For most families and kids, this past weekend’s Labour Day signals the end of summer and the beginning of the new school year. For me, it’s a time of special significance as a year from now we will be welcoming our inaugural class of students to Quest University Canada. A long time vision will finally be a reality.
For this last week of summer, my wife Alice and I stayed in Fergus, Ontario where Alice grew up and where she still has family. A small creek runs along the back of our property and while some parts of this small town have changed over the years, the gurgling of the creek remains a constant and comforting feature of our life here. It always links us back to this little plot of land which has been a part of our family for many years.
I can’t help but compare it to the Mamquam River which borders our campus in the Garibaldi Highlands of Squamish. Building a bridge to our campus across the canyon which embraces its tributary, Mashiter Creek, was the first great symbolic task of creating the University. I expect that like my regular visits to the little creek behind our old house in Central Canada, the students of Quest will come back to the Mamquam to reconnect with their memories of learning, growing and changing.
Over time, the stream becomes both science and art - a subject of research and a matter of the heart. One year from now Quest students will be engaged in a learning experience which we are designing with this powerful metaphor in mind.
Presidential insight into life at Canada's only private, secular University, which opened September 2007.
