From: Michael Kemp
Date: 2001-08-04
Time: 18:00:38 -0400
Occasionally, albeit only very occasionally, there are returns to being a hoarder. I consulted my copies of The Scarborian, the school's annual magazine of record, in search of answers to this and some of the subsequent questions in this forum.
Little joy on the derivation of F Clarke's nickname, however. It is certainly true that we invariably pronounced it like Beethoven's birthplace rather than as a French word of approval. F Clarke retired in July 1957. In issue no. 43 of The Scarborian there are five separate tributes, occupying eight pages of the 50-page magazine. Only two of the five mention the nickname, which invariably appears (in quotation marks) as "Bon." I suspect, however, that this may reflect Vernon Smith's editorial judgments more than the submissions of the individual authors.
The closest anyone comes to addressing the origins of the name is in the piece by Noel Wright of Vancouver, BC. In his article titled "Bon" he writes:
"For the School generation of the mid-1930s (and probably many of their successors, too!) one such unfading memory is a fresh-complexioned martinet with a twinkle lurking in his eye whom we affectionately christened "Bon.""