Allen Upward Remembers: Early Years (1934-38)

Allen Upward taught at Glenlyon Preparatory School during the years 1934-38; 1939-53; 1959-60. In 1985 he presented his memories while at Glenlyon. Jeremy Smith, GNS Alumni and Head Boy 1986-87, gave a condensed version of this document for the Summer, 1992 edition of Traditions. This is an abridged version of that.

Glenlyon School began with thirteen boys on St. David Street in September 1932, born of two teachers. Mr. Ian Simpson, who won the Military Cross and became a Major in WWI and most recently had resigned as headmaster of University School and Mr. Edward Wilkinson, who played rugby for Oxford vs. Cambridge in 1891, was selected to play for England, joined-up for WWI at 47 years of age as a Private and ended up as Captain in the General Staff, and most recently was unknowingly given “early retirement” at St. Michael’s School.

It took a lot of courage to start a school in 1932. Most people had very little money or none at all. It was common to see several hundred men outside the gates of Esquimalt graving dock looking for work when news of a ship was coming in for repairs. The footpath that ran from Uplands Park to the Oak Bay golf links was a make-work project where some of the more desperate could earn a few dollars. I saw a man working in a silk shirt and tailored pants because he couldn’t afford to buy working clothes.

I arrived in September 1934 from working in a sawmill in Pemberton at 25¢/hour; and although I had a university education, I had no teaching experience. All I knew about teaching came from two books: The Schoolmaster and The Lighter Side of School Life. I told myself that the boys of Glenlyon were very little and how bad could it get.

The school on St. David Street was a large, two-storey house perched on a very rocky lot. It had three classrooms and some bedrooms upstairs for the boarders. The first thing that comes to mind was how cold the place was. On very cold days we sometimes had fires going, but the junior classroom had no heat at all and early in November of ’34 the ink in the ink wells froze.

One person I remember well from that time was Wong Chong, the cook. He once came dancing into me very excitedly. The rope on the dumbwaiter that took food from the basement storage to the kitchen had broken and the falling elevator “pletty nearly took head off.” So I fixed it and when I showed him how safe it now was, the rope broke again and it ‘pletty well’ took my head off. Wong thought this was very funny and doubled over with laughter.

We moved to Beach Drive during the summer holidays of 1935. Mr. Simpson and I started to clear a grove of fir trees near the boat house. Most of the trees fell where we wanted them and in due course there was nothing left but the stumps which we removed with crowbars, shovels, mattocks and a lot of sweat. There was one we couldn’t move, so we hired a powder man to blow it. He must have put in too much powder for, with a mighty bang, it split the stump in two – one part landing in the sea, the other flew across Beach Drive, denting the green wall of the Sheldon Humphries’ house.

[In 1938, “Uppy” as he was fondly called by the boys, returned to England briefly, but the following year, after pleas from his former students and a letter from Ian Simpson offering the position of Senior Master, he returned in March 1939 with $4 in his pocket.]