1980s Lt. Col. Demetry Spiropoulos ’83 (Groves’), was photographed by his wife, Georgia, with his sons, James and John, in front of the 1983 School photo in the new Learning Commons. They were on campus in August, and it was Spiro’s first visit since June 1983! Spiro has been on two tours of duty in Iraq and in other combat areas, and now teaches military strategic planning in Norfolk, Virginia.
John Tao Chung Yeh ’88 (Lonsdale’s) returned to Shawnigan this July to tour the campus with his family and explore the potential of preparing his two boys to attend Shawnigan in the near future. Along with his wife and Grade 12 daughter, the boys were impressed with their experience.
Mashi Akiyama ’85 (Copeman’s) has just returned to Vancouver after spending six months in Montreal working in visual effects with MPC (Moving Picture Company). For the past three years he has been working as either a lead previsualization artist or lead layout artist on movies like The Finest Hours, Suicide Squad, War for the Planet of the Apes, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales and Denis Villeneuve’s next feature, slated for release in October 2017. Mashi is now a leader in the highly creative field of film animation and computer gaming. His brother, Tomo ’90 (Copeman’s), is also in the field and a few months ago he and his family moved to Berlin to become senior animator at BigPoint GMBH. Their strong creative skills come from their father, Kazuyoshi Akiyama, Conductor Emeritus for both the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra as well as from their mother, who is an accomplished classical pianist. Andrew Deane ’85 (Lake’s) is still working at Nishimachi International School in Japan and says he’s loving life in Tokyo. “A few years ago, I took over admissions guidance of our graduates (we run kindergarten to Grade 9). The majority of our graduates go on to international high school in Japan, but an increasing number end up in east coast U.S. boarding schools. This year, one of our students entered Shawnigan full-time. Currently, I am establishing connections with Shawnigan and other west coast Canadian boarding schools, so it was a great pleasure to meet with Julia Pollock to discuss ways of furthering the relationship between our two schools. My wife, Yukiko, works literally down the road at Azabu High School. We have a 7-yearold daughter in second grade at a Japanese private school.”
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