TFS - Canada's International School

ENTRE NOUS 32 Nick Volk was enrolled at TFS in Kindergarten when it still held classes in the basement of a church in the neighbourhood he lived in, just south of Yonge and St. Clair. "My parents worked in the diplomatic corps; they were posted overseas and realized the advantage of additional languages," he said. The upstart Toronto French School presented an opportunity for young Mr. Volk to start learning French early. "The experiment went well. I stayed with the school and kept moving around from building to building, wherever the next location was." Mr. Volk, who has worked for the federal government for the past 30 years, was often given duties to write, proofread and translate, necessitating the need for French. He says in the government, the higher the position you hold, the more bilingual you need to be. "It's a key element, not just in the world, but at the larger institutional level here in Canada; if you speak French, you can go anywhere." In the 1960s, Canada's lack of a dominant French-speaking population outside of Quebec and New Brunswick meant we had a long way to go before becoming anywhere near bilingual. Learning a second language was hugely unusual at the time. "Just to have our parents buy into something like that was really so avant-garde. Now it's understandable." Over the years as the school grew, students and teachers also began travelling more and gaining insights into different countries and cultures. At first, Mr. Volk didn't realize the full value of languages. But as he grew older, he began to understand that knowledge of languages is what removes cultural barriers. "Once you break those down, the fear of the unknown disappears. And so do the conflicts of the world." THE IMPORTANCE OF LANGUAGES NICHOLAS VOLK '78 Anna Giles Medal Anna Giles Medal KATHY GILES '77 Anna Giles Medal Anna Giles Medal Kathy Giles had a distinctive and very personal connection to the school. As the daughter of Harry and Anna Giles, she is appreciative of what her parents accomplished. "I'm proud of the vision and the courage it took to put themselves out there to do something like this," Ms. Giles said. Ms. Giles noticed how brave parents were to send their children to such an experimental school, a number of whom were new Canadians. "They understood the importance of multiple languages. So when many of them often were escaping war, a classroom in a locker room, above a grocery store, or in a basement didn't seem so bad." Working in the educational field after TFS, Ms. Giles rose to the position of principal in the public school system. Looking back to her experiences at TFS, she appreciates the calibre of teachers she had. "What's really important is who's at the front of the class and the quality of that human being is the most important part of a pupil's education." Ms. Giles, as a child of the founders, was there from the beginning and spent all 15 years of her primary and secondary education at TFS. Recalling her classmates and teachers alike, she said, "We understand each other more deeply as we have lived so much of our lives together. Teachers who taught me when I was young helped support me emotionally during my mother's illness and death as a teenager. They were family friends and became my close friends later. These relationships have sustained me throughout my life and made a real difference to it." A NURTURING PRESENCE

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