As you enter the Duxbury common room, you will find yourself standing under four wooden pillars.

 

Engraved on each pillar are four words that have helped guide, and continue to guide, every single Dux boy: Respect, Integrity, Honour, and Perseverance. 

 

These pillars hold our House up both physically but also morally, shaping how we act, how we treat others, and how we represent ourselves. 

 

Our house motto, Cave Lupum, means “Beware the wolf.”

 

While it seems like a warning to beware of the wolves outside, in the context of the reading, it's a warning to look within. 

 

Respect, Integrity, Honour, and Perseverance – these are qualities that feed the brave, proud wolf, the one that best represents Duxbury.

 

Cave Lupum – Beware the Wolf – is a warning that if you stray away from these values, you will begin to feed the other wolf, the one driven by ego, selfishness and hatred. 

 

As individuals, we have a responsibility to hold ourselves accountable, and as a boarding house, we share the responsibility of holding everyone else to the same standard.

 

Every single day, each of us decides which wolf we feed through the choices we make and the actions we take. 

 

Feed the brave wolf and beware the wolf. Cave Lupum.

 

 

 

The wolf is unique because of the way they travel as a pack. They aren’t all the same, they don’t always agree and they don’t always get along, but when things aren’t perfect, they are able to stay united and get through these tough times together – this is Duxbury. 

 

Just like every other House, things aren’t always perfect, but we use our four pillars, Respect, Honour, Perseverance, and Integrity, to come together and form brotherhood within Dux. My time in Dux started when I was in Grade 9. I remember my first hundala, my arms wrapped around these random people beside me, not really knowing what to expect, but as our feet started stomping and everything was going quiet, the first thing I noticed was a group of boys with so much pride, joy and passion in their eyes as they knew they were passing down a tradition and showing me and many others what it meant to be a Duxbarian. It was a new House, new friends and a new community, but it didn’t take long for it to become a second home. Our seniors respected us, pushed us and showed us how to be leaders. They showed their honour and integrity through how hard they worked, which left an imprint on us and motivates us seniors to do the same for our juniors. 

 

Brotherhood isn’t tested when things are easy; it’s tested when they aren’t. Nearing the end of Grade 9 a duty staff member came to us 9’s with the idea of a 10-day Beyond the Gates camping trip where we would hike half of the West Coast Trail and kayak through the Broken Group Islands. Without hesitation, almost every one of us Dux boys signed up to go together. Yes, we did get to skip finals, and, yes, that was part of the reason we all decided to go, but this trip turned out to be so much more than we could have ever expected. Whether you were waking up in the middle of the night due to a king tide, climbing up ladders one after another, falling asleep on the beach and waking up with a gnarly sunburn, or having a beard of flaky skin because you ran out of moisturizer, brotherhood is like a flame; one flame can be blown out easily, but together, flame creates warmth and light. When times got hard we could use each other as support to help move forward and reach the end. Now, to most people this would be a nightmare, but this experience became something I will never forget and that is because although it was hard, it brought all of us Dux 9’s together and built a bond that will forever be intact.

 

Duxbury doesn’t just prepare us for school; it prepares us for life beyond these walls. In Duxbury we practice being the best versions of ourselves, whether we are in a time of conflict or a moment of success. Marcus Aurelius once said, “Waste no time arguing about what a good man should be, just be one.” This describes Duxbury perfectly because we may be young and sometimes naïve, but I can full-heartedly say that when I step foot out of Duxbury for the last time, I will know what a good man is because every last kid in Dux shows me what it means to be one.