Selwyn House cuts the ribbon on centennial celebration

Schlemm, Selwyn’s oldest Old Boy, then helped Justin-Harry, the school's youngest current student, guide a large pair of scissors steadily towards the ribbon. Together they cut the ribbon and Selwyn House’s Centennial Celebration was officially under way.

“It’s very different,” said Schlemm comparing the currently polished state of the school to the facility he knew as a member of the class of 1929. “It was just a private house; they took a private house on Sherbrooke Street near Guy Street and used it as a school,” said Schlemm. “It had bedrooms and so on, which they just cleared out and we had our classes in there like any rowhouse in the city.”

But with the launch of the centennial celebrations, headmaster William Mitchell and active members of Selwyn House’s alumni hope to honour the past and ensure the future of the school.

Mitchell is Selwyn House’s seventh headmaster and is honoured to preside over the school’s centennial drive, especially since he will be retiring next year.

“Being the headmaster, it doesn’t matter if you’re the sixth or the seventh, it’s a big responsibility — but it’s a privilege to have been able to do the job,” said Mitchell. “The school has done marvelous things for education and educating young men for 99 years now and I anticipate that it will be doing it for many more years, if not centuries.”

Along with a new book, Selwyn House School: Celebrating 100 Years, which was unveiled at Thursdays’ Founders Day/ Centennial launch, and monthly events over the next year, the school will be holding a capital campaign to put Selwyn’s endowment into the country's top five.

Ted Claxton, a member of the campaign cabinet, and a Selwyn graduate, said that by the spring they would like to raise the endowment from its current level, around $4 million, to about $20 million.

The major events during the Centennial Celebration will be a Latin Nights gala in April, a golf tournament in May, and a conference, as part of the homecoming weekend in October of next year.

According to Mitchell, the gala and the golf tournament will be bigger and better than any of those usually held by the school.

Ellen Pinchuk also took home the school’s top honour of service to the school, the Speirs Medal, at Founders Day. She was the school’s lively art teacher for 25 years, and she had some solid advice for Mitchell.

“I know it’s probably hard for you to believe right now, but there is life after Selwyn House — and it’s good,” said Pinchuk.