Mr H W. Gourlay To Retire After 40 Years At B.H.S.

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28399, 4 October 1957, Page 5

Mr H W. Gourlay To Retire After 40 Years At B.H.S.

Mr H. W. Gourlay, an assistant master at the Christchurch Boys’ High School since 1919. will retire from teaching at the end of January. when he will have served 40 years on the school staff. The school board of governors accepted Mr Gourlay’s resignation with regret at its meeting yesterday. Board members, some of whom Mr Gourlay himseit taught at the school, spoke appreciatively of his great serviae "o the school.

Mr Gourlay was educated at the , Christchurch West High School, and Canterbury University College, from which he graduated M.Sc. He joined the staff of Christchurch Boys’ High School as a part-time master and laboratory demonstrator in 1919. becoming a member of the permanent staff in 1920. He is one cf the few masters on the present staff who taught at the old Boys’ High School buildings in Worcester street, now part of Canterbury University College. Planned Gardens With the removal of the school to its present site at Straven road, Riccarton, in 1926, Mr Gourlay. in company with Mr H. S. Baverstock, a former master of the school who retired in 1952 after 33 years’ service, planned and laid out the extensive grounds and gardens. He and Mr Baverstock selected and purchased all the trees and shrubs, and, did the planting themselves. Since Mr Bavert stock’s retirement, Mr Gourlay > has been master-in-charge of the I school gardens. i Mr Gourlay is senior biology . master at the school, and has i seen this subject grow from the . stage of a “novel” subject f dabbled in by a few sixth-form boys to the stage where it is ’ included in the general third- . form curriculum, and is studied 1 by five sixth forms, comprising 120 boys, of whom 100 take bio- ■ logy as a University Entrance 1 subject. Mr Gourlay has also developed ■ the school’s very fine collections of natural history specimens, a

great part of which ljas been given to the school by old boys who became interested in the subject under Mr Gourlay’s direction. Sporting Interests Mr Gourlay was ■ master-in-charge of junior cricket for manyyears, and also coached junior football. In 1941 he introduced hockey as a winter sport, and for the first few years coached the teams himself. In 1944 the school won the New Zealand Secondary Schools' hockey championship. Before the school had a fulltime music master. Mr Gourlay foi many years took school singing and conducted, the school orchestra. Mr Gourlay has taken a leading part in the social activities of the school staff. He has been organiser of the annual staff golf tournament, and has been a regular member of the cast of the masters’ play at the annua] school concerts, in which he invariably played the female lead with outstanding success.