Dear People, Neighbours, and Friends of St. Thomas’s,
According to a 2018 article, our neighbour across the street, the University of Toronto Schools, was founded in 1910, and its graduates “include 55 recipients of the Order of Canada, 20 Rhodes Scholars, 15 Olympians and two Nobel Laureates.” If you stand on the sidewalk, this is the view from the church (and several of the rectory windows).
As you can see, we have a lovely view of the addition being built onto the back end of the UTS edifice that fronts Bloor Street.
On weekdays, the sounds of construction are a daily reality for us, and (most of the time) it’s music to my ears. I love watching what our neighbours are accomplishing right across the street. The vision and perseverance, despite the pandemic, that its leadership, both staff and volunteers, have shown is, in a word, inspiring.
The construction is being funded by the UTS’s Building the Future campaign, which had a modest goal of raising sixty million dollars. How much did they end up raising? So far, $61.2M. And people are still giving. Why? Because they believe in the future of that school.
When I learned that the school administrator who serves as the director of the campaign was a member of a colleague’s parish, I asked for an introduction. On Wednesday, I sat down with Martha Drake in her UTS office to learn more about our neighbour. I knew a lot of facts from their beautiful website, but nothing beats a conversation with a human being.
Now, it would be natural to assume that a private school that’s been around for over a century would have many generous and deep-pocketed alumni/ae, parents, trustees, and friends. But compared to places like Upper Canada College and Bishop Strachan School, when it comes to capacity for heavy lifts like a sixty million dollar capital campaign, UTS had to contend with the fact that a couple of decades ago, the provincial support that had funded it for eighty years or so was eliminated through government budget cuts, and financial support from its eponymous founding body, the University of Toronto, ended in 2010. So UTS has only existed as a fully independent private school for just over a decade, despite its century-old history of producing some of the greatest contributors to the professional, scientific, and academic life of Toronto, of Canada, and of the world.
As such, when Jim Fleck of the Class of 1949 (do the math on how young he is) agreed to chair this campaign, he saw that the project was akin to founding a new school. He wrote a brilliant appeal about “a school in search of its founders,” seeking twenty founders capable of giving at least a million dollars each. In the end, they got their twenty: this included seventeen gifts from individuals, at least one of whom wished to remain an anonymous founder, and three group gifts: one in honour of a beloved faculty member, another from the earliest women to attend UTS, which went co-ed in 1973 (the year Robarts Library was built and, coincidentally, the year I was born), and one other (I think) which I can’t remember. (If I’ve gotten any of my facts wrong, I’m happy to correct the record next week.)
Martha imparted some wisdom on what might be helpful to St. Thomas’s in articulating our own vision for our future, and I left looking forward to getting to know her better as well as more about the school itself. Despite the ideal commute, it’s not where either of my children are going to end up (as far as I can tell), so I had no impetus to drop by the Admissions Office on my way out the front doors, but when I got to the lobby, I was struck by three paintings above three doorways, presumably leading into an auditorium, which are the first thing one encounters upon entering.
On the left, a figure in Middle Eastern garb is pointing as he speaks. Is he a prophet? Jesus? It appears he is some Biblical figure, because the middle painting depicts monks illuminating manuscripts. Clearly, they are passing on the wisdom of the ages imparted by the figure on the left. Then, on the right, I saw a painting of two men examining a page of text, as an industrious lad works the printing press. Above, on the ceiling, a plaster ornament of grape clusters crossed the hall, to my mind a Eucharistic image, though of course not necessarily so.
In that moment, I was struck by the important role that religion has had in preserving and transmitting knowledge down through the millennia, not only of a scriptural nature, but across all known disciplines. It is no surprise to me that Charles Darwin, for instance, was the son of a vicar. Those who are attuned to the mysteries of life will always be in search of deeper insights, regardless of the field. I was glad to see that the original founders of the University of Toronto Schools had seen fit to enshrine this fact in these three paintings, because progress is rooted in tradition.
I would like to think that any progress worthy of the name at St. Thomas’s would likewise be rooted in the goodly heritage of which we are called to be stewards. I’m reminded of the words of the great Yale history professor Jaroslav Pelikan. As the omniscient Wikipedia has it, “His 1983 Jefferson Lecture, The Vindication of Tradition, included an often quoted one liner, which he elaborated in a 1989 interview in U.S. News & World Report. He said: ‘Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. Tradition lives in conversation with the past, while remembering where we are and when we are and that it is we who have to decide. Traditionalism supposes that nothing should ever be done for the first time, so all that is needed to solve any problem is to arrive at the supposedly unanimous testimony of this homogenized tradition.’”
As we look to our own future, may we be guided not only by best practices in stewardship, but by the wisdom grounded in our tradition, which provides the central reason why we are pursuing greater accessibility to our mission and ministry through our own physical plant improvements in the first place: Because our heritage is our future.
Yours in Christ’s service,
N.J.A. Humphrey+
VIII Rector
Thank You to All Volunteers!
Sunday is not only the Second Sunday of Advent, but coincidentally International Volunteer Day. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our volunteers who make our mission and ministry possible. The time and energy you invest in our community does not go unnoticed. And because contributions to our common life are entirely voluntary, as well, I would like to thank everyone who has given anything from single Loonie to hundreds of thousands of them for your stewardship of St. Thomas’s. Without the people, neighbours, and friends of St. Thomas’s who share so much of their time, talent, and treasure, we would not have survived the pandemic, and more importantly, we would not have been able to help others weather the spiritual and physical challenges this pandemic has imposed on so many of us, especially the most vulnerable.
As we look ahead to another year of voluntary love and labour, I give thanks to everyone who has chosen to grow spiritually and share materially through this parish community. God bless us, every one. —Fr. Humphrey