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At Quest University Canada's graduation ceremony on Saturday — the first in-person ceremony since 2019 — several speakers noted the school’s struggles of late.
After years of steadily growing, Quest found itself in well-publicized financial woes that led to it selling off its land and buildings in 2020 to Primacorp Ventures.
Of course, the pandemic also wreaked its havoc on the school, which depends on out-of-towners to live in dorms on campus, not to mention the switch all schools made to (off and on) online learning.
Arts and sciences professor (Quest calls them tutors) James McKinnon, who gave the commencement address on behalf of faculty Saturday, noted that nobody picks Quest because it is the easy choice.
“No one ends up at Quest by default,” he said of the school, which is Canada’s only independent, not-for-profit, secular university.
McKinnon arrived in 2018 after 20 years in more traditional post-secondary institutions.
“It is not the school our parents went to… It is not the top party school with the best football team...It is not the easy choice,” he said, to chuckles from the crowd.
For students, faculty, and staff to have stayed from 2018 until today was not the obvious choice, to be sure.
The same could be said for Squamish residents and businesses.
Like the school, we have been battered and bruised by the last few years of the pandemic and some of us by financial ups and downs.
Like the school, some long-time believers jumped ship for smoother sailing elsewhere.
And nobody can really blame them.
Financial and pandemic upheaval for
Quest meant a dip in student enrolment.
For Squamish, there have been childcare, housing and doctor shortages, development and infrastructure growing pains and local division over all of the above.
And yet both at the school and in this town, there are those who stay, fight, and believe in the place.
It can be messy and hard to defend at times, and there are sacrifices that come with staying.
But much is gained too.
Later in his address, McKinnon noted that in choosing Quest and in staying to complete their degrees, the students and faculty who supported them put their faith in the school and the different paths it offered them — smaller classes, experiential learning, diving into tough questions and its unique block program— for example.
“That is why I respect you all so much. You didn’t come here for easy...You put a lot of thought into coming here, and you made sacrifices to do it,” McKinnon said.
The same could be said for those who are staying and who choose Squamish.
It isn’t that we don’t see the hardships or the losses — like in Squamish, many at Quest are far from their families.
But we love this place, warts and all. It is uniquely ours.
It is a little bit rough around the edges, but it has spectacular bones and a good heart, like Quest.
Easy isn’t always better.
And we know it.
Like for Quest, our collective fingers are crossed for better days and smoother sailing.
We believe that day is coming — and that makes it all worth it.
