Doc Norquay’s Last Salute

(A story taken from the SJCBS yearbook of 1966)

“Don’t expect great things from me,” said Dr. John P. Norquay. “I’m not young anymore, you know, and besides you’re using the wrong boats.”

It was July, 1960, and the doctor was discussing the proposed 400-mile expedition from The Pas, Manitoba, to Winnipeg by rowing cutter. The school needed another man for the trip and had approached the doctor. Though over 50, he certainly looked tough enough.

The doctor, a veterinary inspector with the federal department of agriculture whose son was in the school, had agreed to come, but not without first protesting the type of boat then used by the school. The rowing cutters, he said, were ungainly, slow and European.

“What you need are canoes. They are the beautiful craft – long, light, fast and incidentally genuinely Canadian. One of the days you’re going to discover them.”

Having said this, he threw himself into the expedition with all his enthusiasm. It proved to be one of the school’s toughest. He endured mosquitoes so thick in the Summerberry marshes that he boys and men had to wrap towels around their faces as they prepared their camp. On a height above the old Demicharge Rapid, he astonished the crew by hoisting an 80-pound wet tent up a 60-foot cliff to a camp site.

Twice severe storms on Lake Winnipeg drove the cutters ashore, the second time onto the rocks of Wicked Point. Here “Old Doc”, as the boys called him, leapt out of the boat into the surf and helped brace the cutter against the waves as the crew unloaded it.

Each morning he was up before his youngsters, got the fire going and then awakened the crews with the same refrain: “It’s daylight in the swamp, gentlemen.”

When one of the two boats was damaged at Wicked Point, Doc Norquay volunteered to remain behind in charge of a stranded crew on short rations as the sailing boat St. Peter came north to pick them up. The other cutter pushed on and eventually reached Winnipeg.

The cutters, said the doctor later, were better boats then he thought. But he’d still stick with canoes and he thought the school should do the same.

Last November at Winnipeg General Hospital Dr. John Prichard Norquay died of cancer. He was 57. During his year-long illness there had been a pathetic incident.

Unknown to the school, the doctor had moved into a home in St. Norbert on the banks of the Red River. Here for months he fought his last fight. One fine June evening, he lay on a cot watching the old river when suddenly from far upstream he heard singing voices. Within minutes nine canoes appeared before him. He pulled himself to his feet and made his way to the edge of the river, waving his hand and softly calling.

But the wind was on the water and the paddlers didn’t hear. Some waved back but none knew who it was. Moments later they were gone.

They’d missed Doc Norquay’s last salute. But as he beheld those long, low craft, the joyful swing of the paddles, the yellow gleaming in the evening sun and the cross blazing on every bow, he knew at least that the day had finally come. St. John’s had discovered the canoe.

One Man’s Odyssey001.pdf – Powered by Google Docs.

(-article from the Alberta Report magazine – 1975)

Chapel 1976

While rural areas are dotted with hulks of abandoned school houses, churches and farm buildings, the city usually dispenses with such remnants of Alberta’s frontier days with almost indecent haste. Surprisingly, then, one of the Anglican church’s original missions in this area lasted for 65 years in the north end of Edmonton before finally facing condemnation proceedings by the city’s engineering department.  And Edmonton’s Mission Chapel at 11725-93 St. may survive for another 65 years, if St. John’s School of Alberta can raise the $12,500 it needs to move the chapel 40 miles southwest of Edmonton to the school’s property on the North Saskatchewan River.

The chapel was originally built to serve English immigrants who settled just north of Edmonton during the immigration boom which followed the turn of the century. Thinly-populated areas of the new province could not support their own parishes, so the mission was staffed by 17 priests sent in 1910 by the Church of England. With the church here as headquarters, the priests served a wide area. Although all returned to Europe when World war I began, and 10 died in the trenches as army chaplains, the mission continued to serve the district in different capacities as the population and parish increased in size and wealth. Now, many other modern structures have replaced the little chapel, which stands empty on the ground the city wants to make into a “quiet area”. The Anglican diocese is also anxious that the church should quickly disappear since some of its outbuildings have been condemned as firetraps.

But an unlikely rescuer has appeared in the Anglican private boys’ school situated just west of the Genesee Bridge, half way between Warburg and Stony plain. The school since its construction in 1967 has been without a church of its own. Plans to build one of logs fell through only four years ago, when several logistical problems prove insurmountable. Then the school’s small library was remodeled to fill the role. “But it was never intended to be permanent,” says Bud Brooks, science teacher at St. John’s, the man charged with finding money for the moving project. “We’ve always had our eye open for an abandoned church, but all the previous possibilities fell through for one reason or another.” Mr. Brooks heard about the imminent destruction and persuaded the city to hold off until he could raise the money to move it.

A brief to the Devonian Foundation in Calgary proved initially abortive, but one of the foundation’s members referred the brief to an anonymous Calgary philanthropist. He has agreed to pay up to half the $25,000 needed to move and re-establish the church, matching whatever Mr. Brooks and St. John’s can raise by other means. Mr. Brooks hopes to raise the money soon, because the Anglican church has already sold the land to the city. As for the staff and students of St. John’s, Mr. Brooks says they would like it moved as soon as possible, too. But since they have been doing their morning and evening devotions in canoes, around campfires and in mountain passes for years, a few more months in a cramped library isn’t going to cause too much suffering.

(Article from the 1970-1971 Annual Report of St. John’s School of Alberta)

Chapel

St. John’s School of Alberta urgently needs a chapel and has no money to buy one. A chapel was not included in the original construction of the school as it was expected that the boys could worship in classrooms or the library until a proper chapel could be built. This has proved a delusion. Attendance at religious services in the Manitoba school has quadrupled since an abandoned church was brought onto the site to serve as a chapel two years ago. Last summer, the Alberta chaplain, Rev. Stanley Isherwood, examined three abandoned churches in the school’s vicinity. Two were too small, one too expensive to move. With a clampdown on all capital spending a new one cannot now be erected and paid for.

(- taken from an article in the 1969-1970 St. John’s Report)

For St. John’s Schools the past two years have been a time of escalating publicity, some bad, most good, but plentiful enough to send a story a about the schools into scores of Canadian and American newspapers, one national TV program and, most recently, towards the international edition of the Reader’s Digest.

What began the boom was the publication by St. John’s two years ago of a 40 page teacher recruiting booklet called “Men Wanted” that was sent to a dozen Canadian newspapers. Two of them, the Victoria times and the Ottawa Journal, did stories on the place.

The story in the Journal was spotted by Weekend Magazine which then sent a reporter and photographer west for a few days on a visit. Continue Reading…

Battle of Maldon the Year 991

We have had many requests for copies of the Green Literature Book. Plans are in the works for a limited reproduction – but here is one of the favourite poems from the book.

Battle of Maldon001.pdf – Google Docs.

52,000 Pounds Last Year

(article from the 1970-1971 Annual Report for Saint John’s School of Alberta)

Honey Production in 1971

Apris Mellifera in its uncounted thousands has provided the base for a program at St. John’s of Alberta which enabled students to gain some special knowledge and experience and also returned a cash profit to the school.

For those who wonder, that means bees. They produced 52,000 pounds of honey which students processed, packaged, promoted and sold door-to-door at a net profit of about $5,000 last year. Continue Reading…

Recruiting Pamphet

In 1956, as a result of a frustration with the way society was moving toward more secular attitudes, Ted Byfield and Frank Wiens began a Sunday school program for boys who sang in the choir at St. John’s Cathedral church in Winnipeg. The Sunday school program did not work – irregular attendance, amateurs teaching a subject that would tax professionals, teachers constantly changing, facilities bad – but beneath all this was what they felt was the true reason for the failure – children were not being taught to think. The habit of reasoning from premise to conclusion had played little part in their education. Also, the new generation lacked some old instincts; to Christians, life is a pilgrimage, an adventure, a voyage into distant lands with great dangers, arduous difficulties and indescribable rewards. But their students had been somehow trained to believe that the good life consisted of social security, physical comfort and physio-psychological thrill.

Continue Reading…

In September of 1968, Saint John’s School of Alberta opened it’s doors. The following is the story of how and who was involved with this happening:

SJSA Early Years003.pdf – Google Docs.

(article from the St. John’s annual report of 1969-1970, author Ted Byfield)

“Men wanted for hazardous journey, Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in case of success”. – Sir Ernest Shackleton

When the British Antarctic explorer ran his famous advertisement in the London dailies of 1906, the results astonished him. Thousands of men came forward. Three years later those selected enabled Shackleton to locate the south magnetic pole and press within 150 miles of the south pole itself. Sixty-four years later the same ad did one thing more. It enabled St. John’s Schools of the Prairies to solve the central problem of their existence – how to find top notch men at a salary of $1 a day plus living essentials. Continue Reading…