Heath MacQuarrie, The MacLean Method, and Victoria School

Lisa and I have been taking weekly theater courses, with the estimable Becca Griffin, at the old schoolhouse in Victoria. It’s fun, and enlivening, and we’ve chosen a scene to work up that’s going to stretch us.

While we were there last night, I found myself looking at the display of artifacts from the building’s past. Among them was this, awarding Heath MacQuarrie an “Advanced Certificate” in The MacLean Method of Writing in 1943:

To the uninitiated, this certificate might be regarded as a benign piece of history, but instead it’s a piece in a much larger jigsaw puzzle of Island history.

H.B. MacLean, signatory of MacQuarrie’s certificate, and the MacLean of The MacLean Method of Handwriting, taught at the selfsame Victoria School in 1905.

He later developed the eponymous method of teaching handwriting, in Victoria, BC starting in the 1920s:

Developed in Victoria by educator H. B. MacLean between 1921 and 1964, the MacLean method was used across Canada as the official handwriting method in schools, particularly in the Maritimes, parts of Quebec, Manitoba, and BC. 

Here’s an example from the MacLean materials:

As an aside, here’s my maternal grandmother’s recipe for gingerbread, in her own hand, likely written in the 1930s:

I asked my friend Ian Scott, a keen student of writing in general and the MacLean Method in particular, his opinion on whether there were signs of the Method in her writing, and he replied:

There is clearly the influence of HB MacLean to be seen in your grandmother’s handwriting. She clearly had developed a personal style, but some exact MacLean template letters in both her capitals and lower case letters. Her capital P and G would have gotten top marks from MacLean.

An additional aside from Ian, who’s nothing if not a polymath, on H.B. MacLean:

His great aunt was Ann “Nancy” Bovyer who married Henry Smith, the brother of the architect Isaac Smith and a partner in their construction firm. The Smith-Bovyer family eventually joined the groups who sailed away to New Zealand on the Prince Edward in 1859.

That is of interest to me, in particular, because for the last 25 years, I’ve lived in the Smith-Bovyer family home, built by them in 1827.

MacQuarrie, meanwhile, born in 1919 in Victoria, was a student at the Victoria School as a child, later returning as its principal from 1940-1942. As he relates in his autobiography, Red Tory Blues, the fall after he attained his Advanced Certificate in The MacLean Method,  MacQuarrie headed west:

Among the many efforts to get overseas in some capacity was an appeal to the YMCA International Service. This wasn’t successful but I did get an offer to join the staff of the YMCA in Winnipeg. In the early fall of 1943, I moved to Winnipeg to take up duties with the YMCA and to enrol at United College. My four years in Winnipeg in 1943-7 were happy. I learned a great deal as a staff member of the YMCA. My time at United College was rich and rewarding. A liberal arts college with a gifted faculty it also brought me enduring friendship . I was class president of both third- and fourth-year classes. I served a period as prime minister of the student model parliament - one of my ‘ministers’ was Sterling Lyon, later premier of Manitoba. And best of all I met Isabel Stewart.

Heath married Isabel Stewart 6 years later, 1949, and the couple remained in Manitoba until 1955, when his political ambitions began to stir:

So, as the year 1955 wore on, I found myself thinking more and more of getting into full political harness. There were possible opportunities on the provincial or federal scene in Manitoba, where I was now teaching. In my native Queens, the Progressive Conservatives would be finding a new standard-bearer for the next election. Nothing was certain by any means, but I had the feeling that it would be easier to gain a nomination in the West, but getting elected there might be harder.

They returned to MacQuarrie’s native Victoria and, in 1957, he was elected to Member of Parliament for Queens.  He served that riding—and in later years in the new Hillsborough riding—as MP for 22 years, until 1979 when he was appointed to the Senate, where he served for a further 15 years.

MacQuarrie’s appreciation for penmanship could perhaps be ascribed, in part, to having been schooled in one of the stops on H.B. MacLean’s educational journey. There are signs later in life, as well; in his autobiography he writes about Island politician John Myers:

I did get to know John Myers much better. In my years at Prince of Wales College 1933-5, he was helpful to me in my information seeking on current events, my favourite part of the school program. I remember his kindness in copying out longhand the names and full titles of all the cabinet ministers. In all my years in the House of Commons, I never had writing paper of the quality of the three or four vellum sheets which Mr Myers used. I can also say that I never filled a sheet with the splendid copperplate penmanship which he displayed. Sharp of tongue and mind always, he told me that the minister with the most initials behind his name was the one with the fewest brains in his head.

Along with Ian, and my friend Andrea Ledwell, we’ve been simmering the notion of a Wikipedia entry for H.B. MacLean. Coming across MacQuarrie’s certificate in the Victoria School prompts me to revisit that project, with hopes that soon he might be more recognized for his contributions to handwriting, penmanship, and Canada. Stay tuned.