News & updates

List of 5 news stories.

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  A Meaningful and Memorable Founder's Day

  10/30/2026
  Founder’s Day is an opportunity for alumni to gather on campus and fondly recall their days at Shawnigan. This year, more than 170 alumni and their families came back through the gates for a day of memories and celebrations.

   

  This year’s event focused on years ending in six, with the Class of 1976 inducted into the Gold Club, marking 50 years since graduation. The Classes of 1991 and 2001 celebrated their 35th and 25th reunions as well. The oldest guest to check in was Brian McGavin of the Class of ’56.

   

  A special Founder’s Day Chapel Service had the theme “Seeds of Service,” in which Scott Larsen ’76 (Copeman’s) spoke on behalf of his class about how Shawnigan set him and his classmates up for a life of serving their communities in different ways. The first-ever Shawnigan Alum of the Year Award was presented to Chloe Hunt ’09 (Groves’). And a collection of more than $2,500 was taken up for the Nak Suu Rugby Academy in Thailand, founded by Eddie Evans ’81 (Lake’s), and which a group of Shawnigan students will be visiting in February.

   
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  October Sports Update

  10/30/2026
  Coming off a weekend in which our senior girls’ field hockey team won the Island championship, and the U18 Prep girls’ ice hockey team topped the field at our own third annual Kingstone Invitational Tournament, it seems like an ideal time to look into what our sports teams have been up to for the first two months of the school year.

   

  Field Hockey

   

  The senior girls defeated Glenlyon Norfolk School 3-2 in the Island 2A field hockey championship final at the University of Victoria on Saturday. As Island champions, they will have a high seed at the provincial tournament, which Shawnigan is hosting on November 4-6.

   

  That was just the latest in a series of successes on the field hockey pitch. The team also won the North Island tournament, defeating Brentwood College School in a shootout in the gold-medal game, and took bronze at the Independent Schools Association tournament before Thanksgiving, beating York House 2-0 in the third-place contest.

   

  The junior girls’ team finished third at Islands, held at UVic on Tuesday. Shawnigan finished second in their pool, then lost to Reynolds Secondary in the semifinals before defeating Lambrick Park 1-0 for bronze.

   
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  Zoom Fest: Lights, Camera, Collaboration!

  10/30/2026
  As if Zoom Fest didn’t have enough twists already.

   

  The annual film festival gives students across BC just 48 hours to make and submit a short film that will be judged against the work of their peers. On top of that, they are given a prop and a theme that they have to incorporate into the piece, which are announced at the beginning of the 48-hour span, making it trickier to plan ahead.

   

  Shawnigan students from the Film and Television 11 and 12 classes had another hurdle they had to tackle. Film teacher Mr. Aren Goodman mandated that they needed to include original music created by students from Mr. Vince Hale’s Composition and Production class – and no other music was allowed.

   
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  A New Kind of Nurturing in Samuel House

  10/23/2026
  When the Grade 8s in Samuel House first acquired a small clutch of chicken eggs to care for, it wasn’t long before jokes started flying. This one was going to be McNuggets. That one was going to be chicken pot pie.

   

  Not surprisingly, the chicks won over even the hungriest of students – before they even hatched and revealed their fuzzy, fluffy selves.

   

  Early in the school year, Samuel House bought an incubator, and Mila R., a Grade 8 student who lives locally, was able to bring in five eggs, which arrived on September 17. The students learned how the incubator worked, and the incubator was situated in the foyer of the House, where they could keep an eye on it daily.

   

  As the eggs incubated, so the students warmed up to their galline guests. Co-House Director Mrs. Rainbow Bartlett watched students kissing their fingers and gently touching the incubator to wish the chicks-to-be good luck.

   
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  Japan Super Science Fair Profile: Coco

  10/22/2026
  The night sky is full of stars, but how does where we live change how many stars we can see? Obviously, cloud cover and air pollution affect the visibility of stars, but even on a clear night in a rural area like Shawnigan Lake, with a large lake and the ocean nearby, the humidity in the atmosphere that is invisible to the naked can be enough to affect how much the light from the stars dims before it reaches the ground.

   

  The amount of light and radiant energy that are lost as starlight travels through the atmosphere due to scattering and absorption by molecules and aerosols is measured by the atmospheric extinction coefficient. Grade 12 student Coco I. made it her mission to evaluate Shawnigan’s atmospheric extinction coefficient, and the results of her research are taking her to the highly regarded Japan Super Science Fair in Kyoto later this month.

   

  Coco evaluated Shawnigan’s AEC using five different filters on the Observatory’s telescope.

   
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