12Years at the Helm O With the impending
departure of Ted Staunton
in June of this year,
St. Andrew’s College bids farewell to arguably its most dynamic and innovative Headmaster. By JIM MCGILLIVRAY
14 SPRING 2009
nly the seventh Head in the School’s 110-year history, Ted joined St. Andrew’s in 1997 when Bob Bedard, his 16-year predecessor, retired. Major change was on the horizon for independent schools in Canada, and Mr. Staunton was no stranger to change. He had come to SAC from eight tumultuous years at Lower Canada College in Montreal where he had steered that school in a dramatically new direction, including a controversial move to coeducation in 1992. In 1996, St. Andrew’s Board Chair, the late Peter Harris, saw the need for an experienced leader and invited the LCC Head to apply for Mr. Bedard’s position. The selection committee and the Board recognized almost immediately that this was the man of the future. Ted was quick to embrace the opportunity. “It had always been a dream of mine to be Headmaster of a Little Big Four school,” he recalls. “I was a Toronto boy and had a cottage on Georgian Bay, so the fit looked perfect. I was thrilled to be offered the position.” Ted and his wife Jane’s long journey to Aurora began in 1973 when Ted accepted his first teaching job in Jamaica. The couple had met at Trent University a few years earlier and were married in the midst of that first Jamaica year during a trip back to Cobourg, Jane’s home town. At the end of their second year in Jamaica, Ted accepted a one-year temporary position at Trinity College School in Port Hope. That turned into a 13-year careerstarter where the rising star taught both Middle and Upper School, headed the History Department, served as Housemaster of the school’s largest boarding house, and coached First Cricket and First Hockey. Daughters Rebecca, Elizabeth and Emily were born and lived on the TCS campus. By the mid-1980s, the time was ripe for the family to move upward, and in 1986 Ted applied for and was offered the Headmaster’s position at Balmoral Hall School for girls in