Christopher Lonsdale

Canadian educator
The basics

Quick Facts

IntroCanadian educator
PlacesCanada
wasEducator
Work fieldAcademia
Gender
Male
Birth1886
Death1952 (aged 66 years)
The details

Biography

Christopher Windley Lonsdale (1886 in Thornthwaite, Cumberland, England – 1952 at Parksville, British Columbia, on Canada's Vancouver Island), was the founder and first headmaster of Shawnigan Lake School in Shawnigan Lake, British Columbia on Vancouver Island.

He was the son of the Reverend Henry Lonsdale (d. 1926), Vicar of Upperby, who was a clergyman of the Church of England, and his wife, Jane, only daughter of William Windley of Nottingham. Lonsdale was born in the northern English county of Cumberland, since incorporated within Cumbria, and was educated at Westminster School in the London borough of Westminster from May 1899 to July 1902. He attended Durham University but did not obtain a degree.

Lonsdale immigrated to British Columbia from England in 1907. Two years later, having worked at a variety of jobs on the lower mainland of British Columbia and on northern Vancouver Island, he settled in Duncan, in Vancouver Island's Cowichan Valley, where for a time, he operated a dairy business. In 1916, seeing an opportunity in the lack of an English-style boys' preparatory school, he founded Shawnigan Lake School, partially modelling it on Westminster School, his own English public school.

Eventually, an ageing Lonsdale was forced into retirement, which Gossage states was his undoing: "It was a mutually painful moment and one which Christopher Lonsdale found impossible to accept. He died a broken and disconsolate man two months after."

His role is formally commemorated at Shawnigan annually by Founder's Day, which was traditionally centred on a service in the School's Chapel conducted by the School's Anglican chaplain, with a visiting keynote speaker drawn from the School's alumni in place of a sermon.

He lies buried in the French Creek Cemetery in Parksville, British Columbia.

The contents of this page are sourced from Wikipedia article on 18 May 2020. The contents are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.