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Selwyn House founding families: the Birks family
Henry Birks founded his jewellery business on St. Paul Street in Montreal in 1879, the family having been in the trade in England since the 16th century. By 1900, the company owned over 200 stores in Canada and the U.S.; by 1907, the Montreal flagship store that has become a downtown landmark was bigger than Tiffany’s in New York. By the time the business was sold in 1999, five generations of the Birks family had been involved in the firm.
The first member of the Birks clan to attend Selwyn House was Arthur H. Birks, of the class of 1920, followed by G. Drummond Birks ’33. Paul Drummond, his uncle, was a member of the class of 1911, and can be seen in the first photo ever taken of Selwyn House students. Drummond Birks won the Jeffrey Russel Prize when he graduated, an accomplishment that was repeated by his son, Thomas, 28 years later, the year after another son, Jonathan, had won the Lucas Medal.
“My most vivid memories are the coliseum for hockey and the old Westmount MIAA grounds for football and track,” recounts Drummond Birks. “The Number 3 St. Catherine St. streetcar to the MIAA was a three-cent ride.
“I thought it was a good school then, just as I believe it is a great school today, thanks to Robert Speirs and a number of devoted board chairmen.”
Drummond was followed at Selwyn House by Richard ’40, son of Gerald Birks and grandson of Henry. Richard had a distinguished naval career during the Second World War. Afterwards, he attended McGill and completed his PhD in physiology, enjoying an even more distinguished career in scientific research.
Drummond Birks sent three sons to Selwyn House: Jonathan ’60, Thomas ’61 and Barrie ’65, or “Birks 1, 2 and 3” as they were known at school.
Jonathan '60 served as President & CEO of the family business before founding Birkden Management Inc., a private holding company with interests in international trade and logistics. He presently serves as a director of several businesses including Reitmans, private Swiss bankers Lombard Odier Darier Hentsch and U.S. venture capital group Nest Ventures. He formerly served as a director of Provigo, Stone & Webster (Canada) Ltd., Standard Broadcasting Ltd., Allura International Inc. and as a Trustee of the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Ct. He also currently serves as a director of the Montreal General Hospital Foundation, the Canada Arizona Business Council, Advisory Board of the YMCA of greater Montreal, member of the Quebec Chapter of the World Presidents'Organization (WPO) and President of the Birks Family Foundation.
Thomas ’61 also served as president of the family jewellery business and went into finance, a career that has taken him around the world. He is now President of Birinco Inc., a merchant bank, Like his brother, he has served on the boards of many hospitals, corporations, foundations and educational institutions, including Selwyn House, where he is a former Board Chairman and currently sits on the boards for the Lucas and Veritas Funds. He also sat on the search committee that hired Will Mitchell as headmaster in 1984, a man whom Thomas credits for taking the school “from heights to heights”.
Barrie ’65 also served as president of the family business before moving on to a financial career, most notably with Tyringham Investments and as chairman and CEO of Shreve, Crump and Low of Boston. He served as a governor at McGill and was a director for Jean Coutu, Inc., the Montreal Association for the Blind and the Birks Family Foundation. Barrie died in 2002, at age 54. Loved for his sharp intellect and keen wisdom, Barrie was described as one who “danced a mean mambo, drove like an Indy pro, skied and played tennis with real edge… enjoyed gourmet food and fine wine, Italian music at full volume, books and astronomy, birds and nature.”
More recent history has seen three more members of the Birks clan enrolled at Selwyn House: Patrick ’89, and Thomas’ two sons Randall ’88 and Bradley ’97.
Selwyn House has always provided “some of the finest education in the country, if not the continent,” says Jonathan Birks ’60 “But the Selwyn House we were raised in was a totally different school. Even your buddies called you by your last name.”
His brother Thomas ’61 agrees. The old school was organized along lines of English public [private] school tradition, he says. “British history was taught—not Canadian history.” A good number of the French teachers were anglophone.
“At the time it seemed perfectly appropriate and acceptable for a fine school,” Tom explains. The school was “a separate enclave.”
“It was a good school with vigorous curriculum,” he adds, “but we’re in a more enlightened world now. A student today would be much more prepared for a global world.”
Jonathan vividly remembers his first day at school, arriving at the front door of the Redpath Street building dressed in “one of those funny little ties,” being met at the front door by Mrs. Christian Markland, who took him by the hand and led him inside. “I fell in love with her, and I loved the place from the get-go,” he confesses.
The school was filled with what seemed like towing figures to a five-year-old boy, people like Gordon Phillips, Edgar Moodey and Headmaster Robert Speirs. “Along with Mrs. Markland, those three men were the power of the school,” he says. “They were wonderful presences.”
The school was a place of “high academic standards and a very exacting discipline,” Jonathan says. The discipline and structure came from the “expats”, for, in those days almost all the school’s teachers came from Britain; very few native-born Canadians taught here.
Jonathan recalls lunch in the library at Redpath, the building where he spent all his years at Selwyn House. Students were seated at numbered tables in benches with no backs, with a master serving at each table and the prefects seated with Headmaster Speirs. During lunch, the headmaster would summon a boy to the head table for discipline. The boy would come forward looking terrified. Mr. Speirs had instructed the prefects to observe how he dealt with the boy’s punishment. Speirs would ask the boy if he knew what he had done wrong and then he would announce the proscribed punishment without belittling or humiliating the transgressor. All the prefects felt they had shared in the punishment and had received a life lesson from the experience. “He treated us with respect as young adults” Jonathan says. “When you feel that kind of respect, you feel more responsible.”
Dr. Speirs was “a wonderful man,” Jonathan says. Thomas remembers their headmaster as “always proper and polite.”
“There was a formality in school in those days,” Thomas says. “Students always stood in class to speak. You never answered sitting down.”
Selwyn House was “a place I loved,” says Jonathan. “The school stressed leadership and how you deal with people, to believe in yourself, to maintain high standards and to make a contribution. And the teachers knew and cared about how you did.”
Several years ago, Thomas took his son up to Redpath Street to show him the old school as he remembered it, with the spreading chestnut tree in front. ”When I got near I realized it was all gone.”
