness of the old soldiers who staffed the place, has been replaced by an ordered, purposeful, well provided but not lavish life, geared to the serious business of gaining an education in a competitive world. But much remains from the past. Work is balanced by play, of many kinds and to high standards. Thought is given to others less fortunate: community service is included in a very full time table. Religion is in the forefront of our lives still with compulsory daily chapel and a full service or Sundays. The Colours, the Pipe Band, Grand Day, are still distinctive features. Members of staff still give dedicated service to the School. Older eyes which chance to read these remarks may doubt it, but the boys are the same. They are the same stock and they show, when pressed, the same enduring qualities, the same guts, to use an unambiguous word, as did their predecessors. Times have changed and the environment, but I don't think the nation has, nor the boys of Queen Victoria School. I have one doubt only. Do we laugh as much as folk here did in years gone by? We must be careful that the earnestness of life does not become an end in itself.
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