Bedard’s Unofficial St. John’s Page

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This page is dedicated to all the students who have ever attended St. John’s Cathedral Boys’ School of Manitoba in Selkirk, Manitoba. This includes two members of the Bédard family, Marc (#1011) and Pierre (#722). Like ex-cons, we were defined and identified by our laundry number.

Years ago, I started my unofficial page and started putting up content. Quirky, odd, bizarre, anachronistic are four adjectives you can use in talking about the school, and the posted artifacts do nothing to dispel this. The documents you will find here are an excellent record of a time past.

I’ve kept the following link up to my old page as I slowly transition. Click here to see the original St. John’s Unofficial Page.

The first of three uniquely Canadian boarding schools founded in the early 1960s by Ted Byfield and Frank Wiens, St. John’s of Cathedral Boys’ School of Manitoba operated until the early 1990s. Sister schools emerged in Stony Plain, Alberta, and then near Toronto, Ontario.  St. John’s School of Alberta closed down a few years ago. The old staff maintains an excellent website with updates and news. I recommend it. This site supplements and does not replace it. 

Buttressed by two Canadian fundamentals – canoeing and snowshoeing, St. John’s Canadian-Anglican foundation, spiced with a Canadian-modified pseudo-English Public School system of corporal punishment would have made Harry Potter an homme du nord. The school retraced many fur trade routes as part of its extensive outdoors program.

Students at the school participated in its running. During my years at the school in the ’70’s, boys kept the school operational. We had to clean dog kennels, the chicken barn, cook and serve food, produce back bacon, chicken, and pork sausage (and pepperoni!), perform janitorial duties, and/or raise malemutes and huskies.

Everybody hit the streets of Winnipeg in winter with a basket of back bacon, frozen chicken, and frozen pork sausage. At -40 below (the temperature where Celsius equals Fahrenheit), there was never any waste due to thawing. But I digress. 

My aim is not to editorialize. I could care less. I just want the documents I’ve scanned, saved, annotated, and commented on to live on. What is the web without content?  And there is such good content from a boarding school with its own reason for being and such clarity of mission (at times). Yearbooks, welcome kits, letters to the editor, book reviews, and so on. I’ll make them available as I re-roll them out.

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Before there were canoes, there were cutters

In cooperation with Mike Martyn, an old, old boy from the original Manitoba weekend school, bedard.com is taking you back to 1962. Mike was kind enough to send me some very interesting scans that I now make available for your viewing pleasure. He is the boy standing in the cutter. I choose to post these documents because 1) I have the bandwidth, and 2) they are historically very, very significant to the early development of the school and to the exposition of the St. John’s philosophy.

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School memoranda from 1962

Spring 1962 was a busy time for SJCBS. A cutter trip was being planned along with the first canoe trip. Father Turney, the chaplain, was preparing boys for confirmation. The weekend school was in its last throes – it was announced that the 1963 class was slated to be full time only, hopefully turning the school into “one of the country’s great religious and educational centres.” This is a must read.

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1964 School Report (pdf)

The 48-page St. John’s Cathedral Boys School – A Report, June 1964 is an enlightening exposition of the school’s philosophy written over forty years ago. It’s a good read and explains the philosophy behind the school. Clearly written by Ted Byfield.

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Macleans Magazine Article 1961 (pdf)

Macleans magazine wrote about the weekend school in November 1961. Note that the article is not complete, but the cover shot is first class!

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Father Turney, priest, pedestrian, and anarchist

We all know the Father Turney Road that runs behind the school, but do you know Father Turney? The school’s chaplain, he passed away in 1962. Read his obit. According to an old boy from that time period, “he was a real character and he made the Winnipeg Free Press on several occasions. The picture I recall is of an elderly priest in a black cassock wailing away with his umbrella on the hood of some hapless motorist … He believed that pedestrians should ever and always have the right of way over mere automobiles and woe betide any errant motorist that crossed his path. Red light or green light, crosswalk or middle of the street, it didn’t matter to Father Turney.”

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The Byfield Bugle – Vol 1, No. 1

Read some of the early school newspapers from 1962! Filled with inside jokes and bad puns. Edited by Mike Maunder.

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Remembering Nancy Cox

Nancy Cox was a class act! Everyone else who met her, loved her. I was grateful to see her at the reunion.

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Pictures from the ’70s

A couple of pictures of the Stone Building and me as a St. John’s student taken in the ’70s.

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Welcome Packet from 1973

Fascinating documents from my “welcome” packet from St. John’s. Included are my acceptance, letter, fees due, the clothing list, and the rules. Documents from 1973 from the school to my parents, explaining the drill.

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SJCBS 1974 Yearbook (pdf)

Written and produced by the Grade 11’s of that year, it gives you a feel for what life was like in one of Canada’s classic boarding schools. Great stuff about canoeing, snowshoeing, selling meat products door to door, and the overall St. John’s curricula circa 1974. Though I was at the school in 1974, you won’t find me in any pictures.

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Men Wanted (pdf)

This is a very readable copy of a St. John’s recruiting brochure. Note that the file is a 40MB pdf. I went to great care to make sure all of the photos are top quality. There’s a few good shots in there of Mr. Felletti, Mr. Wiens, and others. Extremely well-written, the brochure goes into detail about the day in the life of a master and follows the hapless journey of “that horrid Jones boy” as he wends his way through his St. John’s education. Be sure to zoom in on the text when viewing with a browser. Give it some time if you aren’t on a high-speed line.

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God Can Bring Good Out of It (Reader’s Digest) (pdf)  

I wasn’t working with original pages so I attempted to collate scans of the Reader’s Digest article so it can be downloaded, printed, and read. Tough reading online, since I converted jpg to pdf, but legible nonetheless.

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Governor General’s speech (pdf)

I love the parliamentary system of government in Canada. Even when you lose an election, you win. There is no better job in government than being the Leader of the Opposition – you can be as lippy as you want without the responsibility. The Honorable Ted Byfield, the erstwhile Governor-General, addressed the St. John’s parliament on January 7, 1962. We have obtained a copy of his speech and faithfully print it here.

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St. John’s kicks Soviet Ass! Read all about it!

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Wiens and Byfield first love was the cutter. Young boys, proxy galley slaves, plied the Red River and Lake Winnipeg in these archaic vessels before the pairs’ discovery of the canoe and voyageur lore. Like so many bad passages from a Francis Parkman treatise, this 1961 mock newspaper and promotional piece has classic lines like “Youngsters Redrew Manitoba Map and Answered Mr. Khrushchev.” Note that this was written years before the first Canada Cup.

Snowshoeing instructions (pdf)

Some snowshoeing instructions prior to the races.

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Lake Timiskaming and Deep Waters

In this section, I’ve posted reviews and interesting links I’ve found throughout the net about the Lake Timiskaming tragedy. Every once in a while, something new turns up. If you ever attended St. John’s, this book is a must-read, whether you agree with Raffan, or not. As with most nonfiction, there is a fine line between opinion and fact. Some may agree with him, some not, but James Raffan, on the whole, gives a fair account of what happened on Lake Timiskaming in 1978.

Glen Treilhard’s letter to the Globe and Mail re:Deep Waters Review by MT Kelly

Review of Deep Waters from Che-Mun, a Canadian canoeing magazine, by Michael Peake

Victoria, BC Online book review by Brendan Quarry, who attended St. John’s of Ontario

Pierre’s thoughts on Deep Waters

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Other documents about St. John’s

This section is a grab bag of interesting links and articles about all things St. John’s.

History of the Old Stone Building

The old stone building, built in 1867, is a Provincial Heritage Site. Here’s a great link detailing its history. The school site is now the Selkirk Healing Centre, a residential school now run by the Government. I don’t think they snowshoe anymore :). One of the new teachers e-mailed me last year and was mildly amused at how we used to be.

Scumbag!

Don’t know this guy, but hopefully, he’s still doing time and his roommate’s name is Bubba. A brief article about an ex-teacher from the Globe and Mail. Note: An update as of 1 January 2007. I won’t post it here, but this guy got off with less than 2 years in slam. Not to hate on Canada – but some of your laws suck. This guy got less time than Ricky from the Trailer Park Boys!