News & updates

List of 5 news stories.

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  Capturing the Supermoon

  10/9/2025
  While preparing to share their love of the cosmos with some of their peers, Shawnigan students in the Astronomy Imaging and Outreach 360 took advantage of the conditions to create some stunning images of Monday’s supermoon.

   

  The students were setting up field telescopes outside the observatory when they pulled out their cell phones, painstakingly aligned them with the telescope eyepieces, and took photos of the dazzling Moon. They used filters on their phones to bump up the contrast and make the images more compelling. Viewed from Earth, the features of the Moon don’t stand out the way they do in the filtered photos. But Bryce T., Owen V. and Berkley W. knew some tricks to make them pop, and shared their knowledge with Ethan F. and Mateo T.

   

  “It’s a pretty dramatic result from a pretty simple technique,” said Mr. Nigel Mayes, who oversees the Astronomy 360.

   
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  Order Up! Stag Café Goes Live

  10/9/2025
  What most students saw when the Stag Café opened on Tuesday evening was just the tip of the iceberg considering what goes into making the eatery a reality.

   

  It takes weeks of preparation to get Entrepreneurship 12 students from the first day of class to the opening day of Stag, notably a lengthy and rigorous interview process that helps determine what roles the students will fill as part of the organization, from CEOs to kitchen workers. As many as 10 adults – including education and administration staff, interns, and a visiting business major from the UK with previous kitchen management experience – were part of the panel that grilled the potential grillers.

   

  There are 50 students between the two Entrepreneurship 12 classes, a bigger number than usual, which necessitated a total of four CEOs – two in each class – who will have to collaborate because the Stag functions as one business with a separate shift for each of the two classes. The two junior entrepreneurship classes will also be involved in the café at some point as the year progresses.

   
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  Moving Toward a Sustainable Future

  10/3/2025
  For three days last week, more than 100 delegates gathered on campus to discuss a range of issues related to Indigenous knowledge, regenerative leadership, and sustainable systems at the Regenerative Futures Conference presented by Shawnigan Lake School, the University of British Columbia, the University of Cambridge, and Sustainable Education.

   

  The delegates heard from 22 different presenters from diverse backgrounds, including five Indigenous speakers. They comprised politicians, community organizers, authors, poets and activists, as well as individuals from the realms of business, academia, forestry, fire management, and sport.

   

  To host a huge event like this while school is in session was a risk, said Ms. Emily Coolidge, Shawnigan’s Heimbecker Inspiration Chair for Experiential Education and conference organizer, but it paid off.

   

  “It was overwhelmingly positive,” Ms. Coolidge commented. “I felt really good about it, and I felt really good about Shawnigan as the host school.”

   
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  Off the Beaten Path

  10/3/2025
  True to form, Shawnigan’s Beyond the Gates program made the most out of having to change plans for its fall backcountry expeditions on two separate occasions this year.

   

  Each fall, Grade 9 students pick from two overnight camping excursions in the Vancouver Island wilderness: a hiking trip and a kayaking trip, with separate groups heading off campus on two different weekends in September.

   

  The hiking group has traditionally traversed the Juan de Fuca Marine Trail on the southwest coast of Vancouver Island, but that trail is currently closed for extensive repairs. Instead, the program leaders planned to hike in the Forbidden Plateau area of Strathcona Provincial Park.

   
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  House Post Welcoming

  9/26/2025
  A year after Brad Assu ’83 (Lonsdale’s) announced the generous donation of a pair of magnificent house posts to Shawnigan, the 20-foot-tall carvings arrived on campus earlier this week.

   

  A member of the We Wai Kai First Nation from Cape Mudge on Quadra Island and an accomplished carver, Brad (traditional name Poo Glee Dee) announced at the Chapel Gathering preceding the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation in 2024 that he would be gifting the house posts to Shawnigan in gratitude for the five years he spent at the School.

   

  This week, a group of students travelled to Quadra Island along with woodworking instructor Mr. Declan Bartlett and archivist and curator Mrs. Sarah Teunis-Russ to officially accept the posts and accompany them back to the School.

   
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