Fun Foundation Facts!
Do you know the answers to these fun Foundation facts?
Q1: What does the School Motto Levavi Oculos mean?
Q2: What year did Yarra Valley Grammar (YVG) establish its Hearing Unit?
Q3: At the end of 1970, John Roberts Pascoe resigned as YVG’s 1st Headmaster because of illness and the Council decided that the School’s library should be named after him. It was then to be known as the Pascoe Resource Centre (PRC). What year did the PRC first open as part of the second stage of the Senior School? And when recently was it re-opened in its new incarnation?
Q4: Dr Mark Merry, YVG Principal/CEO was also the elected Chair of the Associated Heads of Independent Schools of Australia (AHISA) in Victoria from 2009 – 2011 and the National AHISA Chair from 2017-2019. Do you know which year Dr Merry joined the YVG family as our Principal/CEO?
Q5: Do you recognise the boy in this photo and what auspicious day was this photograph taken?
Q6: What year was the Yarra Foundation established?
Q7: For which building did the Yarra Foundation first fundraise? (A clue in the picture below, but do you recognise it?!)
Q8: The Visionary statue reflects the School Motto (see Question 1). This determined the scale and pose that the sculpture would take; an aspirational visionary, looking skyward, pondering and projecting its future. In what year was it created? By whom? And for what occasion?
(scroll down for the answers!)
A1: I lift up my eyes. It was the founding Chairman’s wife, Mrs Harper, who first suggested the motto Levavi Oculous. The words are the first words of a well-known psalm, Psalm 121. The psalm’s popularity and the happy proximity of the School to the mountains made the choice seem appropriate.
A2: 1972
A3: April 1970; June 2019
A4: 2009 – He is our sixth Principal
A5: Ross Emslie (YOG 1971). He was one of the first students to arrive on the first day of School, Tuesday 8 February 1966
A6: 1988
A7: The School Hall and Performing Arts Centre as it was then known, now known as the George Wood Performing Arts Centre – named after George Wood, Principal of YVG for the eighteen years from 1976 to 1993.
A8: The Visionary was created in 2016 by Yarra Old Grammarian, Damian Vick (YOG 1998) for the School’s 50th Anniversary.
