The West Carleton Diners’ Club invited me to speak to seniors in Galetta on February 24th.  Several people had their education in one-room schoolhouses.  Doris Mills Lesway went to the Woodlawn Public School which is no longer standing.   Rutie Smith Dean went to Clay Valley School (1928-1936) in McNab Township.  Elizabeth Purdy Higginson enjoyed seeing the Ashton Public School (S.S. No. 7 Goulbourn) in my slide presentation. 

Ron Wallace attended S.S. No. 6 Fitzroy in Mohr’s Corners and S.S. No. 11 Fitzroy in Kinburn.  He remembered rubbing orange peels on his hands so that the strap would sting less.  Lorna Scott Cavanagh also went to S.S. No. 6 Fitzroy in 1937 and two years later she continued at S.S. No. 4 Torbolton (p. 147-148).

Ruby Munro said her teacher, Marilyn Brackenbury, didn’t use the strap too often.  She walked to the Billing Bridge one-room school by River Road from 1929-1937.  She recalled the river overflowing one spring, and the kids were taken one at a time out of the school by boat.

Stan Headrick told me that his grandfather took the first log school of S.S. No. 8 McNab and moved it onto his property.  Stan went to that school from 1934-1942 and I hope he will send me information about the school that I can post.

Joanna Sirois told us she taught grades 1-10 and was a principal in a two-room schoolhouse in Manitou Falls, south of Red Lake in northern Ontario.  The previous teacher had had a nervous breakdown, but Joanna thought the kids were great and it was her best year in the classroom.  Unfortunately, she was only there a year as the hydro project in the area ended and the village people disbanded.

Again I made several connections to people in my book.  Tillie Smith Bastien was a student of Adele Muldoon (p. 53 & 54).  Tillie was a very shy child, but Adele gave her so much confidence that she came in second at a regional public speaking contest.  A former principal at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton School where I now teach, Gerry Levesque, taught Tillie at St. Michael’s, Fitzroy.  His wife, Anne taught her sister Helen McDonald.  Tillie also attended S.S. No. 12 Fitzroy on Ferry Road (p. 14) and Don Armstrong was her teacher.

Education was a family affair for Margaret Steen Stevenson.  She went to S.S. No. 2 Fitzroy in Antrim from 1941-1949.  Her first teacher, Helen Wilson (p. 64-66) boarded at her home.  Her father, Sedley Steen was the caretaker and trustee, and her mother, Evelyn Moreton, was the secretary.  Sliding on the hill by the school in wintertime was a favourite pastime.

Frances Laughlin’s (p. 50) cousins, Harold Munro and Edna Munro Baird began their education with her at the Glen Ogilvy School (S.S. No. 19 Gloucester) in the 1930s and 1940s.  Harold remembers eight grades with 19-20 children.  Mr. T.P. Maxwell was the inspector for years.  He used to stand quietly in the doorway listening, as no one knew he was there.  The teacher was not good at administering the strap as it would bounce back and hit her on the wrist.  So she used a ruler instead.  The children then decided to leave their rulers at home until she said they couldn’t have Art, and so the rulers reappeared.  She remembers that Clark boy had the job of putting the wood in the stove.  One day it over fried, and smoked out the school.  It was hot six pipes up!  Harold went on to Ottawa Tech, but had to drop out of school six months later after his father died, and he had to look after the family farm at the tender age of fifteen.

Also in the audience was Mildred Marshall who went to Merivale Public School (S.S. No. 13 Nepean).  She is the mother of my friend Shirley Monkhouse.  Florence Johnston was her first teacher in 1931.  Mildred recalls her being very strict, but good and “as pretty as a princess”.  She was able to maintain law & order over the big boys.  Her second teacher from 1932-1938 was Bertha Whyte.  She used the strap to straighten out the boys.  Mildred’s husband, Harold Marshall attended S.S. No. 1 Huntley.

As president of the Canadian Federation of University Women in Kanata, I was pleased to be invited to speak to members of CFUW/Perth on February 20th, Family Day. 

One member went to the one-room school on highway 43E between Smiths Falls and Merrickville.  She recalled a one-of-a kind teacher, Ms. Garden, who would teach piano, sewing and knitting at recess.  Another women claimed her teacher in the Peterborough area, found teaching very challenging and she used to have a nip or two when the kids were out at recess!

Marion Stalter Legault’s mother taught in a one-room schoolhouse outside of London, Ontario during the 1930s.  She boarded at the nearest home and it was there she met her future husband.  This school was closed sometime in the early 1950s, and a two-room school across the road replaced it.  The principal of the new school had been at Teacher’s College with Marion’s mother and often stayed with them if the weather was bad.  Marion was in high school at the time and so she would ask her to help mark the test papers.

Barb Mingie’s father was an engineer which resulted in the family moving around a lot.  Barb attended a one-room school for six months in Brantford, Ontario.  She was in the youngest grade and all she can recall was that she wanted to be in the senior grade because they were learning how to knit which look far more interesting than learning how to read.

Elaine McCargar went to the one-room school at Hulbert, south of South Mountain, Ontario.  One day, her aunt, who was the teacher, had to run home for a few minutes.  Two boys started tossing an orange back and forth inside the classroom.  The orange hit Queen Elizabeth’s picture, the glass broke, and the Queen was dripping in juice.  Elaine also remembers skating out in the fields, the Christmas concerts over in the church basement, the strap and the toilets in the basement.

 
It is amazing how many wonderful people I have met giving my talk about my book.  Today I enjoyed a lovely meal at the Mandarin Olive Restaurant on Ogilvy Road as the invited guest of the Ottawa Newcomers Alumni Club.  At my table was a man named Dirk Paul.  He moved with his family from Holland to a farm in Gainsborough Township in the Niagara Penninsula.  He remembers his father walking him and his brother to S.S. No. 4 Gainsborough (Bismark School) on the first day, wrote their names and ages (11 & 9) on the blackboard, and then turned around and walked out leaving his two boys who didn’t speak a word of English.  He grew to love his little blue haired lovely teacher names Miss Cook.  This thin old lady managed to maintain discipline without the need for corporal punishment.  Unfortunately, her replacement, a new graduate, was unable to do the same.  Dirk remembers smoking in the basement, skating at lunch and returning late to class.  What a small world it was to learn that Dirk grew up, graduated in engineering from Queen’s University, and went to work for my father at Bell Canada in 1962.  He remembers coming to my house in Lachine, Quebec and listening to me and my siblings play the piano when we were little!

Brenda Maunder told me that her mother, Maybelle Koen, and her three sisters taught at the one-room schoolhouse in the Sydenham area north of Kingston.  Each sister taught two years, except her mother (who was the youngest) as she was getting married.  Each day she rode her horse bareback two kilometers to school and put the horse out in the little fenced in area.  At the end of the school day, she would send the big boys out to catch the horse so she could ride home.  Maybelle met her husband in Maynooth, north-west of Bancroft.  He was the principal and taught the older students in the two-room school, while she taught the younger students.

Mrs. Mamie Hill was Janet Wright’s teacher for the six years she attended Hill’s School, thirty miles north of Kingston near the village of Godfrey.  Janet started Grade 1 at Easter and was in Grade 2 by September.  She ended up skipping Grade 7 and often would help younger children with their spelling before she started high school in 1944.  Janet remembers putting up one finger for water and two fingers for the toilet.  If you wanted to talk to a classmate, you just had to wave your hand at the teacher.  Fridays were special.  Miss Hill had pictures of cities around the world placed on the walls inside the classroom.  If you got all 10-15 words right in the Spelling Bee, you got to “fly” to the next city.  Janet proudly professed that she “flew” around the world several times.  This was an excellent way to teach geography.  Janet told me the boys used to get the strap regularly for doing something bad like talking back, hitting a girl or using foul language.

Barbara Cresswell owned Hillhead School on the road between Barren Lake and Lachute, Quebec.  This school was built in 1840 and many children from Scottish ancestry went to school there.  She found a picture of school children in the attic.  Fortunately it wasn’t damaged when they had a fire in the house.

As mentioned in my book, there were French as well as English one-room schoolhouses in the Ottawa Valley.  I was surprised to learn that there was a German school near Hurdman’s bridge in Ottawa.  If anyone has more information about this school, I would love to hear from you.