The College Song was sung at Diploma Day or Graduation Day ceremonies by students, and was composed by Heinrich Von Haast in 1889.
Looking Back and Moving On
20 November 2023
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For each institution that called the Canterbury College town site home, moving on to better prospects has involved looking back with sentimental regret. For all their quirks and inadequacies, the College buildings were home, and leaving was never easy.
First to depart had been the Christchurch Girls' High School, who moved to their new school in Cranmer Square as early as 1882. A student recalled “On a hot mid-day in the first week of February 1882, I found myself sitting with my lunch-time friends on the un-shaded burnt up grass of an extremely small corner section at Armagh Street, staring at a painfully new, square, brick edifice and imprisoned by a high and painfully new, unpainted, galvanized iron fence. I have never forgotten the desolate sense of exile…”
The College Song was sung at Diploma Day or Graduation Day ceremonies by students, and was composed by Heinrich Von Haast in 1889.
Boys' High School departed for Riccarton in 1926. Old Boy W.S. Baverstock recalled that once a decision was made to leave “… we saw our new home slowly taking shape, and it hurt to realize that the dear old building was shortly to be abandoned. For three short years we could appreciate its revered maturity. It was a building hallowed by many associations, whose every stone was eloquent to all who had been reared there, while the new building was a cold, expressionless statement in brick and concrete.”
The College buildings became endearing because of the experiences people had there, whatever their ultimate deficiencies were. The Ode on a Distant Prospect of Canterbury College demonstrates the affection people came to feel. Based on the Ode to Eton College by Thomas Gray, 1742, the poem shows the strength of a graduate’s sentimental attachment to the College and its environment.
A page from Margaret Wigley's photograph album. Margaret graduated with a B.A. in 1944 and went on to become a teacher.
Ye distant Halls, all roofed in slate
(or corrugated iron),
Where I, a would-be graduate,
Your benches used to sigh on;
Ye chimneys, belching learned smoke,
What time instructively they stoke
The furnace fires that roar and rage;
Ye Labs, where once I frogs dissected,
Or, wooing Chemistry, inspected
Her demonstrative Page.
Ah, happy halls! And chiefly thou,
O Club, particularly dear!
(But not thy tariff, I allow
Thy dues were, after all, most fair).
I see once more that verdant cloth,
Where, spite of holes drilled by the moth,
I piled up breaks of two each night.
My weary soul it seemed to soothe,
As, rolling o’er the baize so smooth,
I pocketed the white.
Say, Father Amos, thou hast seen
(But no man else, I’m sure!)
Of the Cottage by yon margent green
The chaste interior.
What lovely forms now ‘neath the tree
Or grouped in circles think of tea,
Or con their notes for next hour’s lecture?
That cottage, ah, it stirs a chord!
On memory’s tablet’s deeply scored
Its subtle architecture.
