Founder’s Day Welcome Headmaster Richard ‘Larry’ Lamont’s Address It is a pleasure and privilege to welcome our alumni, former staff, governors and other guests to Founder ’s Day on behalf of the community here at Shawnigan. As some of you might already know, I am an enthusiastic fly fisherman – who read, as a boy, fishing tales of Scotland, Southern Africa, Norway and British Columbia. My career has followed a love of rivers.
the rains are here – to look beneath the bridge near Lake Omar for our very own Shawnigan returning salmon – that symbol of instinct, perseverance and renewal.
I am therefore going to start with the story of the Coho salmon to try to capture the spirit of this occasion. Through my reading, I have come to understand that the Coho salmon is a symbol of several First Nations’ tribes, representing both instinct, perseverance and renewal.
In part, there is something magical about the Shawnigan salmon’s loyalty, navigational instincts, and sense of homecoming – and applicable to our alumni community gathered here today and our collective sense of responsibility towards the next generations of students to come.
On the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend, Scott Noble of our Science Department kindly invited the Lamont family to watch some local conservationists catching hundreds of migrating Coho salmon at the estuary pool at Mill Bay and then releasing them in the Shawnigan creek, well above a series of impassable waterfalls.
Today is, of course, Founder’s Day.
The salmon is an extraordinary and powerful fish. Born in a British Columbia river, it migrates out to the Pacific, stretching from Alaska to California – until, years later, the sensory hairs surrounding the magnetite particles in its lateral line trigger the navigational circuits in its brain to head towards the coastline in search of its natal river.
EM Forster, the English writer urged in his novel, Howards End, that we should “only connect.” With this in mind, we have put together a program for Founder’s Day centred on the principle of connection so that it provides you, as alumni, with opportunities to connect with each other, to connect with memories (some still fresh and some in a state of temporary hibernation), to connect with staff, to connect with the campus and this unique landscape, and to connect today with the rich tapestry of education currently on offer here at Shawnigan – from the robotics lab to cabaret acts, from the observatory to the playing fields.
The salmon responds to this call of the wild, this call from its birthplace – and, following the recognizable and unique river scent, it enters the fresh water and begins its journey upstream in order to contribute its genes to the next generation of salmon – a gift to the river that gave it birth. The returning Coho heads west along Shawnigan creek and upstream and through our campus – past the Prep, Lonsdale’s, Strathcona and the hatchery – and onwards towards its journey’s end, and its spawning grounds. I encourage students in the coming weeks – and once Headmaster Larry Lamont giving his address in Chapel on Founder’s day 2018.