St. George's School, Vancouver - Review #3

I was at St. George's from 2021 to 2025 after moving from Calgary to Vancouver for school and hockey. I lived in Harker Hall as a boarding student in the Dunbar neighbourhood. The funny thing is that I came for the hockey but I ended up getting really interested in finance along the way, and the school never once made me feel like I had to choose between those two things.

The best thing that happened to me at St. George's was not a goal or a grade but the realization that I could be both an athlete and an analyst at the same time. The discipline from hockey carried over into how I approach finance, and the analytical side gave me something to think about when I was not on the ice. I am proud of the twenty six points I put up across two seasons of U15, and I am proud that I kept my grades up while playing at that level, and I am proud that I got into McGill Desautels and landed a junior analyst role at Martlet Fund. I grew up by learning how to balance hockey and school and finance all at once, and some weeks were absolute chaos but I figured it out because I had to.

I would have taken more business courses too, because they turned out to be useful in ways I did not expect. My advice for someone new is to ignore anyone who tells you to pick between athletics and academics, because St. George's has space for both and that combination is more interesting than being just one thing.

What I liked most about St. George's was that nobody asked me to choose between hockey and finance and the school just said go do your thing and we will get out of your way. Most places want you to pick a lane, but St. George's let me drive in two lanes at once and that is pretty rare.

You should go to the rink at UBC at 6am sometime because the ice is fresh and the building is quiet and that is the best time to skate. You should not overpack for boarding school because you really will not use half of the stuff you bring. If you are interested in finance, you should just start reading annual reports now, not because you have to but because it is actually interesting once you get into it.

The classes were small and the teachers actually knew my name and my schedule, which helped because hockey practice ate up a lot of my time. I took every business and economics course I could fit into my timetable, and the teachers used real companies and real problems instead of just textbook theory. The workload was manageable as long as I stayed organized, and I had to be organized because hockey owns your weekends.

CSSHL hockey is a real league with about 50 games a season, and we practiced at the Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Sports Centre at UBC which is the same rink the varsity teams use. We had practices four days a week plus dryland training and video sessions, and the coaches actually cared about our grades and our character, not just our stats. I played defence and I was physical and the 56 penalty minutes from my second year of U15 Prep is probably the stat I remember most.

I did not participate in any of those things because my hands were full with hockey and finance but I respect the kids who did.

I am a junior analyst at the Martlet Fund at McGill now working on event driven strategy and that interest started at St. George's when I just started reading about markets alone in my dorm room. I also do case competitions through the MUS Case League, which helps with the analytical side of business school. The Elections Canada job was random but valuable because you learn to follow procedures exactly when there is no room for mistakes.

I boarded at Harker Hall with about a hundred other guys from all over the place and the rooms are pretty simple but the common room is where everyone actually lives. The dorm parents were around but they were not in your face and they would knock before coming into your room which was nice. Boarding taught me how to handle my own stuff because my parents were not there to wake me up or remind me about deadlines, so I had to figure it out myself.

The dining hall was just fuel for me most days. I would grab a plate, eat whatever was hot, and get out. But I remember one specific thing. The pasta station on Fridays. Some older Italian lady ran it and she would load up your bowl with way too much sauce and you could get seconds no questions asked. I ate a lot of that pasta. Also the chocolate milk came in those little cartons and I probably drank four of them after every practice. The dining staff learned your name after a while, which was nice. They would see you coming and already know you wanted extra eggs or whatever. It was not fancy but it was consistent and that mattered more than I realized at the time.

Vancouver is a real city which is different from Calgary in a lot of ways, and I could walk to Dunbar Village for coffee or drive ten minutes to UBC for hockey. The mountains were close and the ocean was close too, but I did not explore as much as I should have because hockey ate my weekends and I was usually too tired to do anything else.

I was not the guy who knew everyone. That was never my thing. But I had a small group of guys from the hockey team and a couple of finance nerds I would talk markets with, and that was enough for me. The school is big enough that you can keep to yourself if you want, but small enough that you cannot fully disappear either. I remember sitting in the common room on a Tuesday night, not talking to anyone, just doing homework while other people played video games and yelled at each other. That was my version of socializing. Being around people without having to perform. The boarding house made that easy. You could be quiet and still not be alone. I did not go to dances or coffeehouses or any of that. Not my personality. But I never felt lonely either, which is probably the right balance.