Headmasters Weekly Newsletter -Week3

Each year we invite everyone to come to campus to help us raise money for cancer research. On Sunday, with the rest of the School and the community of Windsor, I ran the Terry Fox Run for the Cure.

Two days later I attended a funeral for an alumna who passed away from cancer at age 26.

I have wrestled with the dueling emotions of sadness and anger this week. However, I am also mindful of Terry Fox’s heroic journey and the positive impact his life has had. We run for him, but we also run for those who are close to us who have been touched by cancer. Although the Terry Fox Run appears as a whole school community event and a “fun” fundraiser with family and friends and our pets (lol!), it has a powerfully personal relevance and purpose. This year (for me at least), more than ever.

I am also struck by the number of alumni and staff and former staff at the funeral on Tuesday. We were a large and tearful and diverse group. It speaks to the strength and intimacy of the bonds created at our School. Seeing the happy photos from School events – in a prom dress or rugby hoodie – reminded me of how important these days are for our students, and how important it is that they are happy days.

I remember when the President and Chancellor of Acadia University, Ray Ivany, told me that what distinguishes King’s-Edgehill students was their ability to navigate life’s grey zones. In class or in campus life, he discovered that our graduates were good at understanding life’s complexities, of seeing good and bad together, at understanding that life combines joy with sorrow, injustice with generosity, or senselessness and purpose.

And so at today’s soccer tournament, we begin fundraising for the victims of Hurricane Dorian in The Bahamas. It is the students who are reaching out and making the effort to help people they have never met in a country only a lucky few have visited. They feel it is important to do something. I am hugely impressed. Out of destruction and despair comes action, love, and hope.