Students
Societies
Societies were set up at the Academy, mostly for religious
purposes. The 1923 prospectus lists them, beginning with the League
of the Sacred Heart. All Catholic pupils were members of this confraternity,
established in 1871. The members of the Sodality of the Blessed
Virgin held regular monthly meetings. The aim was to foster
a tender devotion to the Blessed Mother of God, the ideal of all
true womanhood. The Holy Angel Sodality was in the Intermediate
Department, and the Sodality of the Holy Child was established for
the youngest pupils.
Thomas Aquinas
Society
The St. Thomas
Aquinas Reading Circle was formed in 1907. It involved all the interested
pupils in the school with the aim to foster a taste for good,
ennobling literature; to counterbalance ... the light, contaminating
works now so current and so enticing to the youthful mind.
The students met to read, listen to guest speakers and participate
in all sorts of activities. Among the events were a lecture on architecture,
delivered to the Aquinas Literary Circle by one of the Sisters,
and a reading by the famous Vancouver Island Poet Audrey Alexandra
Brown, who came to recite some of her works and to speak on the
life of a poet. The Society often met
in the Library, giving the room one of its many names.
The Circle
put together a scrap book, during the years 1920-24 and 1927-30.
It contained photographs from those years. On the Feast of St. Thomas
Aquinas, the girls would organize a special outing. On March 7,
1921, they went to Langford Lake and in 1923 held a picnic at Prospect
Lake. A president and council were chosen to run the club each year,
and their snap shots were also pasted in, alongside items such as
a March 1923 news clipping, marking the opening of King Tutankhamens
tomb in Egypt.
The Aquinian
was the title chosen for the school publication, which included
the poetry, essays, drawings and news items of the students at St.
Anns Academy. This was printed at least once a year, sometimes
more frequently, and became a source of pride and frustration to
the student editors and publishers. The old issues have come down
through the years, to give a strong sense of student life at the
Academy, and many hints at events led to research for topics within
this web site.
Verse
from hymn to St. Thomas Aquinas:
Come be the guide of our schools reading circle
Light up our minds with pure rays from above
Give to our words all the fullness of wisdom
Inflame our hearts with the fire of Gods love
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