I am Shawnigan archive

I didn’t decide Shawnigan was the place for me until I was gone.

 

Originally, I was only supposed to come for one year. The logical reason was rowing. I could row all year here and then return to Germany. Beyond that, I liked the area, the weather, and the campus. It felt peaceful. There was just a feeling I got where I thought, “I could see myself being here.”

I grew up in the bush and spent my afternoons out in the forest – building a fort, digging a hole, making a fire, swimming in the creek, climbing trees, and spotting animals. The outdoors program one of the main reasons I came here. I heard about Shawnigan's Search and Rescue program, and I was really interested in that. It gave me an opportunity to take what I did growing up and take it to a more professional level. Instead of just grabbing a rope and shimmying up a tree, I learned how to use rope work. I got my hands on a piece of tubular webbing, learned how to tie a harness, and learned to climb, to repel, to belay, and to set up my own anchors and safeties to go up and down vertical slopes.

 

Simply put, that program meant quite a lot because I got to meet my best friend through it, Oscar Nicoletti. We were kind of goofing off at the time and they gave us an assignment to learn knots. Oscar said he picked me because he thought I knew what I was doing, but I was kind of being a goofball. I picked the Prusik knot to learn, which is a friction hitch you use for climbing stuff, and I thought we could test it by climbing trees with it. So, we went out to the bushes by the Grade 8 rugby field, and there were some three-inch thick trees. We would climb 20 feet up those, and we built a little tree fort up there, just winching ourselves up on these little knots hours at a time.

 

The outdoor program gave me an opportunity to meet great people, like Mr. Ferris and Mr. Ryan, who are both great staff members I’ve really enjoyed getting to know. It also connected me with members of Cowichan Search and Rescue – Cass, John, and Dewey – who I've seen and been in contact with after the fact. It showed me how to try great things. Oscar and I even got a rope from there and made a zipline over Shawnigan Creek, made rope swings, built fires, and we'd go and sneak off and catch snakes in the Field of Dreams and have a blast.

 

When I came to Shawnigan it was really quite a gift. I joke that I retired when I came here after my 24 years in the public system. A comfortable environment, a sanctuary of a sort – that’s what this place really offered me.

When I arrived in 2003, I had a very clear picture of the commitment that was made to teachers by independent schools in general, and of the types of people, the personalities that existed in these systems, and I wanted to be a part of that. So that was really what it was about overall. My son Pat was really interested in this system, this School specifically. He had a really close circle of friends to begin with who were connected to the School. I was really impressed with what I saw at that time – and still am, obviously – but at that time it was part of that inspiration I had to join the School.

 

I started as the music director, along with a few other roles. My first House duties were in Copeman’s House. I worked a great deal outside of the regular routine to make things happen for music. The only way I could do that was to work in the evenings and try to offer those kids an opportunity to keep their music up. The goal was to never let them get away. Once you start playing, you can’t give time off for half a term.