Spanking was about the only physical hardship the school did not require of its masters. Otherwise, everything we had to put up with, they did too – the canoeing, the snowshoeing, the barn duty, the meals.
The school became their whole life and any master who wasn’t willing to dedicate every waking hour to the school, including during the holidays, usually didn’t last more than a year.
The single men had it the worst. Their private life was virtually non-existent. Apart from a small bedroom somewhere in the midst of the dorms or classrooms they had nowhere to go. They tended to be more visible and, as a result, got saddled with extra duties more often.
For married masters, a house elsewhere on the school property made it possible to slip away for a quiet meal or an hour or two of undisturbed rest. The one drawback was also having to deal with the pressures of the family.
The fact masters did not have much time to themselves did not make St. John’s that different from other boarding schools. Nor did the fact the school was founded and run by a religious organization.
What made St. John’s very different was the fact that the masters and their wives belonged to a religious community and that they were paid a dollar a day. Curiously, recruiting people to work under such conditions never seemed to be much of a problem. The main reason was that the school had Mr. Byfield as its chief promoter and recruiter.
Ted Byfield was born in Toronto in 1928. He was the oldest of two sons of Vern and Caroline Byfield. He grew up in Toronto where his father worked as a newspaper reporter, first for the Toronto Telegram, then the Toronto Star.
At the age of 13, Ted was sent to Lakefield College School for two years. He finished high school in Toronto and then followed his father into the newspaper business, starting as a copy boy at the Washington Post where his father worked at the time.
At an early age he came to understand the power of the written word. His father’s considerable skill as a political reporter not only brought him personal fame, but in 1934 it helped bring the Ontario Liberals to power after a 30-year absence.
History repeated itself two decades later in Winnipeg when Ted, then a political reporter himself, played a part through the Free Press in ousting the incumbent mayor and electing Stephen Juba for the first of many terms.
Ted was an enterprising and gifted writer. And being conservative in outlook he had no trouble allying himself with Juba, also conservative, against a Liberal mayor. Throughout the three-week campaign in October of 1956, Ted missed no opportunity to promote his man at the expense of his opponent. Juba only just won, but it was the upset of the decade in Winnipeg municipal politics.
Once his man was in power Ted made great use of his favored status. In particular, he enlisted the mayor’s support for a personal project he had just begun – a weekend boys’ club. The effect, of course, was to give the project instant credibility. But more importantly, it got the kind of publicity no money could buy.
The boys’ club project was something that grew out of his involvement in St. John’s Cathedral choir. Soon after moving to Winnipeg with his wife Virginia and sons Mike and Link in the early 1950s, Ted had begun using his skills as a communicator at winning people over to the Christian faith.
As he outlined in his book Just Think, Mr. Berton, published in 1965, Ted spent a number of months sorting out his childhood beliefs before embracing the faith for good. The process was sparked by a discussion one day in the beer parlor – the irony of which clearly appealed to his sense of humor. In fact, pubs came to enjoy perhaps an unreasonably high importance in Ted’s life, particularly when someone was trying to persuade him to go home!
Beer parlors soon became the focus of his own attempts to bring others to the faith. His approach was probably not as subtle as he liked to believe, but he would open the conversation on a hypothetical level, and then bring it down to the more tangible realm of trying to persuade a receptive target to join the choir at St. John’s Cathedral, of which he was now a member.
It was an approach that brought the choir nearly a dozen recruits, five of whom eventually became Anglican priests. Many of those same people were part of a Christian cell group which started the boys’ club.
It was undoubtedly Ted’s idea in the fall of 1956 to provide the younger members of the choir, one of whom was his son, Mike, with a more meaningful experience during the sermon.
His solution was to take them into another room and read stories with a Christian or moral message. Other members of the choir, including Frank Wiens, soon began taking their turn, and it wasn’t long before the group was meeting on Saturday afternoon for recreational activities.
Ted immediately discovered how much easier it was to interest people in the boys’ club than in the choir. As the Free Press’s city hall reporter, he was getting to know some of Winnipeg’s most influential citizens. Mayor Juba himself played a part in launching the outdoor program by helping repair an old navy cutter.
More valuable than the mayor’s carpentry skills was the lesson he taught on how to acquire things for free. He pointed out that it was in the best interest of Winnipeg businesses to donate materials because if ventures like the boys’ club, which was teaching its members important values, were allowed to collapse, so one day would society. And that, he noted, would not be good for business.
During the first winter it was for things like wood to build bunk beds in the basement of the Byfield home on Perth Ave so club members could stay over on Saturday night. In the spring it was for materials to refit the cutter which came to be christened the St. John.
Despite the club’s association with high-profile citizens, widespread awareness didn’t come until the second summer of the rowing program. In August of 1958, the St. John made front-page news following a narrow escape from disaster during a storm on Lake Winnipeg.
Overnight everyone in Winnipeg had heard about this unusual boys’ club. That winter, the dean of St. John’s Cathedral, Rev. William E. Harrison, agreed to sponsor a part-time school in the parish hall.
The idea for a school had no doubt been incubating in Byfield’s mind for some time. It was, after all, at Lakefield, he later wrote, where “the first positive values of my life were established — moral, mathematical, historical and literary.” It was also there that he had been introduced to Christianity.
By the end of the first year the school had acquired a permanent home on St. Cross Street. It had also attracted the services of an impressive array of prominent citizens, particularly during the construction of the sailboat the St. Peter.
The list included Winnipeg-area members of parliament Murray Smith and Bob Smellie, former Diefenbaker secretary and clerk of the Manitoba Legislature Derek Bedson, soon-to-be Manitoba Lieutenant-Governor Richard Bowles, Winnipeg Public School Board chairman Hugh Parker, and Manitoba Medical Service Chairman Dr. Don McIntyre. Stories on the school were now appearing every few months as Winnipeg’s two dailies competed to provide the definitive account of this innovative venture.
Very few of those who volunteered to teach were trained as teachers, but at St. John’s that was not a reason to decline their services. Some of the founders even considered it an asset.
The recruits seemed to enjoy the challenge of doing something different as much as the parents appreciated the horizon-broadening effect it had on their sons. Who better could teach public speaking than a member of parliament? Who better could teach German than the editor of Winnipeg’s German Canadian newspaper? The diversity of background made the classroom sessions wildly innovative, and from all reports, very productive.
By September of 1959, the beginning of its second year, the school had an enrollment of 45 and a regular staff – all unpaid – of nine including Byfield, Wiens, Keith Bennett, Shirley Hogue, Parker, Smith, Klaus Pattner, Wes Harvison, Manfred Jager and Ralph Hedlin.
When St. John’s opened its doors full-time in the fall of 1962 enrollment stood at 56, but there were only four teachers – Byfield, Wiens, Bennett, and Millward. They were paid $1 per day plus living and medical expenses, and the commitment in terms of time was total. Never again would it be as easy to find large numbers of high-caliber recruits to help run the school.
To operate the full-time school, a religious community – first called the Dynevor Society, then in 1965 the Company of the Cross – was formed. It was administered by a council comprising masters and their wives, each of whom had to have been at the school two years and become a full member to receive a vote. Full members also had to be Anglicans and take vows before the bishop. Associate members could take part in council discussions but had no vote. The council could only act through motions passed unanimously.
All those who came to work at the school were expected to observe three rules governing their daily lives: spiritual, social, and economic. The spiritual rule required members to say private prayers twice daily, attend a chapel service twice daily, attend the service of Holy Eucharist twice weekly and read the Bible daily.
The social rule required members to eat one meal daily with the rest of the Company, and to offer no criticism of another member before he or she has first made the criticism to that person. The economic rules spelled out the salary ($1 per day) plus other financial benefits.
Separate living quarters made it possible for families to enjoy some privacy, but they were expected to participate fully in the communal life of the school. Food was drawn for a central storeroom. In addition to the $1 per day, each member received a $10-per-month clothing allowance.
The government family allowance cheques were expected to pay for the children’s clothes. Medical and insurance expenses were covered by the Company, and an assortment of cars, vans, and trucks were available for transportation when not in school use. Once a year each member received $150 for a two-week holiday.
The more furniture and other possessions the family brought with them, the more likely they were to be comfortable in their new home. There was never any evidence of money being allocated in the annual budget for furniture, even for the school.
New members were not asked to surrender personal savings, but they were expected not to spend any of them while a member. There was no official policy on money for the education of children. Daughters tended to be sent to a private day school (sons went to St. John’s free of charge), the cost of which was borne by the Company of the Cross.
In many ways, the school operated like a gigantic family farm. Everyone was expected to pitch in whenever there was work to be done. Since there no money for kitchen help or janitorial staff the students did all the dishwashing and floor scrubbing. And that, of course, meant a master had to be close by supervising the work.
With more specialized jobs like building maintenance and farm operation the supervising master had to get more involved. Keeping the physical plant running smoothly was a constant struggle because of the age of the buildings.
As demanding as the communal life was, the master’s greatest test was still in the classroom. For new masters it was a battle of wills which sometimes lasted only a minute or two, sometimes for the entire time they were at the school.
In theory, being able to spank should have meant the master always had an unfair advantage. But it often didn’t work out that way. Masters who couldn’t control a class usually came to be known as “one-year wonders” because that’s as long as they lasted. It was not an easy life.
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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