Last week we took you back in time to the Mount’s very beginnings. This week, we’re fast-forwarding more than 100 years to dive into the 1955 yearbook!

The pics alone are noteworthy – looking very much like a page out of Life magazine complete with saddle shoes and crinoline. But what really caught my attention was this beautifully written verse on commencement written by members of the senior class…

Forward Heritage

Commencement! What meaning does this word imply?

An end? Yea more than end.

It is a new beginning built on foundations

Firm and solid.

We say that we have learned:

But how learned – when and where?

Here at Mount de Chantal

Whose traditions were begun a hundred years ago and more

And we have learned from others

By listening and by reading;

And we have learned

To glimpse the Wisdom that is our God.

Our Heritage was ready, waiting –

The world’s great minds

Were opened for our view;

The glories of the past we built upon

And proved the mysteries sounded by the Ancients –

The true, the good, the beautiful

Bequeathed to us by Grecian sage and scholar.

In Roman culture we delved deep –

Her poets showed us other realms

To be explored.

Her mighty law expounded

On justice, duty, civic peace.

Philosophers, the thinkers, statesmen of the past

Enriched our lives,

Imparted truth –

Truth made whole

As other minds disclosed to us

That knowledge above all knowledge –

What men can know of God.

The saints, the scholars of His Church

Who recognized in human kind

Reflections of divinity,

Whose goal, eternal life, was offered it

Through faith and hope and charity.

We take in our commencing

A heritage of ancient worlds

And ancient ways.

We take in our commencing

A heritage of ancient lore

And traditions of our age-old school

And pray that we may blend with them

A future worthy of the past.