By Dennis Merotto, for Parents Arts Council, Rosedale Heights School of the Arts
Rosedale Heights School of the Arts student Cameron Jones has plenty to celebrate this summer. He just graduated from high school and is set to attend the University of Toronto in September. And when he cracks the books again, he will do so as a winner of the prestigious University of Toronto’s National Scholarship Award, worth close to $70,000.
Thousands of students apply each year from across Canada and all students are eligible, provided they have their school’s support. In early January, twenty finalists were selected from the numbers of applicants and invited to spend three days at U of T visiting and touring with staff and teachers and undergoing hours of interviews. Of these twenty, seven students were selected to receive the full scholarship. Jones was among those seven students who were awarded the scholarship in recognition of their excellent academic record and extracurricular activities. The remaining finalists received a smaller version of the scholarship named the Arbor Scholarship.
Cameron Jones has been a busy young man these past few years not only in school but outside of it as well. In 2010 he met Toronto based historian writer Alexis Troubetzkoy who commissioned Jones to illustrate six maps for his then up and coming book “ Artic Obsession” – an examination of history’s seminal, if not often disastrous, expeditions to the far north. Shortly after the book was released Jones was then approached by publishing company Thomas Dunne Books (a division of St. Martin’s Press) to do illustrations of a similar type for nautical fiction writer Dewey Lambdin and his book “Reefs and Shoals” published earlier this winter. Jones has also been commissioned to do a book per year for the next few years with Thomas Dunne Books.
Between the above commissions, in the summer of 2010, he worked with the San Francisco-based arts and culture magazine, SOMA, for which Jones served as a temporary editor, and, in which he has had prose and journalism published. In the summer of 2011, Jones was managing publicity for the Toronto-based theatre and improv company The National Theatre for the World.
At U of T’s Trinity College, Jones will be studying English literature with a minor in history or philosophy and with hopes of one day becoming a writer or more so a poet.
When asked if his few years at Rosedale Heights helped give him the opportunity to apply and win the scholarship, Jones had this to say:
“I cannot think of a single sentiment that would give appropriate thanks to this school. I have been at Rosedale for only two years; it is, though, the finest school among the seven I have attended across three countries. I have not known teachers so kind and accommodating elsewhere, nor a guidance department so accessible and with such an—absolutely necessary!—open-door policy, nor a curriculum so substantial, a student body so diverse and active, and an office staff and captain so strong. Winning this scholarship hardly represents Cameron Jones being recognized; it is a recognition of and nod to Rosedale.”