MR GORDON INNES TRANSFERRED

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27064, 12 June 1953, Page 10

MR GORDON INNES TRANSFERRED

Vocational Guidance • Appointment DISTRICT HEAD IN WELLINGTON Mr Gordon Innes has been appointed District Vocational Guidance Officer at Wellington after lieing boys’ vocational guidance officer in Christchurch since the end of the war. In the last seven years he has advised thousands on their choice of school courses and on their subsequent choice of employment. The Christchurch Boys’ High School awarded Mr Innes the Old Boys’ Medal for all-round merit in 1927 after he had served as a monitor and member of the first fifteen in football and first eleven in cricket. He then

became a pupil teacher at the Sydenham School. The Christchurch Teachers’ Training College Studems’ Association made him president when he later advanced his studies and then taught at the Wharenui School. Placing Rugby football for Old Boys with distinction, Mr Innes was chosen to represent Canterbury before he had played in senior grade football. In 1932, unemployment through the depression forced him to take a job in a hotel and he joined the Sydenham club, which, under his captaincy won the Canterbury championship. This led to his selection for the New Zealand team to play in Australia 0 * which, for the first time, won the Bledisloe Cup. When employment difficulties continued, Mr Innes went to England and joined the Wigan club which, in his first year, won the Rugby League championship. He played four seasons for Wigan, one for Castleford, and one for Keighley. On the outbreak, of war in 1939, Mr Innes returned to New Zealand and enlisted in the Army immediately. Serving with the tanks in the Middle East and Italy, he rose to the rank of captain. On demobilisation in 1946 he took his present position in Christchurch.

This year has seen the completion of the first cycle of the Canterbury youth farm training scheme of which Mr Innes has been secretary-organiser since its inception. The programme provides for boys to have a year’s special course at the Rangiora High School, then practical experience with farmers, ending with full examinations at Canterbury Agricultural College, Lincoln. The first course passed with high marks and the scheme has been praised as a means of encouraging boys to take training for farming.

As a former soldier and as an officer of the Education Department, Mr Innes has always been interested in the work of Heritage for the children of men .killed on active service. He represents the Vocational Guidance Centre on the Canterbury executive. He has also given service as an officer of the Optimists’ Club. He was recently appointed to the new Prisons Classification Board in Christchurch. Resuming studies interrupted by the depression, Mr Innes two years ago graduated from Canterbury University College. It is not yet known when Mr Innes will take up his new appointment.