Bett, Dr. Sidney George

Coming to Ridley in 1923, Dr. Bett exercised a reverberating influence over the school for forty-one years as a talented musician and instructor of the performing arts. He filled the Memorial Chapel for its first forty years with glorious repertoires of organ music and the sounds of choral and congregational singing. He wrote brilliant pastiche music—often based upon Gilbert & Sullivan—in his “Football Songs” and his topical and local comic operettas.

In all the expressions of Ridley nostalgia, nothing is mentioned more frequently than the tradition of “the signing school.” In addition to eliciting school performance through the choir, glee club, hymn singing, and football songs, Dr. Bett created a love of music through musical appreciation classes. In one of his own compositions, he wrote: "With all our heart, we’ll play our part / We’ll give our best at her behest / For we belong to Ridley." Dr. Bett died in 1964.

P.O. Box 3013, 2 Ridley Road St. Catharines, Ontario L2R 7C3 Canada 905 684 1889

With more than 700 students from 60 countries, the largest boarding programme in Ontario and the third largest in Canada, Ridley College is a truly international, co-educational, day and boarding school of the world that prepares students for the world. It has provided enriching learning and life-shaping experiences focused on the arts, academics, and athletics since 1889. Ridley’s Lower School offers JK-Grade 8, its Upper School consists of Grade 9-PG, and Ridley graduates attend some of the top universities and colleges around the world. Ridley is the only co-ed independent boarding school in Canada and one of only three in North America authorized to offer the International Baccalaureate (IB) continuum programme.