Ted Byfield
Edward Bartlett Byfield was a Canadian conservative teacher, journalist, historian, and publisher. He co-founded Saint John's Cathedral Boys' School and Saint John's School of Alberta, started the Alberta Report, BC Report and Western Report newsmagazines, and published two 12-volume history book series, Alberta In the 20th Century and The Christians: Their First Two Thousand Years.
Early life and career
Byfield was born into a Unitarian family in Toronto, Ontario, in 1928 as the son of Caroline and Vernon "Vern" Byfield, a reporter for the Toronto Telegram and Toronto Star. During WW2 Byfield attended Lakefield College School for two "unforgettable years. The place established the first positive values of my life--moral, mathematical, literary--and introduced me to the Christian faith." Byfield then moved with his parents to Washington, D.C. in 1945 at the age of 17.He began his journalism career as a copy boy for the Washington Post. He returned to Canada in 1948 and worked at the Ottawa Journal and Timmins Daily Press and married Virginia Byfield. In 1952, the Byfields moved from Toronto with their two children under two, to Winnipeg where Ted Byfield began working at the Winnipeg Free Press. Covering Winnipeg city hall news, he once "crawled into an air conditioning duct in order to eavesdrop on a secret city council meeting enabling him to get a scoop on a funding scandal".
Byfield role in Winnipeg election upset
While a political reporter for the Winnipeg Free Press Byfield was enlisted by recently elected MLA Stephen Juba in a bid for mayor. Juba's win was "the upset of the decade in Winnipeg municipal politics. Once his man was in power Ted made great use of his favored status. In particular, he enlisted the mayor’s support for a personal project he had just begun – a weekend boys’ club. The effect, of course, was to give the project instant credibility. But more importantly, it got the kind of publicity no money could buy."Religious conversion and founding of "one of the most demanding outdoor schools in North America"
Source:[Company of the Cross]
In 1952, Ted Byfield underwent a profound religious conversion. Inspired by the writings of Christian apologists, such as Dorothy L. Sayers, C.S. Lewis, and G. K. Chesterton, the couple committed to living their Christian faith fully. Through the St. John's Cathedral choir, Ted Byfield became part of a cell or group of seventeen men, which included Frank Wiens, that shared similar beliefs. They founded what they first called the Dynevor Society, and later the Company of the Cross, a lay Anglican order affiliated with the Anglican Church of Canada. The boy's choir at St. John's Cathedral became a club, then a weekend residential school starting in 1957, and finally, in 1962, a full-time "traditionalist" Anglican private boarding school for boys. The Company of the Cross had acquired the abandoned Dynevor Indian Hospital in Selkirk, north of Winnipeg where they held their weekend schools. The cell officially changed their name from Dynevor to the Company of the Cross under the Manitoba Societies Act.St. John's Cathedral Boys' School
In 1962, Byfield and five other members of the Company opened the first in a series of St. John's full-time boarding schools for boys "dedicated to the reassertion of Christian educational principles"—Saint John's Cathedral Boys' School. The school operated intentionally on "traditional" methods. They used mathematics textbooks from pre-World War II advancing from "arithmetic to calculus" with constant testing. Ginger Byfield taught French "developed from French-Canadian history." They watched hockey on the French channel. Byfield taught history which required that students read copiously from Thomas Costain to Francis Parkman. In 1973 parents were paying $1700 a year tuition.Rationale for a rigorous outdoor program
"Without real challenge and real adventure," said Byfield in a 1968 CBC TV documentary on why the school promoted such a challenging physical education program, "we will never produce real men."St. John's canoe trips
A 1974 National Film Board documentary described the St. John's Cathedral Boys' School as "one of the most demanding outdoor schools in North America." Upon arrival at the school, the new boys, 13- to 15-years old, undertook a 2-week canoe on the English River from Ear Falls to Lake Winnipeg. In the spring there is a second longer canoe trip starting from Grand Portage to the school covering 900 miles with 55 portages. "The boys stand up to it according to the individual boy," said Byfield, "and this is a very difficult thing to determine. For instance, we have eminent success with youngsters who are physically ill-coordinated. For the youngster who has never succeeded in anything physically, often this causes them to have terrible inhibitions and fears. If they go through a canoe trip, when they get back they've done something, and this does enormous things for their confidence."St. John's snowshoe runs
By spring, most senior students will have travelled at least 300 miles on snowshoes. Each week every boy will spend his Wednesdays snowshoeing significant distances, the seniors covering about 30 miles, intermediates about 23, and juniors 15. "We find that of all the programs that the school operates this one is almost without doubt the most effective," asserts Byfield, "because on that snowshoe team the boy, while he's a member of a group, is entirely dependent on his own resources. He has two legs, and those are the two legs that are going to carry him. In no sense can he lean on anybody else's legs."St. John's School of Alberta
In order to open a second school—Saint John's School of Alberta—the Byfields moved to Edmonton. The new school property, which was thirty kilometres west of Edmonton, near Stony Plain, Alberta, had "110 hectares of bush, park and farmland". At first, their schools operated under the auspices of an Anglican bishop. The school practiced corporal punishment, and was eventually sued by an ex-student, Jeffrey Richard Birkin, who alleged that he was "forcefully exposed to experiences on the trip that put his life, health and safety at risk."By 2003, the school had about 130 students and 30 staff members. It remained open until 2008. In the school's early years, Ted Byfield taught history and Virginia Byfield taught "French, English grammar and literature." A third Company of the Cross school —Saint John's School of Ontario—was established at Claremont, Ontario in 1977 and closed in 1989. It was from this school that one of Canada's greatest boating tragedies occurred. Twelve boys and a staff member died of drowning and hypothermia on a canoe trip on 11 June 1978 on Lake Temiskaming.
In an Alberta Report 21 October 1996 article, Byfield denounced "new-found" ideas on educating boys. By 1996, SJCS graduates were staff members at the St. John's School of Alberta near Warburg, Alberta, where its program is evolved from the "Manitoba endeavour."
In the early years, all employees of the Company of the Cross—which included school and magazine staff, earned a dollar per day, plus room and board. The St. John's Edmonton Report news magazine staff lived in communal fashion entirely occupying a three-story walk-up apartment block on 149 Street and 91st Avenue in Edmonton, called "Waverly Place," where they "attended morning and evening chapel services."