Half a Century of the Saint Sava Serbian School in Vancouver

Article by Dragana Kuzmanovic Lekic

For fifty years, children of Serbian families in Vancouver have been learning their language in the abode of the Saint Sava Church. This year, the school, named after the first Serbian archbishop, educator, teacher, legislator and peacemaker, marked its half-century of existence.

The school was founded with the aim of enabling children of Serbian families in Vancouver to learn the Cyrillic alphabet, master the language of their parents, and learn about the faith, history, and customs of their people. Numerous generations of students have passed through its doors, and children who attended it in its first years of operation now bring their children and grandchildren to it.

Classes are held on Sundays, in the church premises. In addition to the language and Cyrillic script, students attend religious education and music classes, learn our songs and customs, and learn about the history of our people and our Church. Winter and spring camps are also organized throughout the year, where children spend their days together in games, songs, and prayers.

Throughout all these years, the school has also been a gathering place for the community. In its classrooms, friendships have grown that children carry long after the last grade, and bonds have been born among parents that have grown into godparenthoods. Thus, the school, while preserving the language, has preserved something more than that — the feeling that here, far from our homeland, there is a place where we are our own among our own.

The anniversary was marked with gratitude to all who participated in the work of the school: the clergy, with whose blessing and care the school was run throughout all these years; the teachers who prepared lessons for the Serbian students after the work week; the parents who brought their children from all over the city; and the numerous benefactors whose efforts and contributions enabled the school to survive.

With the beginning of the new school year, the school invites parents to enroll their children and thus continue what previous generations began. Language and faith are not inherited by themselves — they are passed down, from generation to generation.

Speech by Fr. Vuk Milisic at the banquet on the occasion of the school's anniversary

Honourable fathers, respected children, teachers, parents, former and current students of our Saint Sava school, dear brothers and sisters,

Today, standing on this great anniversary, I have the feeling that I would express myself best if I were a child again. What kind of grown-up person is one who does not see the world through the eyes of a child, at least for a moment? So let us at least try to see it that way today, because this is their day and their anniversary.

The author dedicates the beautiful book The Little Prince to his friend Léon Werth, for several reasons:

– he is his best friend in the world;
– he understands everything, even children's books;
– he currently lives in France, where he is suffering and starving, so he needs comfort;
– each of these reasons is very important, but if the previous three are not enough, the writer dedicates the book to the child that this adult once was.

In this book, which I recommend to everyone who was (if not yet) at least once a child, the author reminds us that only the heart can see clearly and that what is most important is invisible to the eyes. This is exactly what has been happening in our school for fifty years. Perhaps someone from the outside would only see classrooms, desks, performances and lessons. But the heart sees something much greater.

You can see the love that lasts. You can see the warmth of a people far from their homeland. You can see the silent sacrifice of parents who brought up their children so that they would not forget their language and their roots. You can see the effort of teachers who, patiently like gardeners, nurtured young souls. You can see the prayer that has invisibly guarded this school throughout all these decades.

Fifty years… How many children's steps have passed through these corridors! How many smiles have remained under the arches of this temple! How many little hearts have felt here for the first time what it means to belong — to one's people and to one's Church! And perhaps that is precisely the secret of it all.

The fox in The Little Prince says: "You are forever responsible for what you have tamed." And here we have been taming love for fifty years, creating bonds that time could not break, teaching children that the rich are not the ones who have a lot, but the ones who know what is valuable and keep it in their heart.

Our school was the first book that many children fell in love with. The first Cyrillic letters, written with a trembling hand. The first recitation. The first Saint Sava performance. The first feeling that they belonged to something bigger than themselves.

And that's why Saint Sava, Desanka Maksimovic, Uncle Jova Zmaj, Mika Antic, and many, many others walked through her classrooms together.

We taught children to recognize the kindness and cheerfulness of childhood in Zmaj's verses, to feel the beauty of youth, freedom and a pure heart in Mika Antic's verses, and to learn the famous line from Desanka's poem Strepnje: "Happiness is beautiful only while waiting, while it only gives a hint of itself."

During just one weekly meeting of our children, a whole small world happens: someone learns their first letter, someone sings the Saint Sava hymn for the first time, someone makes a friend for life, someone feels the beauty of belonging to a community and the power of prayer for the first time.

Let's just imagine how many beautiful things have happened over the course of half a century. How many memories were created here that generations of children carried deep in their souls. How many children grew up into good people. How much of the most important thing was imperceptibly shaped here — the human heart, because what a person takes away from childhood remains with them for their entire life, like a quiet light that follows them even when everything else has passed.

And perhaps one day the children will forget many lessons and dates, but they will not forget the feeling they took with them from here. They will not forget the smell of incense. The sound of the Saint Sava hymn. The warmth of the teacher's words. The feeling that they belong somewhere — and a person without belonging is like a tree without roots.

That is why this school is much more than a classroom. It is a silent guardian of our memory, a small lamp that has been burning in this distant world for fifty years and does not let the most beautiful thing in us go out; a place where the Cyrillic alphabet is not just a letter but a trace of our memory, where children learn to belong to their people, but also to respect every person, no matter what nation they belong to. For us, our Church and our school in it are a home away from home.

An elder from Mount Athos said: “Everything that is not love is doomed to failure.” That is precisely why this school exists — because it was created from love and survived through love.

Today, we remember with gratitude all those who have invested themselves in this sacred work over the past half century — founders, priests, teachers, parents, benefactors, and all the quiet people, whose sacrifice may not always have been visible, but without whom we would not be where we are.

And I wish our children to always find joy, warmth, and a sense of home in this school; that they learn here not only letters and songs, but also how to protect the heart, how to love one's neighbor, how to remain a child and become a man at the same time; and that, wherever life takes them, they never forget the most important thing — that only with the heart can one see well.

May the Lord bless our school, all its teachers and students, and may the love of God continue to guard this place for many years to come.

Happy and blessed anniversary!