Here's To the School, By Tolmie's Rugged Hill

Those are actually words from my school's song, which I think I (creepily) remember in its entirety. I have managed to forget, thankfully, most of the school hymn, which had something to with St. Michael, which makes sense as the school is named St. Michaels University School. Michael is also one of my names, though University is not. Anyway, I stole the following pics from the school's website, which I visited during a rare break from Internet porn.

This is School House, where I had the great misfortune to live for a year. I am having trouble figuring a date for this picture, but I am assuming it's pre-World War One, which killed about half of the school's graduates, and indeed one of its founders, Captain Harvey. I believe there is a Union Jack flying above the steps, which sums it up. I have no idea what's going on with the roof.



These are, I presume, Junior School kids, judging by the short pants on buzzcut-boy. A couple of points: there were no girls at the Junior School, or the Middle School for that matter, when I was a student. I did not attend the Junior School, and don't believe I've ever even seen the place, which seems impossible, because Victoria ain't that big, and I lived and loved all over it. The look on the boy's face is priceless--if I'm the girl's dad, I'm getting a prospective restraining order yesterday.



Yup... it actually has a cricket pitch. You know what's great about cricket, other than the fact that it is yet another sport invented by white people at which they are now not exactly global leaders? The "tea interval," which is a British expression that means getting snockered in the middle of the interminable game.


A wider shot of campus, with Tolmie's aforementioned hill, in all its ruggedness, on the right side of the pic. I lived partway up the hill in Grade 12 (or twelfth grade, as the Americans say) and once "drove" to school without ever starting the car. I did have to blow through the stop sign on Richmond Road, but Richmond Road isn't exactly Yonge Street.

Back to the name thing: Victoria had a University School for about fifty years before it had an actual, you know, university. I can't swear to the complete veracity of the following, but believe that Victoria was promised the BC university and may have even gotten it, a few blocks down Richmond from University School, at what is now Camosun College. In the time-honoured tradition of sleazy BC politics, UBC ended up in the 'Couv, where it remains and where it has a nude beach (you got one of those, Harvard?). There's a McGill angle to all this:

The cute little birds in the red part of the crest are martlets, which don't actually, um, exist. There's some turgid English tradition about birds without feet who therefore can never land and are therefore always learning. Somehow, the martlets became associated with McGill, which is ironic because James McGill made his money by catching many, many very real beavers' very real feet in very real metal traps. Anyway, McGill had some role in the creation of UBC and UVic, and that's how the martlets ended up in the school crest. There's a plaque in the ground floor of the Leacock Building attesting to the BC connection.

PS: I have no idea what's going on with the fonts and spacing in this post. Sometimes, blogger tires my ass out.