Spotlight - Student: What a Legacy

Meet two BSS families with roots dating back to the beginning.

By Rachel Hahn

Two elements of time meet in the halls of BSS - the students are surrounded by both the past and the future. They’re constantly striving to achieve, to break through barriers, to go on to become doctors, lawyers, mothers and engineers. The teachers are priming them. They are the future women of the world. And yet the walls they walk every day are literally filled with history. During renovations not long ago a newspaper from 1915 was found in a dropped ceiling. But the greatest meeting of past, present and future is embodied in the girls who are part of the living legacy of BSS. They are the girls who don the burgundy, white and grey, and can trace their heritage back to the first students.

On the living room wall of the home of Ebie SNIVELY Dunbar ’40 hangs a gilded oval frame enclosing the sweet soft face of a young girl. She’s smiling gently with her bright blue eyes, and her cascading blonde curls fall down the front of her frock. Painted in 1902, this is Ebie’s mother, Kathleen (though she preferred to go by Kitty). On the stone top of her coffee table is a smaller photograph of another young girl, slightly older than the girl portrayed in the painting. She smiles boldly, her reddish blonde hair pulled into a ponytail and her blue eyes sparkling at the camera. This is Ebie’s granddaughter, Jenny, a spitting image of Kitty (though her sister, who goes by Katy, was the one named for her great grandmother). Both have worn the badge of BSS. “I love reliving [my time at BSS] through the girls. Some of the things are the same for them, some of them are very different,” says Ebie as she looks at the photo of her granddaughters. Ebie’s grandmother was also a BSS girl; in fact, it is rumored she was the first to ever attend. When BSS came into existence it was located in a building called Pinehurst. Ebie’s grandmother, Granny Wright, or better known in her day as Flora CUMMINGS Wright 1869, apparently got her dates confused. She showed up a day early to boarding and was the only girl on campus.

From Flora class of 1869 to Jenny class of 2006 spans five generations of sailor collars. The Dunbars are just one of several families whose history runs through the school grounds.

The current BSS includes an archival area. Previously, documents, artifacts and odds and ends from graduated classes were scattered, shoved in boxes and stored in un-used spaces, such as the third floor attic of the dorms where boxes were dripped on or placed dangerously close to electrical wiring.

Now, tucked into a crisp, clean, and out-of-the way part of BSS is a climate-controlled treasure trove.

This is the haunt of Susan ALLEN Dutton ’79.

The BSS archives began almost as an accident. It never occurred to the schoolmates of Flora back in the 1800s that girls of the 21st century would be flipping through their report cards.

“Old stuff is saved accidentally,” explains Susan. “The records are really spotty. Sometimes all we have is a carbon copy of a document so it’s tissue paper thin and hard to discern.”

Susan, meticulously organized and educated in archeology, is fascinated by the past. She was one of two archivists at BSS who crawled into the stuffy dropped ceiling to retrieve the pieces of newspaper from 1915. They were found alongside wax paper and Susan speculates they were the remnants of a workman’s lunch.

Amy Dutton, set to graduate this year, is Susan’s daughter and just one of dozens of women from her family to have walked through the halls of BSS. The family tree of Old Girls is rather dizzying.

The branches of Amy’s aunts, cousins, great aunts and great great aunts twist and turn all the way back to her great great grandmother Dorothy BEST Fortier who attended Pinehurst (the first building of BSS) in 1867. Dorothy gave birth to 11 children, which explains the confusing interlocking limbs of the family tree.

Being the archivist for BSS, Susan has been able to draw a very detailed lineage of women from her family who have attended the School. The last name begins as Best then changes to Fortier, then to Ritchie and Gilmour to Matthews, Gundy and Allen now to Dutton.

“It would be a lot easier if it were a boy’s school,” she laughs.

Susan’s favourite artifact stored in the archives is the scrapbook of a past student. In it she has saved dance cards and event flyers and she has written notes of her life. It’s the little insights into the life of her ancestors that thrill.

On a Monday evening like any other, Amy and her mother cozy into their living room cradling hot mugs of tea in their hands. They’re comparing their experiences at BSS.

Amy sees the constant evolution of BSS as mimicking the evolution of society.  She looks around the hallways and sees girls from all over the world. “I think Anglican students are a minority now,” she says. She considers Chapel to be a much more “multi-faith based” experience than her predecessors experienced.  “Generations change,” she states.

Susan, who has been riffling through her family history in the archives lately, is most intrigued by the array of women she sees represented there.

“I was looking at the names and you’ve got quite a range of personalities.
I can see the super brain and the athlete,” she says. It’s the differences within her own family tree that make her smile.

“Hopefully they always remember and value the past because it’s unique,” Susan says as she sips from her mug.

When Amy is asked what will happen if she has a daughter she laughs. “I guess BSS is the only choice!” When her chuckling dies down, she answers with a more thoughtful expression on her face. “I’d like my daughter to have the same education as me.”

“The same opportunities,” adds Susan. “You feel really proud to say, ‘my family has gone here since the beginning.’”

 

 


Posted January 04, 2008 at 02:28pm






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