“Cormie, get me a stretcher,” growled Mr. Bennett, his voice breaking the restless silence that hung over evening study in the dining room.
“Me?” asked Lee Cormie, innocently.
“Yes, you,” he roared, “and make it quick. There should be one in the office.”
What new horror was I about to witness? The masters at St. John’s seemed to be enthusiastic supporters of corporal punishment but I wouldn’t have called them sadistic.
Already in my first week, I had witnessed several spankings during class, but no one had been stretched. Surely the school didn’t torture boys, certainly not for an offense as minor as Cormie’s. After all, he had only been waging a spitball war with someone across the room.
“Couldn’t find one, sir,” he said after taking what seemed like a long time to return.
“Then try the staff house,” demanded Mr. Bennett.
“You’ve got one minute to get back here.”
By then, of course, I realized this unfamiliar instrument of punishment that Cormie was searching for was nothing more than the paddle used for spanking. I had yet to receive my first, though I was well aware that the day could not be far off. For one thing, you didn’t have to break a rule to get it.
Just that morning Mr. Bennett, who was my homeroom teacher, had informed us that during the next Latin class there would be a test and anyone getting less than 70 percent would get one swat for every wrong answer over that. This was an application of corporal punishment for which the new student was given no warning.
In fact, the school’s prospectus had been surprisingly silent on the matter of corporal punishment. The copy my parents received certainly made it clear it would be a disciplined environment:
Classes are run on formal lines. Pupils are required to call teachers "sir," stand to answer in class and say 'pardon me' when they pass adults in the hall, etc.
But there was no mention of what would happen to those who failed to abide by the rules. Spanking, it turns out, was one of the school’s oldest traditions.
Popular myth has it that during the first rowing practice in 1957 when boys in the St. John’s Cathedral choir were meeting as an outdoor recreation club, it became necessary to administer corporal punishment. Out of the club grew a weekend school and eventually a full-time boarding school.
On the day in question, the skipper of the eight-man cutter – one that had been discarded by the Navy – had used all manner of encouragement to produce some measurable effort from his rowers, without success. Left with no alternative, since the boat was slowly drifting further and further downstream on the Red River, he threatened to take the next person he caught goofing off ashore and paddle his backside.
Moments later history was made when the skipper took the offending rower ashore and whacked him on the rear with one of the removable foot-braces. In the sport of rowing, that piece of wood is known as the stretcher.
Fact or fiction, everyone agrees it was during one of the first rowing practices that the first spanking was administered.
It is said that the choir club’s leaders, Frank Wiens and Ted Byfield, were so impressed with the results that when the school was started, they realized the stretcher could have applications in all areas of school life. Not without a sense of humor, they saw its application in the classroom, for example, as a means of “stretching” the student’s mind.
From their point of view, it was nothing more than putting into practice the maxim, `To spare the rod is to spoil the child.’
They believed the stretcher was being used out of love and concern for each boy’s future well-being. Failing to spank when it was deserved, they argued, would be just as bad as spanking too much.
Wiens and Byfield started the school because of their dissatisfaction with the way their children were being educated. They felt their children were being short-changed by the public school system — that they were learning about one-tenth what they were capable of.
Further, they felt something had to be done to counter an increasingly popular attitude among educators — ‘if it feels good, do it. If it doesn’t, don’t.’
Using such criteria Wiens and Byfield realized that ultimately little would be accomplished because very little offered by the educational system ‘felt good.’ Finally, they wanted to re-assert the principles of right and wrong as the basis upon which students would make decisions about their lives.
You didn’t have to look far to see that over the years other Canadians had shared their views on the shortcomings of the public school system. Many of those dissatisfied parents had decided to open their own schools rather than fight a losing battle to change what existed.
Where most of these ventures differed dramatically from that begun by Wiens and Byfield was in the area of corporal punishment. Few, if any, used spanking as a means of achieving results in the classroom.
I was trying to imagine the pain of the swats I was sure I was going to get the next day when Cormie’s voice brought me back to the present. My suspicion about the ominous-sounding instrument of punishment he had been sent to find was immediately confirmed. In Cormie’s hand was a piece of wood which I thought looked rather light-weight and harmless compared to others I had seen.
“No answer at the Staff House,” he volunteered as he handed over a board, maybe 18 inches long, three inches wide but barely a quarter of an inch thick. It appeared to have been designed – no doubt by Cormie himself – with the interests of the receiver, not giver, in mind.
Cormie, though only in Grade 6, was a veteran of the weekend school and was well-versed in the art of teacher baiting. The cleverest among them could walk that fine line between insolence and feigned co-operation with impressive dexterity.
The stick Cormie had produced fell into that category because it was serviceable though awkwardly wide. Mr. Bennett had perhaps been outmaneuvered in this particular battle of wits, though not seriously enough to undermine his position. So, he accepted Cormie’s wide-handled, light-as-a-fly-swatter choice.
“Now bend over,” he instructed, sixty pairs of eyes glued to the spectacle unfolding in the middle of the dining room.
An unsatisfactory thump followed the first blow, delivered with what only appeared to be a medium amount of force by Mr. Bennett. Cormie had bent his knees and straightened his body ever so slightly during the swing so as to deny Mr. Bennett solid contact.
Normally this position would have made it hurt more except that during one of his absences Cormie had attended to another detail. He had hastily pulled on a couple of extra pairs of underwear that he kept in his locker for such emergencies. The effect was to cushion the blow.
“Bend over all the way,” Mr. Bennett snapped. “And stay there.”
Clearly, he was no longer amused by the cat and mouse game that was being played at his expense.
A resounding thwack rang through the room as Mr. Bennett brought the full power of his upper body to bear in administering the blow. Cormie hardly flinched. He was now wearing that ‘if that’s the best you can do, I’ve got nothing to worry about’ expression that only the spectators could see.
On the sixth blow, Cormie’s prized paddle split down the middle. He’d have preferred that to have happened two swats earlier but still he was pleased with his craftsmanship.
Mr. Bennett tossed the two splintered halves into the garbage and told him to get back to work. The smirk Cormie wore returning to his seat would have been good for another five. But Mr. Bennett never saw it.
I left study hall that night and filed into the chapel for Compline dreading what lay in store the next day. It was no doubt an occasion when I prayed that I had memorized enough Latin vocabulary and grammar to avoid the unknown pain of a spanking.
As I drifted off to sleep, I felt mildly reassured by the fact a squirt like Cormie had survived the event with so little evidence of discomfort. The next thing I remember was suddenly being awakened by the lights being turned on.
“All right, I want whoever was talking to come forward immediately, or I’ll spank the entire junior dorm,” a voice said sternly from down the hall.
It was Mr. Wiens. In a way no other teacher did, he demanded and won the respect of students. His even-tempered, no-nonsense manner made him the school’s most successful disciplinarian. Still, no one was owning up. I suddenly realized we were all going to be spanked, and in our pajamas. An indescribably sharp pain welled up inside my chest.
“You people first,” he said to the dorm across the hall. We slept in open cubicles barely large enough to accommodate two bunkbeds.
One at a time we stepped out, still half-asleep, some in pajamas, some just in underwear. One boy had to be woken.
Thwack, thwack, thwack. The measured pace of the first three swats was a forceful reminder that Mr. Wiens did not consider the offense minor. If the guilty party or parties weren’t prepared to step forward, he was more than prepared to punish everyone. He hoped next time those involved would behave more honorably.
An ear-piercing howl accompanied the blows dealt with the second boy, and he retreated to his bed sobbing. From the other two boys in the first dorm came only quiet gasps. Then it was our turn.
The boy above me jumped out of bed, I thought, a little too willingly. I was behind him, but I don’t remember getting out of bed. And I don’t really remember bending over. Numbed by fear, I was suddenly aware of a sharp burning sensation on my backside. The other two blows came before I had time to gasp. And then it was over, and I was back in bed, feeling half-drugged by the adrenalin that surged through my body for nearly ten minutes. I was only faintly aware of having a sore backside.
I was practically asleep when he finished spanking the last dorm and turned out the lights. It wasn’t until the following morning that it sank in that I had survived my first spanking. But somehow it all seemed like a dream. I couldn’t decide if the next time it would hurt more or less.
By the time Latin class came that morning I was beginning to think that maybe the pain was all in my head. I felt more relaxed. The test was easier than expected, and I began to allow myself to think I might escape punishment altogether.
When the results were announced I learned I hadn’t, but I was only going to get two swats. Almost nonchalantly I went up to get them over with.
Thwack, thwack. Whew! That bastard, I cursed under my breath, my eyes watering from the sting. There was no doubt Mr. Bennett knew how to hit. For the next ten minutes, I squirmed in my seat, gently trying to massage the feeling back into my rear end. Never again would I let my guard down while being spanked.
Richard de Candole has been working in British Columbia and Alberta as a reporter and editor for over 40 years. Toughest School in North America is about his five years as a student at St. John’s Cathedral Boys’ School in Selkirk, Manitoba from 1962 to 1968. Richard lives with his wife Wendy in Qualicum Beach, British Columbia.
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