Education: Happiness & a Hickory Stick

In his father’s English parsonage and at strict Westminster School, Christopher Windley Lonsdale “was brought up to respect a hickory stick. He thinks it did him good. When he emigrated to western Canada as a young man, he was appalled at the way sassy schoolboys talked to their elders. Since western Canada had no private schools to turn out little gentlemen, Lonsdale started one.

In the wooded wilderness of Vancouver Island, B.C., Lonsdale began with six boys. Today Shawnigan Lake School has 100 boys and 27 masters. One-third of the pupils come from the western U.S. They are easily distinguishable when they return home by their habit of sirring adults and by their preference for “rugger” and cricket. Shawnigan Lake’s spartan Tudor dormitories, school ties, daily chapel and iron discipline are still modeled after the England Lonsdale knew 35 years ago.

When a new boy arrives at Shawnigan Lake, he is known as a “shadow” and is placed in the hands of an older “substance.” At first, the shadow can do no wrong and his substance is punished in his place. But the shadow soon learns to stand at rigid attention whenever he meets his headmaster, and to make his bed without a wrinkle.

To Christopher Lonsdale, now a ruddy, gruff and silver-haired 61, the theories of most modern pedagogues are so much “poppycock.” “Keep ’em happy. That’s their motto. But dammit, there’s no easy road to learning.” His masters, who sir him as the students do, conduct their classes with Victorian formality, emphasize the Scriptures, Greek and Latin: Boys who break minor rules are punished by extra work. Those who commit more serious offenses get a caning in the headmaster’s office.

Last week, with the Michaelmas term at Shawnigan Lake under way, Christopher Lonsdale patted his German Shepherd Judy and pointed a moral: “If I had let Judy run wild and do as she damn wefl pleased as a pup, she’d be a vicious, savage beast today. You can’t develop leaders by letting them do as they damn please when they’re boys. If nothing else, we’re training boys to be less obnoxious.”