- I still know the words to the Lord’s Prayer and Amazing Grace, thanks to my years at Catholic School and UCC
- It’s not the words of the speaker that make us cry, it’s their own emotion. Therefore, humans are born with an innate sense of empathy.
- Old people like to pick at their faces
- The pastor may go on longer about their religion, than the person who passed away and their faith. This is more to comfort those in mourning, than about honouring the memory of the dead.
- Knowing someone for only a month before getting married can lead to over sixty years of marital bliss
Things I Learned At My First Western Funeral
3
The Old Boys of '99: My Perspective
My years at Upper Canada College were of angst. I was an outsider without friends, alien to an institution filled with sports stars and over-achievers. They considered me worthless, excelling neither in academics nor athletics, contrasted against these future leaders and powerful men.
I passed through the hallowed halls of UCC, decorated with boards filled with names — community service leaders, scholarship recipients, military achievments — without making so much as a whisper. When I left, it felt as if I had lost a great opportunity.
It was partially my own fault. A lack of confidence and poor social skills made me an outcast. But it was as much the fault of an institution with shortcomings of its own.
The Old Boys of '99: Another Perspective
Note: I asked John, as a guest writer, to give his opinion. It’s funny to read his writing; the style is completely different. It’s obvious that years of law school have changed him.
When Jeff asked me to write about the “Old Boy system” at UCC, the first thing I asked was, “what system”? To me, “system” implies some order or plan or organization, and the alumni of UCC have no special kinship or bond. An “Old Boy system” connotes one that is different from the ones that exist in every graduating class from every school I know of.
I had mentioned to him that one of our classmates is in my year at law school and Jeff wondered aloud whether I would have mentioned it, or noticed it perhaps, if that classmate and I had not gone to UCC. I replied that I would have noticed him notwithstanding our attendance at UCC, as long as we’d been a part of the same high school class as I’m sure most people would.
My perspective on the “system” is that there isn’t one.
I find it interesting that many people seem to think that one exists, and note that the main evidence used to prove their case is the seeming prevalence of UCC alumni in the halls of power in this country. In response, I would point out that the two things, attendance at UCC and later professional success, more likely have the same root cause — money, family connections, or dare I say it, intelligence.
The likelihood of those things being the cause of one’s professional advancement is greater than or equal to the likelihood that some system of quid pro quos or school ties. Ockham’s Razor is a principle that I would bring up in this context to dissuade those who would claim that any system is behind the rise of Old Boys in their occupations, the tenet of that principle being that the simplest explanation is more often than not the accurate one, and in this case which explanation is the simplest and most elegant.
That Old Boys get together in some nefarious Cabal to chart the course of the country and select from amongst their number the chosen to lead it is a myth.
Or is it simpler to say that chaos reigns supreme and individual old boys make their own way in the world, without the kind of help that the phrase “Old Boy system” connotes?
The people singled out in Fitzgerald’s book are just that — singled out. There are, if I’m not mistaken, 71 old boys profiled in the book who graduated from the 1920’s to the 1990’s. In that time more than 5000 boys have graduated. The idea that 1.4% of those graduates are somehow a reliable and representative sample is ludicrous. Such a sample should not be used to draw any conclusions or to make any generalizations.
The Old Boys of '99 Series
- Introduction
- Another Perspective
- Seeto and Bunston
- Mungovan and King
- Providing Ignorance as Bliss
- My Perspective
The Old Boys of '99: Introduction
An old boy network or society can refer to social and business associations among former pupils of top male-only public schools (independent secondary schools)…and indirectly to preservation of social elites over time without regard to merit.
—Wikipedia
My high-school, Upper Canada College, is often touted as one of the best schools to attend in Canada. Someone once said that it provides Canada with a disproportionate number of leaders, of whom include a Governor General, five Lieutenant-Governors, 24 Rhodes Scholars, and nine Olympic medallists.
The faculty was exceptional. A passionate, charismatic group, some of them former professors, notable businessmen, intellectuals. The facilities were top notch; football fields, baseball diamonds, tennis courts, indoor/outdoor pools, squash courts. Even the bands and theatre groups had access to exotic instruments and props. I remember for a production of Hamlet they hired a fight choreographer to lend his expertise in orchestrating the final fight scene.
School isn’t just about the education though. It’s as much about the experience. The classmates. The connections. The Old Boy network.
When I first started at the prep at age seven, I was cycling along a bridge with another little seven year old UCC chap. He said to me, ‘My mother is so happy that we are friends because you are going to be able to do so much for me in later life.’ I remember thinking, ‘I wonder what it is that I am going to be able to do for this chap?’ Then I grew up and realized, ‘So that’s the way it is. That is what people expect.’
—Lord David Thomson (1964–1967, 1970–1975), Chairman of Thomson corporation, Canada’s wealthiest man, sixth wealthiest in the world
The influence of the elite legacy of the Old Boys is far-reaching. Compounding this is the age of the school, and perhaps a degree of nepotism. A related male at the school significantly increased the chances of getting in.
Like his grandfather, John was in McHugh’s house. If had a brother or a son, they would belong to Jackson’s.
Years later, I insisted that my sons, Hugh and Stafford, go to UCC simply because I knew from my own experience that once a boy had gone to Upper Canada, he would never again be in awe of great family names, money, power or social standing. He would know that although a good private school like UCC can produce the best, it can also produce the worst.
—Conn Smythe (1908–1910), founder, Maple Leaf Gardens
It was only when James Fitzgerald, an Old Boy himself, published his best-selling book Old Boys: The Powerful Legacy of Upper Canada College in 1994 (from where these quotes are taken) that the blemishes of UCC came to light.
Beneath the veneer of of navy blue blazers and polished shoes were issues like any other school. There were drugs (though much higher-classed because of better funding). There were sadistic headmasters who looked for an excuse to cane their pupils. There were teachers who molested — or seduced — their students.
I learned to be a sexual masochist at Upper Canada. I’m not kidding. Whenever the housemaster caught me masturbating, his way of dealing with it was to cane me. Caning is a rotten method of teaching anything. What it taught me, of course, was the erotic connections of caning. They are still with me to this day.
—John Gartshore (1935–1943), musician
A couple months ago, I received a copy of Old Times, the semi-annual publication for alumni. In a section called “Class Notes”, they bring others up to speed on their classmates. In the last issue, for example, they mention that Michael Ignatieff, class of ’65, had just joined the race for the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada.
There are updates starting from the graduates of 1941, including my graduating class, the class of ’99. Out of curiosity, I looked back on my yearbook, The College Times, Canada’s oldest student publication. I had to wonder just how much the prestige of the school had helped them. To compare my idea of where I believed my fellow classmates would be, with what they’re doing now.
The memories I had didn’t always match up with their current achievements.
The Old Boys of '99 Series
Vacation With John '06: Part 2
Before leaving for the next part of our journey, John and I revisited our old stomping grounds: the high-school where we grew to be friends. We didn’t get to know each other until we had to share storage lockers in computer class, even though we had already met four years before that another elementary school. Everyone else paired up for the lockers, but being the loners that we were at the time, we had no one else with whom to share, so we resigned ourselves to being alone together.
Turns out things worked out for the best.
While we were there, we found a photo montage of a trip the band took to Hungary back when I was around 15 or 16, probably in ’95–’96, and not ’98 as I say in the video. They needed more flutes to fill out the wind ensemble, and there so I was invited to come along for the three week trip. The framed montage still hangs in the music room, next to the double basses.
We also visited his mother’s grave. It was fresh with flowers, laid there for the anniversary that week. We stood in the mild rain, and John told me the story of her death for the first time: how he cried, how it affected his father, and how long it took them to get over it. I had never brought it up until then; it took nearly ten years until I was comfortable enough to say anything.